FullTime DayTime Jobber, HalfTime NightTime Writer

Working full time and stuffing in enough writing/editing time in to feel like an actual writer is quite difficult for me. I don't know how people manage it successfully. Except that they've had a lot more practice at it than I have. At times, I feel as though there's so much to be done with the bills, paperwork, and housewifely cleaning that I don't have enough time for me, let alone the myriad of characters plunging around in my gray squishy matter. And if it's this bad now, how in the universe am I to cope when I have kids? Fretting like this does me no good, serves no purpose. So the hubby and I had a chat over budgeting and longterm future goals. An agreement and compromise was born. The Plan.

The Plan involves a more rigid schedule during my weekdays to help me find both destressing time and writing time. During the weekend it's more fluid, to allow me to write during my best part of the day and be home administrator as needed. The Plan involves only one social outing a month (for the time being). I keep my critique meetings Sunday afternoon but I lose my TriMu meetings on Wednesdays and instead take on choir rehearsal. The daily schedule builds in time for my Morning Pages (The Artist's Way), plotting and planning time, and THREE hours of writing time after dinner.

A Typical Plan Day:

Morning Routine
AM Commute - Morning Pages
AM Break - Daily Writing Goal Spreadsheet
Lunch - Blog Reading/Composition
PM Break - Calendar, Email Reply-To List
PM Commute - Vent, Rev Up Blocking
After Work Routine
The 3 Plan Writing Hours
Before Bed Routine

The hubby has declared that I may continue to read all the publishing blogs and articles I would like - but not during my Plan hours. I may no longer research for my "agent wish list" nor submission guidelines until I have completed this latest editing run-through of StarStones. (Yes, by "run-through" I mean complete rewrite of several chapters, and pokey fixins of others.) No more work on short stories or smaller subs during Plan hours until this is done. Now, I can still scribble on the outskirts of those hours, but unless I meet my goals on the bigger work - the shinies and short stories get taken away. So I guess I better bust tail and get on it, huh?

Our priority goal?

To allow me to finish this run-through of StarStones by September 1st.

The Plan's 2009 Schedule:
September 1: Latest StarStones revision complete
September 2-7: Revision of query letter, research of submission takers, and the mailing of the first official query
September 8-30: Preparation of material for the October writer's conference
October 1-4: Writing Conference
October 5-23: More revisions
October 24-31: Pre-NaNo Plotting Week
November 1-30: National Novel Writing Month
December 1-31: Short Story Bonanza

A 2 hour session of new writing consisted of a 15 minute prep/outline, then writing for 15 fast minutes, exercising for 5, etc. until time was up. A 2 hour editing session would be a straight word binge. Until I do a week of the new 3 hour sessions, however, I won't know the flow. So expect the next update about this fulltime day job halftime night writer Plan to cover how I've managed to make it work for me.