A Benefit of *Having Had* a Day Job

For a long time I had to juggle a lot of things: a family, a day job, volunteering, and writing—first a doctoral dissertation, then books for young readers. In the process, I discovered something:

“Organized” is an adjective, and like many adjectives, it’s changeable. “To organize” is a verb, and like many verbs, it’s something you can choose to do.

It irritates me when people say, “Oh, I wish I were organized like you,” as though it were something you’re born with (maybe some people are—I certainly wasn’t!) like being tall or left-handed. Not true; I’m living proof. I realized that in order to be able to do all the things I wanted to do, I couldn’t afford not to organize my life. Choice: don’t organize and give up writing, or organize and have the time to write? Simple. I organized. This decision served me well in the dissertation years and then when I began my real writing career. It’s become a habit, and even though I have more time at my disposal now, it’s one I adhere to.

Even though I’ve ditched the day job, I still have a time-consuming volunteer position as SCBWI’s U.S. Regional Advisor Coordinator. It’s been more time-consuming than usual lately, as I’ve been taking in and processing RA grant requests. But I’m still finding time to write, because I formed the habit of organizing years ago, under day-job pressure.

My top tips for how to organize a writer’s life:

Everything I need is in reach

1. Have a dedicated writing space, whether it’s a tiny computer shelf or a luxurious studio (still pining for that one). Do all your writing, research, cogitating, communicating, etc. in that spot. In an earlier post I said that I never wrote my children’s books at my day job, and never brought day-job work home. (Well, rarely.) Set up your spot so that you don’t have to move from it to get your work done. That way you won’t wonder what you did with something—it’s right there!

2. Don’t write notes on easily lost post-its or little scraps of paper. I have a white board next to my desk so I can turn and scribble something down without interrupting the writing flow. During writing breaks I copy those notes into the appropriate file on my computer.

3. Have a backup system. Back up all your files, all the time.

4. Respond to emails immediately, or at least make a start on a reply. If I don’t, I forget them. But if it’s a sensitive topic or one that you need to think about, save your reply as a draft. I don’t put the recipient’s address in the draft so as not to send it prematurely. Seeing that I have a draft waiting to be sent is enough to remind me to finish it and send it.

I just swivel my chair to see this

5. Label things. You’ll forget what they are if you don’t, I promise. This set of office mailboxes that I rescued from the trash at the day job is one of my favorite things, and the slots where names used to be are perfect for labeling each cubby’s contents.

6. Get rid of dead wood. This is what my math teacher used to say when simplifying fractions, and it makes a great deal of sense. Why poke through a lot of stuff you’ll never need in order to find something? Both on-line and in real life, excess stuff just gets in your way. You can always keep it—just get it out of sight.

7. Lastly, remove “being organized” from your vocabulary, and add “to organize”!

Scheduling

I’m trying very hard to establish a writing routine without getting rigid about it.

I heard some advice years ago at a writer’s conference (I think it was from Wendelin Van Draanen, but the memory is hazy): “Some people say they don’t want to get into a rut. I say you do—you want to get yourself into a rut so deep you can’t get out of it.”

Well, I can see that. I can see writing being a learned response like anything else: you sit down at a certain place at a certain time, and your brain says Writing time!

So far I’m not focused like that, but I’m working on it. I work out three days a week, so on those days I sit down to write as soon as I get home. (I go to the gym first thing in the morning, or I’d think of a thousand reasons why I can’t go.) On the days I don’t work out, I write in the morning and do writing-related things—answering emails, setting up speaking engagements, etc.—in the afternoon.

And I’ve become strict about taking one day a week off writing. For various reasons, I settled on Tuesdays. This was difficult yesterday, as on Sunday and Monday I received terrific revision notes on two different manuscripts, and I was itching to get to work on both. But I restrained myself. Instead of leaping in, I read the Science Times—my favorite New York Times supplement—and finished a novel (Code Name Verity—highly recommended). I tried to tweet but left defeated, as usual. I watched some stupid TV. I clicked on links to interesting articles in friends’ Facebook postings that had looked intriguing but that I hadn’t had time to check out before. I went through my notes from the SCBWI-Midsouth conference and requested books at the library that the speakers had mentioned.

All this time, what I had read in the revision notes percolated in my brain. I jotted down some thoughts (my rule is that I can do that as long as I write no more than what can fit on a standard Post-it note). I evaluated ideas, rejecting some, filing others away to think about some more. The result is that I can address the revisions much more efficiently than I would have if I had leaped right in.

So the Tuesday-off idea seems to be working. As I said, I’m not rigid about it—I’m taking a few days off at the end of next week for travel, so next week I’ll be working on Tuesday and taking Thursday and Friday off instead.

Next up: figuring out a daily schedule. Any advice? What works for you? What doesn’t work?

First Day of School

As near as I can figure, my first class at Vanderbilt would have started at 11:10 today. This is what I was doing instead.

That's scrambled eggs with smoked salmon and crême fraiche in the foreground, mimosas in the midground, son in the background.

An Unexpected Benefit

For the last several years, I've slept at most seven hours every night. If I went to bed at 11:00, I'd wake up at 6:00 and couldn't get back to sleep. A 10:30 bedtime meant waking at 5:30. This was true during the school year, spring break, the long summer break; whether I was at home or away.

One morning about a month ago, I was surprised to realize I'd slept eight hours. Was I getting sick? No, I was fine.

And then the same thing happened the next night, and then the next, and now eight hours is my new norm. Some nights it's even eight and a half!

This started happening at about the same time that I decided to take off one day a week. Clearly I'm feeling less pressure to get up and make the most out of my waking hours!