30 Days of Change: Day 1

 November 1st.

A day that fills the internet writing community with dread and excitement. 

The first day of NaNoWriMo.

For the uninitiated, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month, the annual November sprint to 50,000 words where writers sign up (for free) and do their best to write a novel in thirty days.

I don't know how many of these I've signed up for over the years. Probably a dozen.

I do know how many I've finished.

None.

It's not strange that I've never finished a NaNo project. I'm not consistent, and it takes consistency to bang out 50,000 words in thirty days. I tend to write in fits and starts, and have more uncompleted projects than completed ones. 

I did have a solid year from April of 2021 through March of 2022 where I wrote fifty short stories and three short (40,000 word) novels. This was thanks largely to putting my money where my mouth is - I signed up for Dean Wesley Smith's short story and novel writing challenges. 

Something about paying to enter the challenge kept me more consistent and motivated than I'd ever been, and having concrete goals drove me to continue. I wrote the short stories mostly on Sundays, sometimes taking all morning and a good portion of the afternoon. 

I wrote the novels typically in the last two weeks before they were due. The longest took me thirteen days, and the shortest took me six. So yeah, I can write 40,000 words in six days, but I can't get 50,000 words in 30 days? Something is wrong here, eh?

I know what's wrong, though. I procrastinate. I lack discipline.

I find it easier to sprint through a project at the last minute than I do to commit to a daily writing routine.

This is a habit born of laziness, but driven by fear. When the stakes are highest, when my back is to the wall, I usually get done what I must.

But why do the stakes have to be so high?

This method of writing is exhausting. 

Heck, this method of doing anything is exhausting. It's much easier, and far more productive in the long term, to be consistent and get a little bit done every day, to take smaller pieces out of larger goals until the pieces accumulate to a whole.

Then, even if you want to increase your productivity, you spend a little more time every day, increasing slowly, until you reach your desired output.

Simple, right?

Apparently not. And I know I'm not alone. There are plenty of last minute sprinters out there, banging away on everything in their lives at the last possible moment. We did it with school assignments. We did it with college papers, and many of us were rewarded with A grades for our last minute, late night efforts, which did nothing but reinforce our procrastinatory ways.

We continue to do it with doctor's appointments, haircuts, weekend plans, finances, work, and just about anything you can list that would benefit from a regular schedule but which we, instead, do at the last possible minute.

This is a tough way to live a life, and it drives out partners crazy!

I've worked on my procrastination habit for years, and I've mostly overcome it where work is concerned. I've turned into a systemic, habitual animal when I walk through the doors of my 9 to 5, and the daily tasks that used to spread across my day are now often done in the first two hours, leaving me more time to devote to grander pursuits that have been hugely impactful on my effectiveness and salary.

But there are still some things, less urgent things, that elude my best efforts to systemize. I'm still chasing these small, less important but often more impactful tasks down at the end of the month or quarter. These are things I should schedule, but because they are not daily and routine, I let them come and go as they will and often find myself scrambling to complete them at the last minute.

New guitar, same old song.

Well, here I am on November 1st. I've signed up for another NaNoWriMo. And I'm signing up for my own personal challenge.

30 Days of Change: Systemizing my life for better productivity

For the next thirty days, I'm scheduling everything. I'm planning out my days, weeks, and the entire month. I'm leaving very little room for flexibility. I'm going to bear down on my priorities and get to work, and I'm going to do it in a way that eliminates procrastination and guess work as much as possible.

I'm aware that planning is a skill. That's good news. Great news, in fact!

Skills can be learned. 

I've shown I can learn to systemize the routine tasks of my work day. When I stick to that routine, I'm happier and far more productive at work than I've ever been. And even when it slips a little, I now have that stable model of routine to return to in order to refocus.

That's hugely valuable. My career has taken off in the last two years, and I see measurable, concrete results.

I want that for my whole life.

So, for the month of November, I'm going to be focused on setting up a system and sticking to it. I'm going to look beyond daily planning and work out not just daily routines, but weekly and monthly ones as well.

