How to Create A Writing Schedule That Helps You Hit Your Deadlines

hello everyone I am back today with the great video since I'm finishing up a book like as we speak y'all this is deadline hair I apologize you're just gonna have to forgive me but this was my only chance to do this video and to get the voiceover done but I'm gonna show you since I'm on deadline now and I'm gonna be starting a new books coming up this next weekend I thought it would be a great time to show you how I have planned my writing schedule to stay on track and I also have a free download for you guys at the end of this so stay tuned guys now I am gonna show you how I actually like plan out when my release date is gonna be and how I'm gonna get through everything so I'm gonna be using just a little bit of washi tape some recollections dual brush pin which is very similar to the tombos and then this is a SEPA pen I got them from Amazon they're just felt to fineliners and I love them and they're very cheap so they're great and then I've been using this happy planner like hardcover which I'm not using like a planner insert I've really actually been getting into making my own planner pages that I'm just showing you real quick here if you guys want to see a video of the planner pages that I've made for myself to help organize my business let me know and I can do a video on those I'm still using the hobo Nicci but I'm also using these to help organize my tasks so this page that I've got right here is actually my writing plan page and I'm of course if you know me I am just putting a little bit of washi tape on there to make it look a little bit prettier and right now I'm just trying to find like a prettier place to put it because this is actually like I've been using the system but I didn't have like a printed page to use so I made one to start using as I'm getting more into this year because I've been writing more books this year then I have in a very long time so it's just super important for me to stay on track to look forward and instead of just being like it takes as long as it takes to actually plan ahead and have a goal I am really somebody who needs like I'm a super procrastinator let's just put it that way and I'm somebody who needs the guidance of a deadline so this helps me a lot so at the top here I have a space to put the title of the book which the one I'm about to start is deceiving darkness which is my shadow demon Saga book ten then there's a place to put your word count goal and for this book it's nine ninety thousand words and then my words per day goal which means how many words per day do I plan to write on the days that I'm writing which I have put for this book four thousand words per day which means that it should take me 23 days of writing to hit that goal then I've got places here that have all the dates and I've got up space for the goal date and a space for the actual so the first thing on there is the day that I'm starting which is June 25th so here's what else I do I go in and I print out a Google Calendar I'm going to show you real quick how I do that okay so I'm just popping in a recording on my screen real quick this is just basic Google Calendar and you go to the little settings bar on the right it looks like a little cog and you can click print and when you do that it brings up this print dialog I like to click fit to page that it all fits in one and then I just print the month then I go back print again but change the print range to the next month I know that this is going to take me through August so I'm printing out June July and August calendars so I'd like to click black-and-white so that it prints in black-and-white and you'll see later I had to go back and reprint these and I forgot to click black-and-white but it's not really a big deal just depends you know what how much of your printer ink you want to use so I just go in and print you can change the dates and you can print out any given month you do have to go in and change the view to month I think it automatically sets to week so just go into that right corner and click month and select the month that you're interested in all right so now back to the planner page so these are the June this is the June planner page that I have just the calendar page and I print these out mostly for planning purpose I'm not gonna actually use them in a big way when I actually start writing but this is just to help me get a big-picture view so if I'm starting on June 25th then what that means for me is I'm going to actually plot and outline the book now this is book 10 in a series so I already have a lot of notes on what is going to happen in this so it's only going to take me hopefully about a week to get started on a rough plot and outline so now I've moved on to July and for that Sunday I'm marking that this is the date I want to have the plot done so what I do in this section here is I'm writing down the start dates for things and I'm running down when the deadlines are which just gives me a rough estimate of when things are going to get done so the next thing is the rough draft that needs to get done and like I said I'm hoping for 4,000 words a day and what I'm gonna do here is mark out any days that I know I'm not gonna be writing like I said that gives me about 23 days on estimate that I need to be writing four thousand words a day but I'm not going to be writing every single day to July 4th I marked off for the holiday with family and then this entire week is going to be lost to the rwa conference so I went ahead and marked all of that off I marked the day before and of the day after I get home because I know I'm gonna be packing and then I'm gonna need to some time to like just rest when I get home then I figured that following Sunday I'm really gonna need an extra day of rest there - July 11th is my husband's birthday so I I might work a little bit in the morning on that day just depending on what he wants to do but I'm not gonna count that in so this is a crucial step if you're trying to really estimate how much you're gonna get done how quickly is you've got to mark off the days that you're not going to be writing and try to be realistic about when you're writing and when you're not writing because 23 days sounds like whew I'm going to finish this really fast but it doesn't mean 23 days from start to finish it means 23 writing days and there are going to be some people who don't write on the weekends and some people who only write on the weekends some people only can write you know two or three hundred words a day instead of thousand so you just sort of figure out what it is you need and how fast you can go what you feel comfortable with and for me every book is different four thousand words a day is pretty realistic for the shadow demon saga but a week to plot it may not be so we'll have to just see so here I've moved on to August and I've marked the 23 days and since it happens on the weekend I decided to go ahead and get myself 25 days before I set the deadline because I might need a couple extra days to finish out the rough draft so I'm writing my rough draft deadline for August 5th now I'm moving on to self edits which is just my own editing pass now I do edit some as I go so it only takes me about 4 or 5 days usually hopefully to go back and edit and I do usually rewrite and add some things too but I'm hoping that it will take about five days for self edits and then I can send it to my beta readers on that Saturday then I know my beta readers usually get back to me within a handful of days so then I can send it to my editor on the 15th which they should get it back to me also in just a few days so I'm hoping to have it back by Monday where I can do my own final edits I do submit you know I put in my beta comments before I send it to the editor make some changes then after the editor sends it back I make more changes and then do a final read-through which will take a few days and then I'm hoping on that following Friday I'll have it formatted and ready to send out to my arc team and usually I