Category: Writing

Are You Committed To Writing Or Just Interested?

I’m a huge Tony Robbins fan. (Based on his books, not his conferences, which are a bit too pricey for me.)

One distinction Robbins makes that’s key to writing is commitment versus interest.

Being Interested v. Being Committed

If you’re interested in doing something, you probably admire or envy other people who’ve achieved that goal or engaged in that activity. You believe you’d enjoy it, and you feel it’s something you’d be proud of.

But if you don’t do it, while you might feel a little regret, it won’t seriously upset you.

For example, maybe you took piano lessons as a kid. As an adult, you might like to play better than you do, and you might include “play piano more often” as one of your New Year’s resolutions or goals.

If despite that resolution, during the next twelve months your piano is mostly used to display family photos (or your favorite tea sets, not that that’s what I use mine for), you’re interested in playing piano, but you’re not committed to it.

On the other hand, if you’re committed, playing piano and playing it well matters to you more than almost anything else.

If life gets busy, you’ll push aside another task to make time to play. If you feel sick, short of actually collapsing, you’ll sit at the keyboard even if it’s for five minutes or practice your fingering in your mind or listen to music you can learn from.

As it is with piano playing, so it is with writing.

How You Become Committed To Writing A Novel

If despite your best laid plans, month after month you never get more than a few sentences written, what you need most may not be more time but to shift from being interested in writing to being committed to it.

How do you do that?

  • Set a deadline.

If you don’t choose a timeframe, it’s too easy to imagine you’ll get to writing your book next week or next month. Then you turn around a year later and you’ve still not finished your novel.

So choose a date by which you’ll finish your book that’s reasonable but a little ambitious so you’ll need to make an effort to find the time. It could be six months, a year, or two years.

  • Write down all the reasons you want to finish a novel.

Maybe you’ve had an idea forever that you believe is perfect, and you so want to see how it plays out. Maybe you love immersing yourself in a fictional world once you finally do it, and you want that feeling more often. Maybe you imagine being interviewed on a podcast or television show, speaking at a conference, or reading at a launch party from your novel.

Whatever your reasons are, write them down. Now imagine how you’ll feel if all of that comes true. Pretty great, right?

  • Imagine yourself a year down the road and you haven’t written word.

How will you feel? Write that down along with the other downsides of not writing.

  • Tell other people about your goal.

Tell three people that you will finish a novel within six months, a year, two years, whatever your timeline is.

Just saying it strengthens your commitment, because now you’ve said it aloud to witnesses. Even if you never speak of it again and all three people forget about it, you’ll know that if they do happen to ask and you haven’t written a word, you’ll have to admit that. (Or lie, but you wouldn’t do that, right? And, anyway, you’ll know the truth no matter what you say.)

  • Ask for help.

This point is one step beyond telling people, it’s enlisting them in your goal.

Ask a friend or family member to check in with you once a month and ask how the novel is going. Or, if you don’t want to put that obligation on anyone, ask if they are willing to receive an email, text, or voicemail from you once a week about your progress.

The person doesn’t need to respond.

Simply knowing you’ll be reporting what you did or didn’t do will add to your commitment to have something positive to say, even if it’s only “wrote a hundred words” or “figured out who my antagonist is.”

Good Luck!

Until Friday–

L.M. Lilly

P.S. If you’re looking to learn more on this distinction between commitment and interest or how to motivate yourself, I recommend you go right to the source and read Awaken The Giant Within by Anthony Robbins.

 

To Revise Or Not To Revise

How often and how much to revise a piece of writing varies from writer to writer.

I’m usually more of a rewriter than a writer. I create a rough outline then write fast, shutting off the editing part of my brain and telling myself whatever it is I’ll fix it later, which I do.

This leads to a pretty fast first draft. I think that’s a plus given how many writers struggle with getting anything on the page.

On the other hand, I just attended a writers conference where a couple presenters made a good case that aiming to write a solid draft the first time around, trusting your creativity and voice, and doing only a clean up rewrite to fix errors and fill in research blanks saves a lot of time and results in more engaging writing. (Though it apparently leads to run on sentences.)