And every day, I'm going to tell you about the changes I'm making, the resistance I'm feeling, and the progress I'm making.

So what am I focusing on?

Well, there are four main areas I want to improve: Health, Work, Writing, Family and Friends.

How am I going to systemize and improve my quality of life in these four areas? And how am I going to eliminate procrastination from my life in the process?

The first change I made today was getting up earlier, and getting up with a purpose and a plan.

I normally wake up at 5 a.m. , walk the dogs, have some coffee, and read a little before breakfast. Sometimes I don't read, and instead spend time scrolling on Social Media. None of this, outside walking the dogs, is particularly productive. Enjoyable, but not productive.

Today, I woke up at 3 a.m.

I find that I can be very productive in the early morning when I want to be, which involves knowing what my goals are for the day and what my plan is, step by step, when I get out of bed.

I kept it simple today. I woke up at 3 a.m. with the intent to write.

I devised a simple morning schedule for myself, and I plan to stick to it for the entire month.

3 a.m. - 5 a.m. - Writing

5 a.m. - 5:30 a.m. - Walk the dogs

5:30 a.m. - 6: 30 a.m.  - Gym

6:30 a.m. - 7:30 a.m.  - Breakfast/Shower/Shave/Dress

7:30 a.m. - Leave for work

This morning schedule, done seven days a week, will lay the groundwork for a successful day, week, and month.

You will note that the morning routine addresses two of my priorities, Health and Writing, in a hugely impactful way.

Daily writing can only improve my consistent, quality, and productivity. And two hours to start each day provides a solid base on which to build a writing practice. And an hour at the gym each morning will have an immediate positive impact on my health.

I haven't even planned the rest of the day yet, never mind the week and month, and I've already addressed half of my priorities.

This morning, I got out of bed at 3, started a novel, wrote this blog, drank a full bottle of water,and have barely finished half a cup of coffee. Good start.

That's enough for today. It's time to walk the dogs.

See you tomorrow.

How to reset your writing goals for the rest of the year

It’s never too late to begin again.

Image by vecstock

 Have you fallen short of your writing goals for the year?

I have.

But it’s not too late to salvage the rest of the year and set yourself up for success in the New Year!

In fact, it’s the perfect time to stop worrying about what you didn’t accomplish and start focusing on what you can do.

Wherever you are, whatever you’ve done, you can seize the moment and commit to a new writing goal for the rest of the year. You can pick up where you left off on an unfinished project. Or make a clean start.

Even if you did nothing this year, you can take the time you have left, get your butt in the writing chair, your fingers on the keyboard, and start writing now.

You’ll be surprised what you can achieve.

What can you achieve?

Well, here are my personal writing goals for the rest of 2023. Depending on what you want to write and how much time you have available, your goals may vary.

But don’t be afraid to challenge yourself. You might be surprised what you can accomplish in a small chunk of time, and you might even find it easier to focus for the short term instead of taking on the whole year!

There are 98 days left in 2023, which works out to 14 weeks exactly.

First, I have a work in progress that needs about 30,000 words.

Second, I have a trilogy I’ve been wanting to write. Three 90,000 word manuscripts.

Third, I need to make sure I blog regularly. Two blogs a week at 500 words each and a third, 1000 word blog seems like a great start.

Fourth, I like to challenge myself to write a short story every week. That’s about 5000 words a week. Some weeks will be longer, some a bit shorter, but 5000 is a good average short story word count.

That means I intend to write 30,000 WIP words + 270,000 novel words+ 28,000 blog words + 70,000 short story words.

Total: 398,000 words. Let’s call it 400,000.

Divided by 98 days and we get 4081 words per day.

Multiple that by 7 days and we get 28,571 words per week. Let’s call it 30,000 words a week to make the math easy.

Weekdays, I have a full time job that takes 8–10 hours of my time. But I know I have about 3 hours a day to allocate to writing. I write about 1000 words an hour, so Monday through Friday I’ll write 3000 words a day. That accounts for 15,000 words, or half of my weekly goal.

That means I need to get 15,000 words on the weekend.

Well, I can stay up later on Friday nights, so I can get another 2000 words there.

