Early this year when I decided I really needed to kick the writing and publishing business into gear (or stop, one of the two), I started looking hard at my daily, weekly & monthly habits and routines. I’d been trying to just “fit writing in” wherever I had time, and allowing myself the flexibility of working without deadlines, which…really doesn’t work for me.
So, I decided to change it up, set some deadlines, and then force myself to figure out how to meet them in the time allotted. I knew I wouldn’t be successful for awhile, but only because I needed to go through the process and fail in order to find the process that would actually work. Often there’s no way around good old fashioned trial and error in order to set or reset habits and routines.
I struggled. I lost sleep (but tried not to), I pushed myself hard, I experimented with different times and schedules and routines and processes…and I met deadlines or just barely went past them. I published a book. I decided not to publish another one, and I moved the publication date out for yet another. I came up with an idea for a huge series that could span all three of the genres I write in, and be connected, but not in a way that would require a reader to experience all the books to enjoy their particular genre.
I switched newsletter providers three times. I tried out different blog templates, email templates, and posting/sending schedules. I missed deadlines. I started novels I never intended to start, while leaving a few I meant to revise and publish behind (temporarily, I hope).
The most important thing I discovered in all this is the writing/revision workflow that works as long as the technology it requires works. At least three days a week, I dictate a scene while I’m driving home for lunch and back to work after. Then late at night, I revise that scene (or one I dictated earlier) into something more polished and descriptive. So I’m basically writing the first draft by voice while driving, Dragon Anywhere transcribes it to text, and then late at night when I finally have time to really focus, but not necessarily the mental power to actually draft on a blank page, I polish the first draft, add description and detail, and end up with a very nice second draft of that piece of writing.
This has been amazing for my writing output. I can speak faster than I type, so dictating gets the initial story out on the page much faster than I could ever actually type it in. And while my brain is pretty much done doing any heavy lifting late at night, it can totally handle revising words and story that are already there, plus since I’m already tired, I don’t resist the revision process nearly as much as I do when I’m more rested and raring to write new things rather than edit old words.
It worked for me for a good while, and I think it will work long term, but it’s not perfect. I do have days when my lunch hour gets preempted or something, but I can normally ensure that three days out of every week are good dictation days, and I have four nights for revisions that I protect pretty heavily.
Until the technology fails, like mine did after a recent phone update that made my Bluetooth microphone stop working. I did figure out a work-around, but it took me a week, in which I lost productivity and failed to meet deadlines because I didn’t have a buffer of serial installments done.
After that, I also developed some good workflows for blogging, newsletters, and publishing tasks. And they’re all sustainable for the long term, with one major caveat: I’m working too close to the margins.
The vulnerable thing about a workflow is that because it involves more than one routine to accomplish the larger task, it’s easy to get interrupted during one or more of those routines, which throws the whole thing off deadlines. I’ve been using my new workflows with no margin for interruption or error, which…makes them less effective (and far more stressful).
Which is why I really need to focus on maintaining wide margins.
This translates to other things in my life as well – specifically finances, where I am currently annoyed with myself and paying (mentally and financially) for choices I made when my “impulse control” was…well, not controlled. I narrowed my financial margins to a rather embarrassing state, and now it’s going to take me a long time and a lot of self-control to return them to a comfortable width. I’ve been working on it for a few months now, but this is the worst time of year for such things.
Still, I’m holding the line and not making it worse, which is all I can do for the moment, and after the holidays are over, I should be able to make better progress.
My weight is another area where my “margins” are too narrow, but I’ve been making progress with that recently as well. It’s a toss up as to whether the bank account or my body will become healthier faster, but as long as they’re both headed in the right direction, that’s all that matters.
As far as the writing and publishing goes…that’s where the two weeks off in November came in, as well as the recent “break for technology”. My intent was to establish a week-wide margin for these blog posts and my serial novels. I didn’t quite manage for the serials, but that’s partially due to the holiday in the middle, which interrupted *all* my workflows for a week, and then the whole microphone failure.
It was wildly successful for the blog posts, however, and I now have a nice wide margin of time in which to write new posts while you, dear reader, are reading a post I wrote several weeks back (and updated shortly before posting it this week, but the bulk of it was done, which saved me a lot of time). Now if my blogging workflow is interrupted, I have the time and space to catch up without it affecting the actual blog posting flow, which takes a lot of stress out of the process. And it’s easy enough to put an impromptu post up if I feel like sharing something more immediately.
I wanted to be ahead on serial installments by the time this went live too, but I’m still working on that. Life is so unpredictable, even in a very habit and routine driven existence such as mine. Building wide margins into my workflows will give me the gift of more peaceful productivity, which is good for stoking the creative juices.
It’s also good for my overall mood and well-being.
Sleep, exercise, good workflows & wide margins. These are the things I think will allow me to meet my goals going forward, as long as I use them wisely and prioritize them in both life and business.
What are the tools you gained this year that you’ll be taking into 2023?
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