writing and research

Sometimes freelance writing for clients can take over your life and there is little time left for your personal writing. When I wrote about time management for freelancers I ‘d written five tips, at the time my personal writing wasn’t getting a look in, readers of the earlier post please take this as number 6.

Personal Writing: Journaling

There was a time when I journaled six days out of seven, then I started freelancing and it sort of withered. A couple of weeks ago I read a post about journaling, which I forgot to bookmark so no link, sorry – that got me started again and I have been trying to find fifteen minutes or so two or three times a week. It does work, I found that it was a lot easier to rethink a scene in my novel, which is another aspect of my personal writing that I hadn’t touched in weeks
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Personal Writing: Novel

My book or should I say not quite half a book, is about a woman researcher turned reluctant PI. Getting through that scene in journaling helped a bit here. What really got me back to the novel in all seriousness, I spent most of Sunday adding bits and entering the whole thing into yWriter – great organization tool – was writechat on twitter. All those people writing, struggling to write and publishing their work was a great kick up the rear end for me as I started to see my main character in a new light – I have even journaled a new plot twist to go in this weekend. Which leads me to:

Make Time for Personal Writing

No matter how busy you are with your freelance writing and research if you also write fiction, then you need to make time for it. I spent a fair bit of a day working out my freelancing schedule, but left off my own writing and it wasn’t doing me any good. Everything we write feeds into everything else in some way, and if we write fiction and/or poetry then we need to schedule some time for it. Try taking 10 minutes less on Twitter and getting a journal to write in for that 10 minutes a couple of times a week. You’ll be surprised at the difference it makes. How do you fit your personal writing into your freelancing schedule?

Possibly Related Posts:

• Just a Five Minute Writing Whinge
• When the Freelance Writing Gets Tough
• Write it Right, Right?
• Freelance Writing: Keyword Research and Other Writerly Things
• A Dog’s View of Freelancing

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