Then, I can spend my Saturday afternoon, about 5 hours, writing, so that’s another 5000 words.

That leaves 8000 words for Sunday, which means eight hours of writing on Sunday. A full work day. But I’ll break it up into two or three, maybe even four sessions, depending on what else I have going on.

That’s 30,000 words a week, and 30 extra hours of work on top of my typical 45 hour work week. That might seem like a lot.

There are 168 hours in a week.

I’m committing 75 of them to work and writing.

And I sleep about 7 hours a night, or 49 hours a week.

So 168 total hours –75 hours of work and writing–49 hours of sleep still leaves me 44 hours a week!

I can still go to the gym (6 hours), go out on Saturday night (6 hours), have date night on Tuesdays (4 hours), movie night on Sundays (6 hours), and have 22 hours left over for commuting, reading, self-care, and general miscellaneous downtime.

I’m not recommending you try to write this much.

But I do recommend you examine how you spend your time, and imagine what you can do with your writing if you manage your time better and commit to getting your butt in seat more often.

You might be surprised at what you can accomplish if you eliminate distractions and get down to business.

Who knows? Maybe you’ll even finish that novel.

How to get more out of life - a plan for fulfillment

 

How to get more out of life

A plan for fulfillment

You’ve probably heard the phrase, “We all get the same twenty-four hours in a day.”

And it’s true.

But it’s a troublesome phrase, causing more problems than it solves.

Here’s why.

The idea that we all have the same amount of time in the day makes us focus on what we aren’t doing, rather than what we are.

Instead of making the most of those twenty-four hours, we end up worrying that we aren’t doing enough. 

In a world where so many people humble brag on social media all day, every day, sharing their accomplishments and urging others to do more and be more, it’s becoming increasingly hard to prioritize what we value over all the noise.

The never-ending search for likes and views has warped us to the point where we aren’t even sure what we enjoy anymore. Instead, we get caught up in the modern version of Keeping Up with the Joneses, focusing on the things that generate the most feedback.

Yes, I’m aware that I’m writing an article on a social media site, and that I hope lots of people read it, enjoy it, and get something out of it. No irony intended.

We’ve become a society that values other people’s opinions far more than we value our own, largely because it’s damn difficult to sort out what it is we actually do value. 

The constant marketing and social bombardment we subject ourselves to has changed the way we function collectively, but also individually. And the marketers and content creators have gotten so good at their craft, we may not even be aware our perceptions and values are in constant flux.

But there’s a way to combat the growing pressure, a way to restore your sense of self and reconnect with your loves, your likes, your dreams, and your desires.

Don’t worry. I’m not going to tell you to delete all your social media. 

That’s like trying to stop a tidal wave with a single sandbag. 

Social media is a part of our lives now, and it’s not going anywhere. In fact, it’s just going to become a bigger and bigger part of our daily existence with each passing day. Trying to deny that is a waste of time and energy, and you might be depriving yourself of valuable tools.

Tools that enable a whole new level of human connection, so long as we are conscious of how we utilize them.

But in order to understand just how we should be using social media in our lives, we first have to figure out what we want our lives to be in the first place.

What do you want your life to be?

This is a question of priorities, but also of time management.

See, we really do all get the same amount of time in each day. And we do get to decide how we spend it.

But most people are trying to do far too much, and as a result, the quality of their lives is suffering.

The first step in restoring your quality of life it to establish some priorities. So go ahead, make a list of all the things you want and need to do every day, every week, every month. Every year if you are feeling ambitious (or just have that special sort of planning-based OCD).

You’ll probably come up with a list of twenty, thirty, maybe even fifty things you want and need to do. Go ahead. Write them all down. Everything you can think of, no matter how trivial. 

If you spend time on it, or want to spend time on it, write it down.

Good.

Now cross out all but five.

Five things

See, you can’t do twenty, thirty, or fifty?!? things and be fulfilled. You’re just to damn busy. You don’t have the time to fully enjoy anything!

So cut the list down to just five.

These should be the absolute most important five things in your life.

