How to Write Everyday Without Missing Your Life, by Genevieve Parker Hill

Maintaining a Writing Schedule: The Importance of Structure

I’ve learned through the years that I need some sort of schedule for myself. Writing is solitary and there’s no boss looking over my shoulder, making sure I’ve done pages for the day. I’ve experimented with many different  tactics:

• Writing in the morning
• Writing at night
• Writing in the afternoon
• Writing every day
• Wearing  a special hat to write
• Writing only when inspired late at night on caffeine
• Writing for eight hours a day on weekdays
• Writing on my lunch break at an office job
• Asking friends to ask me about my writing regularly
• Promising  people completed scripts upon certain deadlines
• Writing carefully
• Writing heedlessly
•  Setting yearly writing goals
• Setting monthly writing goals
• Scheduling out each day down to the minute
• Setting a timer and writing until it goes off

Whew. I’ve learned a few things in general about how to make myself write. For me, the earlier in the day that I write, the more likely I am to a) write that day and b) write more that day. Writing at the beginning of the day seems to set a tone of creative production for the whole day and to keep my muse happy and coming back for more.

Capturing Your Muse: The Inconvenience of Inspiration

Genevieve’s early career as a Hollywood Fairy Princess helps her recognize a good muse when she sees one

The muse shows up unannounced and usually at the most inconvenient times.  The best writing comes from the muse: what you can also think of as the holy spirit, or the creative subconscious.  The ability to write when the muse shows up takes the same kind of discipline that waking up early – the moment your alarm goes off–  takes. It’s hard and I rarely do it. But I’m glad when I do.

The best feeling when writing, and when the best writing comes, is when the creative subconscious gets though in kind of a sly way. I’m relaxed, well fed, and not worried about the well-being of any of my loved ones. There’s quiet around me – no music or conversation or fear of interruption.  I’m not trying too hard; it’s flow. Time passes without my awareness of how much has gone by.

However, most times, I’m trying hard. Because in an almost cruel reality, the muse  is somehow  summoned and nourished by my trying hard — by thinking a lot about the writing and the topics. I can relate it to something I heard in an interview with actor James Franco. He prepares and prepares very hard, then when the cameras roll, he just relaxes and lets whatever comes out come out.

Balancing Structure and Inspiration: Rules for Dancing the Creative Dance

Travel: The world’s best office.

What has worked for me to get my writing done every day while still leaving time to experience where I am, is daily goals. Also, I have more time to write now than I did in LA. I have fewer friends here to hang out with, and I don’t have another job to take any of my creative energy (as much as I liked faerie princess-ing).

After trying to schedule my days, I found out that one of my big values is freedom. I won’t stick to a schedule because it can feel like a tyrant boss.

So I have simple two rules for myself:

1) Write everyday.

2) Write for at least an hour, five days a week. Usually I end up writing for more than one hour, but it’s kind of like telling yourself before a morning jog that you are just going to run for five minutes. Once you get out there, feel the wind in your nose and see the birds fluttering by, you’ll be enjoying it and you’ll probably run for the whole thirty minutes.

Set Goals to Guide Your Daily Writing

Goals help you focus when the muse just won’t bite.

On top of my writing rules, at the beginning of the year I had a couple of big writing goals. One was to write six first drafts (feature-length scripts) this year. Another was to write and publish my first book. I have other smaller projects too, but those are in addition to my major goals.

So that I keep my projects straight and work on each project enough to complete my goals on time, I created one goal for each remaining work day of 2012. I did this a couple months ago, and this system is working for me so far. It allows me to focus on one project a day,  to trust that they will all get done because I can see it on the schedule, and to not get bored because I can see ahead that I will get to work on a different project soon.

For example, here is what my first ten days looked like:

• Day 1 Blogsville — book project ask for help and weekend trip
• Day 2 Character work on script #3.
• Day 3  Plot work on script #3.
• Day 4  Character work on script #3
• Day 5 Research details for the script.
• Day 6 Blogsville
• Day 7 Outline #3 in Final Draft
• Day 8 New script idea generating
• Day 9  Outline #3 in Final Draft
• Day 10 Go to script: Write 10 pages today on script #3.

It goes on until the end of the year…

I don’t add a date to when I should be doing each goal because sometimes I move them around or work on a weekend or maybe I took a mental health day or a sick day. (I have a great boss who lets me take off whenever I want.) Life is bigger than writing. And that’s the way I like it.

Making Your Own Rules

Travel provides its own unique perks for those writing breaks called, “life.”

I think each writer (or any person who wants to create something without an office and a boss) must experiment and figure out what works for him or her.

If you are trying to write (or paint, or whatever) and you are also working a full-time job or have some other major drain on your time, my only advice is to write first thing in the morning. I didn’t have the willpower to do it regularly when I had a full-time job, but if I had one now, I’d find a way to make it work. I’d reward myself with ice cream of something, anything, but I would make it work.

If you are trying to write while traveling, the advice is the same. Bring a small laptop computer or a notebook, and do it early. You never know what the day will bring, and you have most control over you time and willpower in the morning.

If you have felt for a long time that you want to write, that you have something to say, you are weakening the tender fabric of your soul with each day that you do not write.

Let me know if these tips help you and please leave any helpful tips that have worked for you in the area of self-motivated creative work.

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* In the same vein, I’m currently reading (hang on, let me count them) seven books. Probably more, but I stopped counting at seven since I thought it was a suitably impressive number. That’s useful for me since whatever I’m reading tends to come out in pure form when I converse. If I was just reading one book, it could get tiring to hear about revolutionary Iran in the 80’s over and over. With my brain in seven books, however, I can talk about how Nabokov appears to have been read by students at Tehran university who were  not exactly fifty shades of Zionism which came during and after Audrey Hepburn’s early film career.

I often internally  mourn that my brain is fond of boxes. However, I think this reading of unrelated subject matter fights my waffle-headed tendencies and helps me make creative new connections.

Back to my writing, which is as connected to my reading as Levi’s are to blue thread…