I’m not entirely convinced that method will work for me. But I am going to try to be a little less bare bones in my next first draft and see if that cuts down on some revising time.

Because of these contrasting views on revisions, this Friday I’m recommending 3 different articles:

SPF-088: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Revision Process – with Joan Dempsey

Until Sunday–

L.M. Lilly

Scarlett O’Hara, Lizzy Bennet, And Character Values

What we value drives all our decisions, from the friends we choose to the jobs we take to where we live or what types of families we have.

This is also true of your characters.

You don’t need to know everything your character values, but the more you know, the better you’ll understand who your character is and what drives her (or him or it).

Also, the more easily you’ll be able to create conflict. That matters because without conflict, there’s no story.

Values-Driven Conflict

You can create conflict by starting with a character you’re drawn to, figuring out that person’s values, then choosing conflicting values for another character who opposes the first.

For example, if you want to write about a protagonist who highly values peace and getting along with others, you might give him an antagonist who believes that disputing every point is the best way to get to the truth or to foster the most honest relationship.

This difference can create great conflict—and so spark a story—whether you’re writing romance, horror, literary fiction, or any other genre.

On the other hand, if you have a plot but no characters yet, you can start with what values your significant characters would need to serve that plot.

Lizzy Bennet

In Pride and Prejudice, protagonist Elizabeth Bennet highly values happiness and love in marriage, as well as compatibility, having seen her parents’ unhappiness.

Those values place her at great conflict with the practical realities of her life.

We learn on page one of the book that she is one of five Bennet sisters who, along with their mother, face homelessness and poverty when their father dies, as his estate passes to a distant cousin.

Nonetheless, Elizabeth, defying her mother’s wishes, refuses to marry the cousin.

The marriage would ensure she, her mother, and her sisters will be protected upon the father’s death. If Elizabeth didn’t value happiness—or perhaps avoiding definite unhappiness—in marriage so highly, she’d accept the proposal to protect herself and her family. But there would be no conflict, so no story.

And Scarlett O’Hara

As another example, in Gone With The Wind Scarlett marries her sister’s fiancé to get money to support the family’s home.

Why?

Her highest values are saving her family’s plantation and keeping her family from starving. She’s sure that if her sister marries the man, his money will not go toward the family or their home but toward the sister alone.

Someone whose highest value was loyalty to her sister would make a different choice, as would someone who valued romantic love above all.

Love Scarlett or hate her, admire her or criticize her, does anyone doubt that she would marry her sister’s beau in those circumstances? Not for a second. That’s a character with strong, clear values. Gone With The Wind is full of conflict as a result.

Think about the protagonist and antagonist in a story you’re writing or plotting.

What do they value most? Do those values conflict? If not, is there a way you can alter their values so that they do?

Until Friday–

L.M. Lilly

P.S. For more on developing characters, check out my Free Character Creation Tip Sheet.

Playing More Could Help Your Writing

I finally watched Stranger Things, the Netflix series about frightening forces at work in a small town.

The first episode starts with four boys playing a role-playing game that includes monsters.

A few of my games.

When one boy disappears, the others draw from the rules and the magic of their game to help search for him. As is also true in many Stephen King novels, magic and imagination are key to confronting evil.

Play is key to real life, too, especially for writers.

There’s a reason we often get our best story ideas or solve a plot issue as we drift off to sleep or when we dream. To be creative, our minds need to relax and rest and play.

But it’s not easy to play.

Most of life, especially when you’re juggling multiple responsibilities, is scheduled and goal-oriented. Writing can add to that, as fitting it in often means putting every free half hour (or every fifteen minutes) toward our latest project.

That’s a good way to make progress on a novel, and I’m a big fan of schedules and goals, lists and plans. But doing things that are solely for fun, that have no end goal, is what sparks creativity. It helps avoid writer’s block.

Also, it’s fun.

So what counts as play?

Peter Gray, Ph.D., in a blog on Psychology Today, noted that Play is:

  1. self-directed and self-chosen;
  2. an activity where the means matter more than the ends;
  3. has rules, but they’re created by the player’s minds, not required by physical necessity;
  4. is imaginative, not literal, and is in some way removed from “real life”;
  5. involves an alert and active, but not stressed, state of mind.