For example, when I cut my list down, I’m left with:

• health
• friends and family
• writing
• travel
• giving back

I took out things like getting a promotion at work, making more money, saving more money, playing video games, staying up to date on all the great Star Wars shows on Disney Plus, and reading every one of the 100 greatest books ever written.

The five things I have left are the absolute most important things in my life. 

They are the things I can’t live without. They are the things that make my life better and more meaningful, and the things that make up my core identity.

Not just who I am, but who I really want to be.

They are my priorities, and they come more or less in the order I listed them here.

I could live without every other thing on my list. And believe me, it was a long list. I was way over fifty.

But I don’t have time for fifty. 

I only have time for five.

Now, that doesn’t mean you’ll never do anything else but these five things with your time. And your five things will probably differ from mine, at least a little. 

They should. These are the five most important things in your life. 

You don’t have to be productive with them. Your final five might include reading, watching television, playing video games, going to bingo, cooking, building a business, or even making a fortune.

What’s important is that those are the five things you deem most important. The things you are most passionate about. The things you enjoy the most.

If you focus on those five things eighty to ninety percent of the time you have available, the quality of your life will increase exponentially.

And you’ll be amazed at how little you miss all those extra little things you used to do, things you considered important. Vital, even, to your day.

But they weren’t. They aren’t.

They were just noise.

They were obstacles getting in the way of enjoying your life.

They were creating STRESS.

Don’t believe me? Give it a try.

It won’t be easy, but you don’t have to be perfect. Heck, give up one thing month from the list. Take a couple of years to get down to the core five if you want.

Whatever it takes, it will be worth it.

I promise.

If you enjoyed this story and want to read more about life, goals, and writing, please don’t forget to follow. Thank you.

The 4 things you need to be a great writer (I bet you already have them...)

 What do you need to be a great writer? That’s the question, isn’t it? And every aspiring writer wants the answer.

The truth is, all our combined Google searches cannot hope to answer that question.

Why not?

Because every writer is different. What works for someone else probably won’t work for you.

That’s not to say you can’t find a method that works for you by learning what other writers do, but even the best-sounding writing routine by your absolute favorite writer is probably not a good fit for you.

It might be a good place to start, though. If you’re really stuck, mired in worry about doing it wrong, then anywhere you begin is a good place.

You can’t do it wrong, by the way.

But that perfect routine you copied from someone else will only work for you if you're willing to be flexible. You’re going to develop your own routine through trial and error, and if you're stuck following someone else’s routine, you might not discover your own.

What don’t you need?

You don’t need a fancy laptop or a dedicated writing space. I’m writing this on a four year old laptop sitting in my reading chair. The laptop rests on a $15 lap desk I bought on Amazon. My wife is on the couch eight feet away from me watching TV, and the volume is loud enough that I can hear it clearly over my headphones.

I’ve written on my phone while waiting at the doctor’s office for an appointment. I’ve written on a piece of printer paper during my break at work. I’ve written poems on napkins in McDonalds.

And I wrote one novel on this laptop while sitting on the majestic deck of a rental house on top of a mountain in North Carolina. (That was a great week for me, and a terrible week for my wife. Sorry, babe.)

If you think you need a new computer, the perfect notebook, or a writing retreat to unlock your creativity, you’re procrastinating.

All of those things can be a nice addition to your writing practice, but they aren’t at all necessary.

So, what do you need?

1. Time to write.
2. Something to write with.
3. The willingness to sit down and write during that time on that thing.
4. Lot’s of practice.

That’s it!

Everything else is an excuse not to write.

So grab something to write with, pick a time, and get started!

And don’t stop, no matter what. Keep coming back day after day. It’s the only way to get better, and better is the path to great.

If you miss a day, that’s okay. But try not to miss two in a row. And definitely don’t miss three.

The longer you go without writing, the harder it is to get started again. So keep the momentum going as best you can with the time you have.

Stop worrying. Stop being afraid. And definitely stop waiting for inspiration.

Start writing right now, and let all the worry and fear go.

You want to know what it takes to be a great writer?

No, you don’t.

