Keeping a good balance between different types of writing projects with a chaotic schedule

Balancing Rocks (Photo credit: Viewminder)

One of the biggest things I’ve struggled with in my writing life is keeping a balance between the types of writing i have to do. I tend to get laser focused and obsess over a certain project and, while that meant I finished it, it meant that I’d completely neglected everything else. I needed a way to make sure I was devoting the same amount of time to each type of writing I had to do but how could I possibly measure that? When I actually got a minute to sit down to write, how would I know what to work on?

I remember reading something in Writer’s Digest a few years ago where the author talked about keeping a balance between types of writing, in her case it was fiction and freelancing, and how you just needed to force yourself to work on one for x number of hours in the morning, the other for the same amount at night. She stressed that you had to be vigilant with this, no exceptions, and that your mind would get used to the pattern and be ready to switch gears when the clock changed.

I despaired when I read this because I don’t have any consistency in my life or schedule. Some days I don’t get time to write at all and the time I do get is so sporadic that, if I didn’t get a chance to work a couple of nights in a row, my work would be lopsided immediately. How would I ever make sure I was devoting equal time to my various projects when any time I assigned them might not even be a time when I could work?

Can you be regimented and balanced about how you work on your writing if there’s nothing regular at all about your schedule? Turns out, you can. You just need to rethink some things.

What did it come down to, really? I needed to find a way to devote equal, or close to it, time to each type of writing I had to do. Instead of measuring the time I gave to each type of writing, what if instead I measured the result and adjusted my work accordingly?

I started to keep track of my word counts* not just in terms of the total, as I’d always done in the past, but in terms of each type of writing I had to do. Then, instead of obsessing over what I worked on last and for how long or trying to assign each type of writing its own daily slot, I just kept an eye on the numbers. Using the example above, if I were trying to balance fiction and freelancing, I’d have a total word count each for Fiction and Freelancing and I would just make sure that the word counts for each hovered near 50% of my total for the year. Simple enough, right?

I’m a spreadsheet junkie so I just made myself a simple way to track this. It just totals my word count for each type of writing and spits back what percentage each is of the total words I’ve written for the year. For extra flash, whichever one is the lowest turns red so that I can see at a glance which one is lower when I sit down to write.

Now I don’t obsess over which type of writing I did last or whether Tuesday mornings mean fiction or not. Instead, when I get a moment to write, I just look at which word count is currently the lowest and that’s what I have to work on since it’s clearly the area I haven’t been giving enough attention. If I sit down and Fiction is currently the lowest, I crack open my novel. If I was on a tear with my novel last session, chances are I’ll be working on something else the next time I sit down.

What I’ve found is that, even though my time for writing is more erratic than ever, with the exception of a few times when I had deadlines on a certain project and had to focus on that only for a few days, I’ve consistently split up my time evenly between the different types of projects for the first time in my entire life.  Not only has this made me feel more on top of my projects and in more control of my writing, it also means I’ve gotten more done already this year than I’ve done in the last several. And as for my mind getting tuned into some writing schedule, I’ve found that jumping back and forth between projects is much better at keeping my mind fresh than a routine ever was.

Life, particularly the writing life, isn’t one size fits all. If you’ve got the luxury of a life where routine is possible, you should absolutely harness that. But if your life is all over the place, that doesn’t mean you can’t balance multiple writing priorities in the time you do have. Instead of lamenting your lack of normalcy, find a solution that works for your life and you’ll be amazed how much more effective it can be than trying to use someone else’s system.

*I use word count as my catch-all writing measurement. I just log the actual word count for new writing and then use a words per hour formula to track editing and revision work.