Over the last few years as I’ve cut back on my law practice, I’ve added more play. I’ve played air hockey and laser tag. Yesterday night I visited the Jurassic Park exhibit at Chicago’s Field Museum.

I also like board games, and next month I’m meeting with some writer friends at the Galloping Ghost Arcade. You can play arcade games all day for $20, and I’ve heard it has the classics from my childhood. (My favorites were Q-bert, Galaxian, and Ms. Pacman.)

Looking back, much as I’m happy that I wrote a lot even when I was working 55-65 hours a week at law, I’m pretty sure I would have been happier, and possibly also finished my novels more quickly, had I occasionally written a little less and played a little more.

How about you?

If you were going to write less and play more, what would you play?

Until Friday—

L.M. Lilly

Should You Use Beta Readers?

Five or six years ago I’d never heard the term beta reader. Now almost all authors I know use them as part of their revision process, as do I.

Recently, however, I read a post by Dean Wesley Smith that cautions against relying on beta readers.

A beta reader looks at a complete manuscript and gives the writer comments. This person is not a professional editor or an author, but is someone who reads a lot, ideally in the genre in which the author is writing.

Some authors send beta readers a first draft.

I usually send my novel out only when it’s close to finished. My early drafts are very rough, and I do a lot of my writing in the rewriting phase. I don’t want other people’s views to skew my take on my own story.

The main benefit I’ve found from beta readers is that they let me know when they can’t follow or don’t understand a scene or plot twist. Also, if they don’t understand why a character does something or strongly dislike a character I’d thought readers would resonate with, it cues me to double check to see if enough of what I know about that character has actually gotten out of my head and onto the page.

Some authors use dozens of beta readers and try to incorporate all of their comments. For me, that would be overwhelming, so I’ve never tried it.

In Killing The Sacred Cows Of Publishing: Beta Readers Help You Dean Wesley Smith strongly discourages using multiple readers, as it can easily turn into writing by committee.

Also, and contrary to much of the common advice to indie authors, Smith argues against using beta readers at all, stating: “Grow a backbone and believe in your own writing.” He makes good points about the downsides of the process and also about the fears and lack of confidence that may motivate writers to seek out many opinions.

If you’re using or considering using beta readers, I highly recommend checking out his post.

Until Sunday-

L. M. Lilly

What To Read When You’re Writing

The next book you read can make revising your own novel easier or harder.

Most writers are strongly influenced by what they read and when. Sometimes you’re aware of it.

For instance, Margaret Atwood said that when she came up with the concept for A Handmaid’s Tale, she realized it required her to to write dystopian science fiction. She read dozens of sci-fi novels to become more familiar with the genre.

Other times it’s unconscious, such as when another author’s style creeps into your prose.

You don’t notice as you write, but when you return to a first draft after having set it aside for a while, you see a shift in style, level of detail, or dialogue rhythm that reflects what you were reading as you worked on different parts of the manuscript.

Because of that, it’s worth choosing books that influence your writing in a positive way.

Know Your Strengths And Weaknesses

To make a good choice, you need to understand the strengths and weakness of your draft. That usually requires some distance.

For me, setting a first draft aside for 2-3 weeks is ideal, though I’ll let it rest longer if I need to work on something else anyway, and I’ll take a shorter time away if I’m on a deadline.

Regardless, when you read the draft with fresh eyes, think about plot, pace, character development, dialogue, and scene level detail.

Ask yourself which aspect is strongest and what needs the most work.

Below are some thoughts on what to read to help the revision process.

Plot

For strong plots, genre books like suspense, mystery, horror, thrillers, and romance are good choices. These books usually have strong, clear plot outlines you can see if you pay attention when you reread.

When I was trying to get a better handle on plotting, I reread Stephen King’s The Dead Zone and wrote an outline of it. (I later read an interview where King said that was one of the few novels he outlined before writing.)

Watching movies and noting what happens in the beginning and at each quarter point in the film also can be very helpful. A major plot turn typically happens at the 1/4, 1/2, and 3/4 point.

You can easily see this in The Dead Zone, in the film The Terminator, or in the book or film Gone With The Wind.

