Surfing the Groove

I was going to call this post “Gettin’ All Virgo On You” but I figured it would scare everyone away. Yes, I’m a Virgo, and I’ve been working on my writing schedule and trying to tweak it so that I have time to do all the writing – and other stuff – that I want.

First I should probably say that I’m not doing this because I’m not writing. On the contrary, work on my novel-in-progress is going along great! I’ve written 4,857 words since Sunday, and I’m now at 82,223 words on the way to the finish line of 100K-ish. I say “ish” because of course it’s most important to finish the story, no matter the word count. But it’s going very well. Feel free to skip right to the next ROW 80 blog if you aren’t into planning and scheduling details.

The thing that tends to happen is that I get so caught up in the novel that I lag behind on blogging and other important tasks relating to my writing path. Not to mention I want to have time for physical exercise. So the Virgo part is that I came up with a loose daily schedule that aimed to avoid the “novel-writing versus yoga” morning time period. As such:

get up/ready for the day
yoga and meditation, journaling
have breakfast/tidy kitchen
novel writing
other household tasks
other writing tasks: correspondence, social media, blogging, marketing
make/eat/tidy up from dinner
family time (hanging out, playing games, watching shows), exercise (dancing or walking)
reading and study time, journaling if it didn’t happen in the morning
bedtime

Note: this isn’t for every day in the week. I have a part time job that I do sometimes, and other days and/or evenings are devoted to my kids and their activities, to social gatherings and events, or to hobbies like music and art. This is a schedule intended for “writing days.”

The first one was yesterday and went well, except I didn’t get to my blogging. I wasn’t feeling inspired and chose to do other things. This morning I got sidetracked from yoga, though I did do meditation and journaling. We’ll see how the rest of the day goes.

I tend to rebel against strict schedules. I guess my Libra Moon shows her face there. But having some kind of a loose discipline helps keep me on track. Overall, what I’m doing seems to be working, and I want to make it even better.

What is your writing schedule like? Do you have one? How does it work for you? I’d love to hear about it.