You want to know if you have what it takes.

Since you're reading this, I’m willing to bet the answer is yes.

If you enjoyed this article, please follow me for more on writing, goals, and life.

Five ways to increase your writing productivity

Do you write as much as you want?

I can never seem to find as much writing time as I'd like, and I struggle to hit my weekly word count goals regularly.

When I write at all, that is.

There are an abundance of excuses to not write readily available. 

From days jobs, to family commitments, to the need to clean the entire house, reorganize your sock drawer, and find more time for reading, video games, and Netflix (all, you may notice, are not writing), it's easy enough to avoid writing altogether. 

If you want to grow as a writer and build a portfolio of work, no matter what your chosen writing form, you need to put the time in and get the words down.

As an expert at finding reasons not to write, I thought I would share some tried and true ways to help you find the time and increase your word count. 

Whatever sort of writer you want to be, these five tips will increase your word count as soon as you implement them.

1. Get up early.

There's no better time to write than the early morning. 

It's quiet and very few people are up and about, which means the potential interruptions and conflicts are almost nonexistent. Sure, there might be an occasional emergency to deal with, but those should (hopefully) be few and far between. 

You have the most control of your time before the rest of the world has woken up.

You may believe you won't be able to write as soon as you get out of bed. But, with a little practice, you'll soon find the words flowing easily from your fingers onto the screen (or paper, though writing longhand is a great way to derail your productivity. But that's a subject for another day...)

I do some of my best writing well before dawn. 

I've found that waking up at 3 a.m. gives me a couple of uninterrupted hours to write, and that fiction flows especially well before my conscious mind is fully awake. I don't even need coffee! 

And let me tell you, there's no better feeling than getting a couple thousand words down before you start your day and get worn out by work, life, and the general feeling that the world is on fire. (It is jsut a feeling, right?)

Want to curb your anxiety over not finding the time to write today? Get up an hour or two before you have to and get to typing! You'll find a feeling of wellbeing and freedom follows you through the day knowing you've already gotten your word count goal in.

If you do choose to wake up early and write though, it really helps if you...

2. Know what you are going to write about.

This may seem obvious, but it's where a lot of writer's get hung up. Some people call it writer's block, but I've learned it's just poor planning.

Since you've decided to get up early and get in the habit of daily writing, you may as well head into the morning prepared. There's nothing more discouraging for a writer than sitting down to the blank screen and searching for the first word, then giving up and going back to bed. Or worse, getting on an early morning cleaning spree.

The first day will be the toughest, so have a good idea of what you want to write about before you go to bed. When starting a new project, whether it's an article, chapter, or brand new story, I like to set up the document the night before. 

Once you've decided what you'll be writing about, open the blank document you'll be working on and type in the title. It doesn't have to be the perfect title, just the first one that comes to mind. 

Even better if you have an opening line in mind. Type it! That way, when the morning comes and you roll out of bed groggy and wishing you'd slept in, you'll sit down in your writing chair, open the doc, and find the creative energy from last night infusing you with inspiration!

If you are returning to a work in progress, that's easier. 

Use the old trick, oft attributed to Ernest Hemingway, and stop each writing session in the middle of a sentence. It's much easier to pick up where you left off mid-sentence than to start a fresh paragraph or chapter. Just like hot do eating champion Joey Chestnut would tell you, momentum is key. He'd also say you should...

3. Take small bites.

This is crucial. Don't try to write it all in one go, unless it's a very short piece, say 1500 words or less. 

Even then, take frequent breaks. A five minute break every half hour goes a long way to keeping your creative energy high and the words flowing.

Even better, don't try to block out hours of time to write. 

It's hard to find a free hour in our busy days, never mind two or three. I used to sabotage myself by only writing when I had two or more uninterrupted hours to commit. The result was predictable. I barely wrote at all!

Write for fifteen minutes here and there when time allows. Once you get it out of your head that you need hours and start looking for small windows of free time, you'll find that you can write anytime, anywhere. And the quality doesn't suffer.