will release on a Monday but it looks like for this if there's any hope of getting this book out in August it's gonna be that last day of August because I like to send out my arcs at least a week ahead of time and I want to give myself a little bit of leeway because I'm really actually pushing pretty hard on this one and to be honest I'm not going to be surprised if it goes into September instead of August but this is kind of my best-case scenario so now that I have all of those dates sort of planned out I'm going to go back to my writing plan page sorry for the shaking there I think hit it when I was changing the page there and I'm going to you know add those dates to this schedule so that I can see it at a glance without having to flip back and forth always so you'll see me flip back and forth to find and finalize the dates but you can see that first one is the start date then the plotting is completed by then the next thing to fill in is the rough draft rough draft deadline so I'd like to have that done by August 5th then edits completed by and by this I mean myself edits not the editors edits but my edits completed by so I put in that date and then that I want to have it sent to the beta's by the following day which is August 11th and then send it to my editor and any one of these things could get disrupted by beta's taking longer to get it in me being a week behind there's any number of things that can happen so it's good to keep in mind that this is just kind of like a best-case scenario gives me a you know a guideline to work off of but I don't get too attached to the outcome like I'm not going to be like crying if I'm a week or two off because you know life happens and sometimes you can't force the words to come and it would be great if they do come but you know sometimes you need a little bit of extra time for things to flow and that's fine too I realized as I was going through it I forgot to write in my formatting date so I added that back in and hope to have it formatted on the 22nd and the arc sent out on the 24th and my target release day is August 31st so now I've got all that filled out and when I go back and I'm actually writing I will write in the actual date like when I send it to Vedas I will write the actual date that it got done and then at the very end when the book is done I will fill out this review which is my final word count the total production time and then just kind of a review of how I felt while writing the book what would I change about next time like maybe give myself more plotting time or plan for only a thousand words a day and additional notes that I might want to keep track of so that is the planning page that I use to help me stay on track and hopefully get the book done on time so there you have it this is one of the main ways that I've been able to stay on track I've been writing so many more books than normal like I think I've mentioned to you guys before if you follow this channel that usually I write two to three books a year which is great that's a really nice pace for me but over the last couple of years I only wrote two books but I started a bunch of series you guys have heard this story before if you've been following the channel and I'm really really anxious to start a brand new series in 2019 so my big big big goal for this past year has been to quickly finish up the series that I have ongoing it's always a balancing act in terms of making sure that I don't burn out that I'm not reducing the quality of my work but to be honest since we moved here to Charleston and I've got this gorgeous view of the marsh right behind my desktop here and we can go to the beach any afternoon and we do go quite a lot it has really been really easy for me to refill my well and get back to work and I find that it's just been a really inspirational time in my life so I'm making the most of it and in order to stay on track so that I don't procrastinate more than I should or get way behind kind of get an idea of how far I'm gonna go I created this writing plan sheet that I just showed you and it's really been helping me to stay on target and to know kind of how long everything's going to take now most of the time to be honest I don't actually hit those targets exactly it's just sort of a guideline for me to see where I want to be and if it takes me an extra couple of weeks or even a month longer than I planned that's fine especially if it's because the plot isn't coming together or I just need more time to think through it I am totally willing to push that schedule to the side to give it the time that it needs however it's a really good way to before I start the project to know exactly how long it could take me in a best-case scenario and if I get behind how far behind am I I really hope this is how for you guys in planning your own work and trying to figure out how long it will take you and don't do any comparisons please by saying oh gosh you know it takes me six months to write a rough draft or a year to write a rough draft everybody has their own process when I was first starting out it did take me an entire year to write my first book that when I scrapped and then it took me an entire like year and a half to write my second book and I also scrapped that one for a long time and it was only my like third completed novel actually never mind fourth completed novel that I published for the first time in 2010 and I had been writing steadily for three plus years at that point it just after 25 books it starts to get easier to know the plot and especially because I'm on book 10 of a series I already have a lot of this plotted out and I already know so take it with a grain of salt like what my dates are use the process not comparing anything to how fast I write if all you can do is 500 words a day before you start to feel burned out or no longer inspired then do 500 words a day and set that schedule up with that 500 words a day mark out the days that you can't use or you don't want to be writing like a lot of people don't want to write on Saturdays and Sundays other people who have normal full-time jobs Monday through Friday Saturday and Sunday are the only days they write so take your own schedule don't compare it to someone else and make it work for you but hopefully this will be a good guideline for you and if you would like a copy of my writing plan sheet you can get it over at my website at heart breathing's calm I'll link it down for you in the description box below all you have to do is follow that link down there and sign up for my newsletter list and it will be automatically downloaded for you if you've already signed up for my newsletter list then all you have to do is enter your information again it won't sign you up twice but it should allow you to take that download anyway and if you have any trouble with it just let me know and I will send it along to you alright guys that is it for today's video I hope you enjoyed it I have another video coming up this weekend and then I'm going to start a plotting series as we go into camp NaNoWriMo for July so if you've been interested in kind of how I plot and play in my actual books I'll be having a I think six-part series starting next week on plotting so I hope you'll join me for that be sure to thumbs up this video and subscribe below and hit that notification bell so that you'll be notified the minute a new heart breathing's video goes up that's it for today you guys I'll see you in my next video

Channel: Heart Breathings

Views: 30,369

Keywords: how to write a novel, hitting deadlines, writing tips, writing a book, writing a novel, writing a book for the first time, writing advice, how to write a book, writing advice for beginners, writing advice from writers, writing tips for young writers, writing tips for beginners, writing tips for writers, writing a book tips, how to write a novel for beginners, authortubers, planning for writers, writing planner, how to hit deadlines

Id: V3aNTa0WbQ0

Length: 15min 51sec (951 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 21 2018