Scheduling Your Writing Life to Maximize Your Output by Jo Michaels #ChaBooCha

Hello, good people of ChaBooCha! I'm Jo Michaels, author at http://jomichaels.blogspot.com. I was invited over by Ms. Rebecca Fyfe to talk with you all about scheduling and how you can use it to maximize your output. Like many things, being an author is a job. When you work for yourself, you work twice as many hours than you would if you worked an hourly job. Were you aware of that? Are you feeling overwhelmed by ChaBooCha? It's probably not writer's block or the number of hours in a day. I'll show you how to get organized and schedule around your brain's preferred output time. Ready? Grab your pens and notebooks and let's get going!

First, I need you to make a list of everything you have to accomplish outside of writing. If you're anything like me, that list is probably really long. Go ahead and do that now. I'll wait.

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Done? Good. Now, make a list of all the social networking platforms you visit during a week. Again, I'll wait.

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Write down what time of day you have the most energy. Is there a block of time you always have to yourself, when you could choose what you want to do, rather than what you have to do? Write that down, too.

Get out a lined piece of paper. Don't be tempted to do this digitally just yet. Paper is your friend. Let's create a Monday schedule first. List times. From the hour of the morning your alarm goes off to the time you go to bed, use one line for every half hour. It should look something like this:

Feel free to print that one and use it, if your times are similar to my own.

Now, write in and block out time for things you would like to accomplish. Even the most menial task should be listed.

I've filled mine out, here's what it looks like:

If you want my social networking schedule, you can see here.

Now, go make one for every day M-F. Then, follow the schedule you make for yourself. I find if I write around the same time every day, my brain is ready to create content or tell a story. It takes fourteen days to form a new habit; why not start now?

If you take the time to make a schedule for every day you work, you’ll find your productivity increases ten-fold. Turn everything off for the times you have your writing scheduled and just write. Some days may be research, editing, or plotting days, and that’s fine. But make sure you’re only doing what you’ve written on your list. I know it takes time to schedule these things out. But I also know how much it helps. I was a NaNoWriMo winner this year. Because of my scheduling habits, take a look at what my stats were:

Notice how many days during the month I had progress. Thanksgiving week was a wash. I averaged 1,673 words per day. Why? Because I had a schedule and stuck to it. Some days, I wrote upward of 6K words.

Remember, you’ll only get out of something what you put into it.

Well, that’s all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

About the author: Jo Michaels is a writer who's really had a taste of life. She's lived in Louisiana, Tennessee, and Georgia; but visited states from coast to coast. Michaels, a high-school dropout, put herself through college while her husband was deployed to Iraq and still managed to come out on the other side with all five of her children still breathing. On top of that wondrous feat, she managed to graduate Summa Cum Laude. After her fourteen year marriage ended cataclysmically, she took to the keys to fulfill her dream of becoming a writer. Using the degree she obtained in school, Jo set out with tools in her belt not many writers possess: a strong design eye, the skills necessary to format her books, and the ability to use her artistic talents to create stunning covers.

Now, Michaels writes full-time in her garage while imbibing copious amounts of coffee to keep her motor running from son up to son down (and daughter, too). Her inspiration for her books comes from relationships, life, friends, passion, and her own incredible imagination. A fight for achieving her dream (along with her super duper boyfriend) is what drags her out of bed every morning to do what she does best: spin tales laced with high-octane emotion for readers worldwide.
Jo has written nine books, all of which are self-published.

Today's prize is going to be an e-copy of Jo's book "The Indie Author's Guide to: Building a Great Book." This guide contains helpful tips and tricks to make your book look like it came from a major publisher. Guided sections walk you through how to format your book for all platforms, how to create a dynamite cover, how to brand yourself as an author, and how to build a perfect book for printing. I was going to buy a print copy of it for the prize, but Jo assures me that, due to helpful links within the book, the e-copy version would make a better prize. However, if you don't have an e-reader, you may choose a print version of the book instead.

    

If you are already a signed-up member of the Chapter Book Challenge, all you need to do to be entered into the drawing to win this prize is to comment on this post by noon GMT on the 29th of March. At this time, the winner will be chosen through a random number generator and announced later the same day.