Characterization

For character development, I like Pat Conroy’s novels, as he delves deeply into his characters’ lives. The Prince Of Tides and The Lords Of Discipline are two excellent choices. Read either book to see how backstory plays into the plots.

Gone Girl also is an excellent book for character development (and plot for that matter).

Regardless whether you like horror, Stephen King develops his characters in great depth. That’s what I love most about his work. The Stand and It show how really knowing the characters makes the stories pay off.

Prose

If you feel your prose is too wordy, read any John Sandford book to help achieve a clear, clean style. In a single line, Sandford can do more to set a scene or portray a character than most writers get across in an entire page.

My very old copy of Gone With The Wind

On the other hand, if your writing tends to be too sparing, again go back to Pat Conroy. He writes beautiful description and, in his best work, does it without distracting from the story.

Gone With The Wind is also a great choice for describing scenes and characters in a textured way that draws on all the senses.

Dialogue

For engaging, fast-paced dialogue that reveals character, one of the best choices is Jane Austen’s Pride And Prejudice.

Any play by David Mamet is a good choice. For TV, Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, also has an excellent ear for dialogue.

Pace

The pace of your novel or story is best addressed toward the end of the revision process. For that, you’ll usually want to read books that fall within your genre.

If you’re writing a thriller, read books praised by reviewers as page turners. If you’re writing literary, immerse yourself in your favorite literary novels, which generally allow for a far more leisurely pace.

One caveat on pacing—when you choose your examples, consider how established the writer’s fan base is.

Going back to Stephen King, while It is a wonderful example of characterization, on first read, I found the first half of the book far too slow. I had the same reaction to The Stand (and that was the less lengthy edition that was initially published, not the later extended version).

Because I already loved King’s books, I stuck with both and found I was glad I knew the characters so well. Had I not already been a huge King fan, though, I might not have finished either book.

In other words, if you’re aiming to draw in new readers, you may need to pick up the pace a bit more than does an author who already has readers eagerly buying the next book.

What do you like to read when you’re writing? Feel free to share in the comments or via email.

Until Friday—

L.M. Lilly

P.S. For more on the plot points referred to above, including an analysis of the stories mentioned, check out Super Simple Story Structure: A Quick Guide To Plotting And Writing Your Novel.

Truth, Strangeness, And Fiction

Have you ever written a story based on something that happened to you in real life and had a reviewer, beta reader, or editor say, “That would never happen?”

In that situation, most of us automatically think (and sometimes say), “But, it did.”

Unfortunately, we can’t walk around with our novels explaining to readers that certain things really did happen or certain words really were said. Even if you write a piece labeled based on a true story or that’s marketed as a memoir, readers aren’t obligated to believe any of it is true. And they won’t, unless you lay the proper groundwork.

So what to do? Try these 3 steps:

  • Remember the cliché about truth being stranger than fiction
  • Recognize what you know that your reader doesn’t
  • Be true to your story
Truth And Fiction

The old cliché that truth is stranger than fiction is a good reminder that just because something really happened doesn’t mean your readers will believe it.

In real life, if your friend does something that’s out of character, you believe it because you see her do it whether you understand her motives or not. In fiction, though, rather than believe it when a character does something that doesn’t ring true based on what you’ve seen so far, you’ll likely instead feel the author has done a poor job with characterization.

Similarly, if a reader’s understanding of a particular situation, workplace, or topic clashes with what’s depicted in a novel, the reader most likely will believe her own experience and figure the author failed to do enough research.

That assumption might be completely unfair on the reader’s part, but as story expert Lani Diane Rich often says, truth is no defense to fiction. The fiction must stand on its own.

I ran into this with a story about a lawyer who, in the first scene, was meeting an important client for dinner and hoping to make a good impression that could help him get a promotion. Nervous, he adjusted his tie, which he had borrowed, as he hadn’t worn one to work that day.

The critique group with whom I shared a first draft couldn’t believe that a lawyer at a large firm with business clients had gone to work without a tie. One writer said flatly, “There’s no way this guy who’s bucking for a promotion doesn’t wear a suit and tie every day.”

