If I look back at the last three years of being a full-time university student, I see a clear trend: when classes are in session, I don’t write much, and when they’re not, I write a lot. It almost doesn’t seem to matter how heavy a term I’ve got.
And I want to fix that.
Okay, but that’s a goal, not a plan.
The plan is simple: I will set aside an hour each day for the purpose of writing, which will mostly be drafting, but there will be some editing, too. And I’ll need to learn to balance that again. That hour will be non-negotiable, although there will be times when I’m using that hour when we’re driving to Ottawa and it’s not my turn to be behind the wheel, so it will be a little less focused. I actually instituted this rule on the 10th of February and have had an 87% success rate so far in spite of end of term and certain life events that have happened in between. Almost 9 days out of ten is pretty good, all things considered. During the summer, on breaks from school, and on weekends, I’m going to try pushing this to 90 minutes.
To go along with that, I’m going to get back to the publishing side of things and set an hour aside each weekend for story submissions plus an hour for prepping my next indie publishing story or refreshing an existing one.
So the plan is essentially a time commitment of eight hours a week, 12 when I’m not in school. That feels like it should be reasonable even in a year when I’ll be working on my undergraduate thesis.
But if I’m making the plan that simple, there has to be a set of goals in the background, and there certainly is. Some of those goals are very specific, some of them are not, and a few of them are more writing adjacent than actual writing, but the whole list is worth a post of its own.
For now, my time is almost up and there’s still one more thing I want to make progress on today.
Be welcome and be well, everyone.
Life, Writing, Weirdness 
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