THE BUSINESS OF WRITING
TIME ZONES
Allow more time to be creative by optimising your schedule with practical advice from Simon Whaley
Simon Whaley
On Sunday 31 October British Summer Time ends and the clocks go back. We all get an extra hour of time. So, what will you do with yours? Most of us would love more time to write, but waking up at 2am on 31 October is not what most of us have in mind. And, while an extra hour is useful, there’s only so much we can do with it. To become more productive writers, we need to rethink how we classify our time.
When it comes to the business of writing, we don’t simply need time to write. There’s other business that needs sorting, such as research, recording submissions, promoting ourselves on social media, pitching article ideas to editors, and so on.
That’s still writing work, but it’s not writing. As creative people, we only produce something when we sit down to write. Therefore, our writing time is the most important time in our writing business. Can you quantify how much of your writing time your research and admin take up?
Managers vs makers
In 2009, programmer and writer Paul Graham wrote an online essay (www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html) about the Makers Schedule. He explained how managers are more efficient when they schedule lots of meetings throughout the day to manage people and fire-fight problems. Whereas staff who are creative are most efficient when they can work uninterrupted for long periods of time.