The firm in the story was modeled after the large law firm where I worked as an attorney at the time. My first instinct was to point out that no one in firm’s Chicago office, which included over 200 lawyers, one of whom was the Chairman, wore a suit every day.

But I realized that didn’t matter.

The people in my critique group knew I was a lawyer, and still they thought I had written an unrealistic lawyer character. Clearly, readers who didn’t know me would be even more likely to assume I had no clue what “real” lawyers’ lives are like. Regardless what was true, I hadn’t done my job as a writer.

What Do You Know

If you have a point that seems clear to you because it really happened, but it doesn’t strike the reader as true, you’ve probably left out facts or details that you think are obvious. Think about what you know about the backstory, the larger world where your story takes place, or the characters that you haven’t shared with the reader.

As I talked further with my critique group, I learned that their views of lawyers came mostly from two types of experiences. First, what they’d seen in TV and movies. Second, from personal experiences with an attorney they’d hired for a personal matter such as a divorce, a will, or a personal injury lawsuit.

Those types of lawyers are more likely to wear suits when meeting with clients, and they’re more likely to appear in court where suits are required.

What I knew and the readers didn’t is that at a large firm that handles litigation for large corporations, the client contact person is a lawyer who works for (or “inside”) that corporation. Those inside lawyers don’t go to court, and they generally wear business casual attire to work. If the lawyers at the law firms wear suits, that makes the inside lawyers feel underdressed. The firm lawyers dress to match their clients.

Also, in that type of commercial litigation, trials are rare, and there aren’t a whole lot of court appearances. Especially for more junior lawyers, nineteen days out of twenty the work is all about writing on a computer, talking on a conference call, and corresponding with clients via email. (Which is why you don’t see a lot of TV shows about commercial litigators.)

These sorts of details, perhaps told from of the perspective of a new lawyer nervous about fitting in and wearing what everyone else was wearing, probably would convince the reader that my protagonist wasn’t used to wearing a tie.

But should a writer always includes those types of details?

Being True To Your Story

Whether it makes sense to include details or backstory to make your real life experience believable depends on the type of story you’re telling.

Sometimes that detail is the story. Giving readers the inside scoop on a milieu with which they’re not familiar can make for a fascinating read.

In the 1960s Arthur Hailey did this with hotels and airlines in the aptly named novels Hotel and Airport. While probably everyone who read the books had stayed in a hotel or flown in a plane, they didn’t know what happened behind the scenes. The novels gave readers an inside view through compelling, likable characters facing challenges in getting their jobs done, dealing with coworkers and superiors, and handling difficult customers.

By bringing us deep into the viewpoint of someone striving to make guests happy, Hailey showed the stressful nature of tasks that seemed from the outside to be simple, such as ensuring each guest got an on-time wake up call (back when actual people made those calls).

In contrast, in my example above, my story wasn’t about life inside a large law firm that handled complex commercial lawsuits. I was writing a horror story about a lawyer meeting a client in a fancy restaurant where everyone morphs into monsters.

In that type of story, sharing backstory about the law firm and how people dressed, or adding scenes with conflicts on that point, would only slow the plot and bore the reader.

So I dropped the part about the tie being borrowed. I had the lawyer fiddle with it out of nerves, but I didn’t otherwise comment on what he normally wore. That got us to the monsters much more quickly.

Next time you write something that comes from real life, keeping these three steps in mind should make sure it also works as fiction.

Good luck!

Until Friday—

L.M. Lilly

Money And Your Characters

Writing believable, compelling characters requires knowing what’s happening in their minds and hearts. It also requires a deep understanding of human behavior.

One key to both is to figure out the relationships your characters have, including their relationship with money.

That’s so because people’s finances hit on all the same emotional issues as family, romance, and friendship.

What Money Means To Your Character

Your Character And MoneyMoney has lot of layers.

First, it has a practical and literal meaning. Unless your character lives in a society that is all barter, she needs money to survive.

Money also places a value on things, work, and—in some people’s minds—people. 

The average Major League baseball player in the U.S. earns about $4.47 million a year, while the average salary for a high school teacher in the U.S. is $47,760.

How Much Your Character Earns

You can argue about whether or not this statistic means our culture actually values ball playing more than teaching and what other factors go into those salary differences.

