Time Management for Writers? It's ME Management
I like to be organized, but no matter what I can’t seem to expand the practice of having a day planner/phone/computer calendars that contain all my deadlines and birthdays and random events to the rest of my life, especially my life as a writer, into making me feel truly organized. I like to read about time management, different organizational styles, how our brains tend to deal with these things, etc., but reading about it and actually implementing it are two different things. And it finally dawned on me why…
Time Management doesn’t exist.
We can’t “manage” something that’s nebulous. Time just is. The disconnect between “time management” and the difficulty in doing it should have dawned on me much sooner than this because I used to teach time travel literature and time & narrative back when I was still a lecturer. Time travel narratives are some of my favorite stories, and thinking about how we put stories together—the choices we make with chronology, disordered scenes, pacing, etc.—is one of my favorite things to think about as far as writing. One of the most fun things to do in these classes while I was talking about how humans have thought about the concept of time over the centuries was to ask my student to come up with a definition for time that did NOT use the word time. You try it. It’s difficult because you need to explain the concept of time to define time. We can’t think outside that box, at least not without maybe being genius physicists, and even then I don’t think so.
Well, if we can’t manage time, what can we manage?
Sadly, there is only one answer, and it sucks: ourselves.
Time management is ME management. It’s managing my choices and habits, breaking out of ruts, and following the rules and processes I set to make me put my receipts away in a place I can find them later, get up at a certain time, actually get some damn exercise, and plan meals. It’s all the stuff we hate to do because it’s just so LIFE-y. And for writers, it’s also not just writing but finishing things, editing them, planning publication schedules, and setting up marketing (if we are self-pubbing) or learning the get-an-agent dance and everything else involved in trad publishing. It’s doing all of that without letting the LIFE-y stuff get in the way or using it as an excuse.
So no, sorry, there will never be more than 24 hours in a day (and boy do they go by quickly), but we will always inhabit our bodies during that time, and while we can’t add more hours to the day we can decide to do the things we know we have to do even if we don’t wanna. So then we can do the things we want to do. Because ME management isn’t only the daily LIFE-y stuff, it’s also the stuff that makes us happy and reminds us that a) this is it (there is no do-over) and b) life can be pretty damn fun sometimes.
Time management for writers: remember that you love to write so it’s not a chore but a joy (even when it’s not).
Go forth and practice ME Management. You’ll be a happier writer.
Want to subscribe to my newsletter? Add your email address here: https://buttondown.com/TiffaniAngus
I like to be organized, but no matter what I can’t seem to expand the practice of having a day planner/phone/computer calendars that contain all my deadlines and birthdays and random events to the rest of my life, especially my life as a writer, into making me feel truly organized. I like to read about time management, different organizational styles, how our brains tend to deal with these things, etc., but reading about it and actually implementing it are two different things. And it finally dawned on me why…
Time Management doesn’t exist.
We can’t “manage” something that’s nebulous. Time just is. The disconnect between “time management” and the difficulty in doing it should have dawned on me much sooner than this because I used to teach time travel literature and time & narrative back when I was still a lecturer. Time travel narratives are some of my favorite stories, and thinking about how we put stories together—the choices we make with chronology, disordered scenes, pacing, etc.—is one of my favorite things to think about as far as writing. One of the most fun things to do in these classes while I was talking about how humans have thought about the concept of time over the centuries was to ask my student to come up with a definition for time that did NOT use the word time. You try it. It’s difficult because you need to explain the concept of time to define time. We can’t think outside that box, at least not without maybe being genius physicists, and even then I don’t think so.
Well, if we can’t manage time, what can we manage?
Sadly, there is only one answer, and it sucks: ourselves.
Time management is ME management. It’s managing my choices and habits, breaking out of ruts, and following the rules and processes I set to make me put my receipts away in a place I can find them later, get up at a certain time, actually get some damn exercise, and plan meals. It’s all the stuff we hate to do because it’s just so LIFE-y. And for writers, it’s also not just writing but finishing things, editing them, planning publication schedules, and setting up marketing (if we are self-pubbing) or learning the get-an-agent dance and everything else involved in trad publishing. It’s doing all of that without letting the LIFE-y stuff get in the way or using it as an excuse.
So no, sorry, there will never be more than 24 hours in a day (and boy do they go by quickly), but we will always inhabit our bodies during that time, and while we can’t add more hours to the day we can decide to do the things we know we have to do even if we don’t wanna. So then we can do the things we want to do. Because ME management isn’t only the daily LIFE-y stuff, it’s also the stuff that makes us happy and reminds us that a) this is it (there is no do-over) and b) life can be pretty damn fun sometimes.
Time management for writers: remember that you love to write so it’s not a chore but a joy (even when it’s not).
Go forth and practice ME Management. You’ll be a happier writer.
Want to subscribe to my newsletter? Add your email address here: https://buttondown.com/TiffaniAngus
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