How to schedule time as a part-time writer

On scheduling time for writing, applying a weekly rotation, and studying books on editing.

Hey there!

Every once in a while I’ll be updating you on my progress: it’ll help me keep myself accountable and reflect on how my projects are going, while also being a (hopefully) interesting behind-the-scenes-peek for you.

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🗓️ Schedule

Weekly

To allocate my time to my projects, I’ve been following the same method for quite a while: I write a couple of hours in the morning every time I have a late shift at work.

I have a 30-hours-per-week job in sales: 6-hour shifts, 5 times a week. Every week looks different, but I tend to get late shifts three times a week. When it comes to creative output, I function better in the morning, so I try to wake up early and make the most of that time.

The days I have the early shift I don’t even try. Those free afternoons are dedicated to socializing, relaxing, etc.

This means that I’m not writing every day. I used to do that: right when I started getting serious with writing, my only goal was to write once a day. One paragraph, one sentence, one word: did not matter. As long as I wrote down a letter on my Google document, that counted. It was good: it helped me familiarize myself with writing.

After a while, I realized that forcing myself to do the same thing over and over again tires me: I’d keep up with the habit for weeks, but then suddenly give up and stop for months. Also, I realized that I do more and better if I write a couple of hours for a couple of days, instead of 20 minutes for 7 days.

So, this is my schedule as of right now. It may change; if so, I’ll update you.

Monthly

After the call with Daniel Badosa¹, I decided to follow his method of scheduling how to work on multiple projects.

The idea is to dedicate one week to each project. I truly believe that deeply focusing on one thing at a time is an effective way to go about things: switching between creative projects during the same day, therefore, won’t do.

I like the idea of switching weekly. It allows me to immerse myself into a project for real, not just dip the tip of my toes in it. But also, it allows me to not get bored: before I get tired of one project, I have something else to work on.

As of right now, I’m working on two things: the rewrite of my book (of which I complain in “Having something you want to do”²) and this very newsletter! I was so inspired by Daniel, that I may add a third: I want to dedicate a week every once in a while to writing short fiction. We’ll see how that goes. More on it later.

So, my week rotation looks like this:

• Week 1: ✍🏼 Rewrite

• Week 2: 📫 Newsletter

• Week 3: ✍🏼 Rewrite

• Week 4: 🗒️ Short fiction

Rinse and repeat.

The priority is the rewrite, that’s why I allocated two weeks to it. I don’t want too much time to pass between the weeks I dedicate to my book—I could lose its thread. Also, it’s the biggest project of the bunch: it’ll take enough time to tackle it as it is.

✍🏼 The “rewrite”

At this moment, rewriting my first draft doesn’t look a lot like rewriting.

Before I can rewrite the draft, I need to know what to fix. And, I’ll admit, I’m taking my sweet, sweet time to figure that out.

I finished my first draft in December 2022. I took a looong break from it—six months! To be fair, I was anyway busy with other fun projects (I created my own D&D mini-campaign and DMed for the first time for a group of friends—it was a blast! Also, I organized for the first time a Crime Dinner³). Moreover, that gave my writing groups enough time to finish reading my draft.

In July 2023 I started re-reading my draft and organizing my own and others’ feedback. Because of vacation and other stuff (like, another Crime Dinner⁴ 🤣) I managed to finish that process only in November. And then… well, December happened. With vacation and festivities coming up, I just went with the motion.

But I came up with a plan. I had been reading The Story Grid⁵, a book on editing which I vibe so much with: it’s nerdy and detailed in just the right way. May not be for every writer, but it’s perfect for me.

It’s a great tool that would allow me to structurally analyze my first draft and determine where it’s weak and what it needs. I’ve read The Story Grid; now I need to study it. So, I’m re-reading it, breaking down every chapter, and extracting the most useful bits—in a week I managed 24 chapters out of 70. Depending on how dense the chapters are, it may take me 2-3 more weeks to be done (which, following my schedule, means one month/one month and a half).

That’s why I’m excited about the “Week 4” project: short fiction. I haven’t been writing fiction practically for a whole year. That realization makes me uneasy. It’ll take a while before I get back to writing my book, not only because of The Story Grid: after I finish that, I want to analyze at least two fiction books I love to understand what makes them work. I know it’ll take even more time… but I see it as an investment. I’ll possibly get out of them some knowledge that will be useful not only for this draft but also for future stories.

I should get back at writing fiction, and dedicating some time to short form will help me do that.

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So, that’s kind of it. What do you think of this plan? Is there any useful insight that you can use too? Do you have any tips or suggestions?

If you have any thoughts or questions on what I shared, let me know by simply replying to this email!

Take care,

Rye Youbs

1. A call with Daniel Badosa — in the entry “One hour and a half at a time” I write about what I learned by asking someone more experienced than me.

2. “Having something you want to do” — an entry of mine, in which I complain about all the things I want to do and how little time I have to do them because I’m a very busy person lol.

3. Crime Dinner — if you’re interested, check out FreeFormGames! Their main site may not look very modern, but the games are really good. As per usual when it comes to Crime Dinners, there is a murder that the players have to solve; but in these games every guest has also their own character with their goals and secrets. Everyone isn’t bound to a table, but free to move around and talk to whoever they want—and they have special abilities too! The first one I organized was Dazzled to Death, and it was a lot of fun.

4. Another Crime Dinner — we had so much fun the first time that a friend of mine asked me to organize a second one. This time it was Casino Fatale!

5. The Story Grid: What Good Editors Know by Shawn Coyne — this book is specifically for editing: it’s not that useful unless you have a draft to work on. My main takeaways as of right now: readers may not be fully aware of it, but they expect specific characters, scenes, and movements in your story, depending on the genre that you pick. How do you learn what they are? By dissecting stories that work. The problem is readers also want to be surprised: delivering all that is expected in a fresh, new way is the challenging part, and makes the difference between an okay story and a great one.
The book also gives instructions on how to create a spreadsheet to analyze your draft—I love it.