Should I Be Scheduling Writing Time?
The art of planning and the argument not to.
I opened up my long forgotten planner that I promised would change my life at the beginning of the year and made a new writing schedule last week.
I wrote it out carefully. I even planned to make it color-coded.
Hour by hour work was set up all laid out in front of me. And you know what? It was beautiful. It was a masterpiece in paper calendar form that I hoped would be just as satisfying as checking off a to-do list.
I had blocks for novel planning work in my new journal and emails and checking up on my wonderful readers on social media. A break at exactly 10:35 a.m. when I knew I got a little distracted for stretching. A two-hour window for nothing but writing.
No scrolling, no inbox, no pretending that reorganizing my desk is a productive task.
Pretending my cell phone was a landline approximately five feet away from me as if social distancing.
What plan I jotted down!
It lasted…
A day and a half.
Honestly, actually? Not even the day. (We are just trying to be more positive around here.)
I don’t know why I’m surprised every time this happens. I fall in love with the idea of routine. I mean, I hear everyone talking about it all the time from 5 a.m. writing plans to the new trend in how to make your mornings run so smooth you won’t believe how you ever lived before.
Not to mention, I love a good office supply and planner.
It looks so clean once it is all laid out— and if anyone else saw it? Wow. They’d think you have it all together. It feels so grown-up. It somehow seems to make me feel more like a real professional writer.
But then the actual doing starts beyond the planning out time slots and highlighting what I should be doing and what chapters I need to be working on instead of haphazardly writing anything and everything that comes to mind, suddenly I’m spiraling over whether I’m working on the right project or if my time would be better spent creating content or if I should learn how to make a new soup or sourdough recipe from scratch instead.
Which always has a happy ending.
Clearly, discipline doesn’t always look the way I want it to. Treating writing like a full-time job works.
Though there still is a lot of leeway for the creative part. At least, that is what I tell myself.
Sometimes it’s not elegant or inspiring or aesthetic at all no matter how much I’d like it to be. Sometimes it’s writing a few lines after errands even when I want to flop on the couch and do no more. Sometimes it’s editing a paragraph I hate for the eighth time before deleting it all together. Sometimes it’s closing my laptop before I ruin the day’s progress with self-doubt disguised as productivity and write a sad frustrated Writing Diary for you all to see it’s not all unicorns and butterflies on the page.
In fact, it usually isn’t.
I’m learning that being a writer is less about following the perfect schedule and more about keeping the promises I make to myself—even small ones. Especially small ones.
So no, the ideal or “perfect” schedule didn’t save me. But I keep showing up anyway.
And that just might.
My Current Creative Planning Loves
Yearly planner from Papier
Archer & Olive notebooks and calligraphy brush pens
Comfy headphones to listen to whatever playlist is my obsession of choice while planning and working.
A variety of colored sticky notes for last minute add-ins to my planner.