For the purpose of building your characters, though, it hints at many important questions.

For instance:

  • If the amount your character earns per year is zero, does that affect her self-esteem?
  • What if it’s in the top 1%?
  • How about if it significantly increases or lowers one year?
  • What if it’s higher or lower than the character’s best friend, sibling, spouse, grown child, or parent?
  • What does the amount earned per year mean to your character?

Money might be how your character measures success. It also might be a measure of good or evil.

To one person, being well-to-do financially could indicate being a good person who is showered with the bounty of God or the Universe. To another, it might symbolize selfishness or greed and signal underhanded dealings.

Does Your Character See Money As Love?

Money can serve as a proxy for love, which is why some wills and trusts lawyers advise clients to leave an exactly equal amount to each child, regardless of circumstance.

Going back to our ballplayer/teacher comparison, parents whose only real asset is a modest house may look at their baseball player child and think it’s ridiculous to leave him half of it. It will be a drop in the bucket to him. But leaving the entire house to the high school teacher child might cover a grandchild’s college bills, be much needed to supplement a retirement fund, or fund a move to a nicer neighborhood.

But giving everything to one child, even when the other is in excellent shape financially, can create bitter, “Mom always loved you more” feelings.

Disputes About Money

The best way to figure out how your character feels about money is to ask what she would do in a dispute over money.

Let’s say your character gave a sibling $5,000 two years ago to help pay for a child’s car or tuition. Your character believes it was a loan, the sibling says it was a gift. Your character absolutely does not need the money.

(You can switch the amount to $100 or $1,000 if that’s more realistic.)

  • If the dispute is never resolved, how long will your character think about it or talk about it?
  • Would your character consider talking to a lawyer or suing to get the money back?
  • Would your character ask for the money from the college student/car buyer?
  • Is it likely your character would stop speaking to the sibling?
  • If your character says, “it’s not the money, it’s the principle of the thing,” what is the principle?

These issues overlap into family, and that’s part of the point. If money means love, success, who is right or wrong, who is honest, etc., that’s magnified when it’s someone with whom the character has a personal relationship.

Because of that, drawing out your character’s feelings and beliefs about money reveals a lot about what matters to him and who he is.

Until Friday–

L.M. Lilly

P.S. This article contains excerpts from Creating Compelling Characters From The Inside Out, which is available in paperback and Kindle editions (and is free to Kindle Unlimited subscribers).

Improving Your Dialogue

Writing dialogue is a challenge for most writers. There’s making it sound “real” or “natural” without it actually sounding the way people talk, which includes constant “uhs,” incomplete thoughts, and sentences that make no sense.

(I discovered that last one in my law practice when I read transcripts of testimony. I was surprised how often people say things that everyone understands in the moment but that is confusing or incomprehensible when read later.)

Then there’s the rhythm and musicality of great dialogue. Read or watch a David Mamet play (Glengarry Glen Ross, Oleanna) or Aaron Sorkin show (West Wing, The Newsroom, Sports Night) for great examples of that.

Also, there’s character. Just as people don’t all talk the same way, your characters should sound different from one another. This difference is not only about how they speak but what they say.

All of which is why this Friday I’m recommending you check out this podcast episode from How Story Works on Character & Dialogue:

https://chipperish.com/2017/09/18/hsw-25-character-dialogue/

Have a great weekend!

Until Sunday–

L.M. Lilly

Where Does The Time Go: Tracking Time And Your Writing Life

As I talked about last Sunday in Will Eating The Frogs First Help You Write More?, it’s easy for time to get away from you, especially if you’re working full time (or more) in another job or profession, raising children, and/or have other significant life responsibilities. Even in a slow week, whatever time you thought you’d have to write can melt away.

So how do you hang on to that time so you can use it?

First, you need to figure out where your time–all of it–is really going. Then you can choose how you want to spend it.

Tracking Your Time

You already know the large tasks and responsibilities. It’s the 10 minutes here or half hour there that’s unaccounted for. It might not seem like much over the course of a morning or a day. But over a week or a month it adds up.

It’s easy to track to your time. Some people use spreadsheets or apps or special programs, but all you really need is a piece of paper or a screen (on your phone or computer).

Write down or type today’s date and the time. Yes, right now. Now write what you’re doing. A short description, like “read blog.” When you finish, you’ll write the time again, note the next thing you’re doing, and when you finish that. And so on for the next week.

 

One day might look like this:

If you have kids, or you work longer hours, or you’re caring for an ill relative, you’ll probably have more entries, but you get the idea.

If this sounds like a lot of trouble, remember, it’ll pay off. Because once you know what you’re doing with your time, you can make choices.

Adding And Evaluating

At the end of the week, group your tasks into categories and add up how much time you spend on each one.

Look for these things:

  • Tasks you could spend less time on by being more efficient
  • Activities you could skip
  • Tasks you can group together
  • Time spent unintentionally
Spending Less Time

Tasks you can spend less time on each week are ones that could be done more efficiently another way without harming your life. For example, if you can take a train to work rather than driving, you might free 40 minutes a day for writing while you commute.

If you spend an hour and a half a week driving to and from the grocery store and shopping, you might be able to free half that time by shopping on line and having the groceries delivered.

If you watch news 30 minutes a night to keep up with current events, look for a website that provides highlights you can read in 10 minutes a day. That saves 2 hours and 20 minutes a week. Which means you could write for 2 hours and still have an extra 20 minutes one day if you want to read a news story in depth.

Skipping Time

You’ll probably find some activities you don’t really need to do. Maybe you went on-line to pay bills, which should have taken 10 minutes, but spent another 20 scrolling through social media sites or articles. Or you watch more TV than you realized.

Whatever those activities are, consider each one. All of us need time to wind down and relax, and if those activities help you do that, you don’t want to cut them completely.

But be sure whatever it is actually helps you relax. Does reading social media posts help you unwind or make you angry? Does watching a talk show before you go to bed help ease you toward sleep or get you thinking too much about world events, kicking your brain into high gear?

If it is quality relaxation time, consider cutting it by half for week so you can write and seeing how you feel. You might find that works out fine. If not, you can experiment and adjust.

If the activity isn’t helping you relax, cut it completely and write instead.

Grouping Tasks

When we switch from one task to another, we lose time. We spend a few minutes figuring out what to do next, putting together what we need for that task or getting ourselves situated for it, and adjusting our mental state.

By grouping similar tasks, you can cut that time without losing out on anything you want or need to do.

For example, once a week I take out my calendar, my general To Do lists, and my list of monthly goals and I write a rough schedule for each day of the following week. It takes me about 15 minutes a week but saves me about 15 minutes a day.

Similarly, if I need to shop on-line, I try to cover all my shopping for the next week or two in one 30-minute session. I visit Peapod to buy groceries and Amazon for things like office supplies, bird food, soap, etc.

If I’m working on a legal matter (which is rare, as I don’t take a lot of legal work anymore), I set aside an entire morning to research, write, and make phone calls on the same case. That way I get my file materials and shift my brain into lawyer mode once that week, rather than shifting constantly between fiction and law.

Unintentional Time

All of the above should help you spot unintentional time–time on tasks that don’t matter and to which you don’t mean to devote minutes let alone hours.

If you’re talking to or texting with your brother because you want to catch up and care about your relationship or there’s something important to discuss, that’s intentional. If you’re reading emails with links to articles that don’t interest you or answering texts from a friend who doesn’t have enough to do at work and is just passing the time, that’s unintentional.

With each activity, ask yourself if it makes you happy or serves a purpose that matters to you. If not, that’s time you could spend writing instead.

All the examples I gave might or might not be ones you personally can use.

You may never watch news or TV. You may work a much longer day at your office or devote your evenings to your kids, only turning back to your own tasks after they’re in bed. And that’s exactly the point of doing the time audit. It lets you can figure out where your time is going, find whatever pockets there that allow some flexibility, and choose how best to use them.

Even if you find only 30 minutes a week, that’s significant–it’s a little over 2 extra hours a month that you can write. And, as we talked about in Writing A Novel 15 Minutes At A Time, you can get a lot done in a lot less time than that.

Good luck!

Until Friday–

L.M. Lilly