Once I adopted the mindset that I could write no matter where I was, I found I could get down a paragraph while waiting on line at the grocery store or waiting in the doctor's office. If I have five minutes free, I'll get the next few sentences down. 

I write on my phone almost every day, and while it isn't quite as satisfying as sitting down for a good hour on my laptop, let me assure you, those five and ten minute spurts add up at the end of the week. Get in the habit of writing anywhere and anytime you have five to fifteen minutes and you'll see a few thousand extra words every week. 

And that, my fellow writers, is incredibly satisfying.

4. Forget perfection.

This kind of fits with the last tip, but it's a monster of epic proportions that deserves far more than the time I'll give it here.

We all want to write wonderfully, and I'm not advocating you strive for anything less. 

But I do want to warn you, we writers are the worst judges of our own writing. We are so damn hard on ourselves that it can be tempting to give up writing altogether.

Instead, just do the best you can and trust your creative voice. Your toolbox as a writer will only grow with frequent practice, and even when you gain excellence in the craft, you'll still think most of what you write isn't worth reading.

You're wrong!

I'm not saying to treat everything you write as a masterpiece worthy of unending praise and everflowing acclaim, not to mention monetary compensation. 

What's I'm saying is, the best thing you can do to become a better write is to write. A lot. And an attitude of perfection is the enemy of your growth as a writer.

Instead, let it go. Don't worry about how you feel about your own writing. Heck, don't even read it if you can manage. 

My own process is to get the words down the best I can, and to take frequent breaks. 

When I come back from a break, I'll read what I wrote the last session (this is easy if you keep your sessions short) and edit as I go.

And I rarely look at it again!

That's right. I try to write the best, cleanest copy I can, get it right the first time out, review and tweak every five hundred words or so, and always keep moving forward. This applies to novels, short stories, articles, and even important emails. 

When it's done, it's done.

Chances are, when you go back over and over again, you beat the hell out of some pretty decent writing. 

Often, you'll be taking what makes your writing fun and unique, your voice, and slaughtering it down to the blandest version of itself.

Your an artist, damnit! Let the creative voice do it's job. There are enough critics out there (failed writers, the lot of them!) without you tearing yourself down. 

These four tips will go a long way, but none of them will do you a lick of good if you don't do one specific thing as often as you can stand. Get your...

5. Butt in seat!

There's no better way to produce more words than to spend more time in the writing chair, fingers on the keys, in more or less constant motion. 

Nothing will do you as much good as sitting down and writing the next sentence!

Seriously, sit your butt in the writing chair. Don't wait for the right time, and never, ever wait for inspiration. 

If you're cleaning the house for the third time this week, inspiration is likely to fly over your head and look for someone else, someone with their fingers on the keyboard.

Stories want to be told, and they will find those writers with their butts in the writing chair. 

Seriously, have you ever thought of a great premise for a story or article but not gotten around to writing it? Or finishing it?

And have you then seen a very similar story or article go on to be a huge success?

I've had it happen to me. No one stole my ideas, because I never got them down on paper. But there have been a few times when something I thought about writing turned up as an article, novel, or even major motion picture!

Ideas are alive, and they are out there in the world waiting for someone to capture them and write them down. Don't let you next idea become someone else's Academy Award!

If you only take one of these ways to increase your writing productivity, make it the last one. Nothing else will elevate your word count, not to mention your craft, as much as consistently getting your butt in seat!

Don't forget to follow for more writing advice, tips, and an honest look at a writer going from procrastination to publication. 

How to reset your writing goals for the rest of 2023

 How is your writing year going?

Have you kept up with the ambitious goals you set way back on January 1st? Are you crushing them? Great!

This story probably isn’t for you.

Then again, who knows? Maybe it is. Maybe it would help to see that while you are out there exceeding your every expectation for writing in 2023, most writers are not.

Me? I’m not even close.

I don’t even know what my goals were!

I’m sure they were appropriately ambitious, befitting of New Year’s goals (dare I say resolutions?) across time, space, and memory.

They were probably way too ambitious.

Most likely I was going to write two-dozen full length novels, a short story a day, a poem every hour, and three-a-day blog posts to recap, all while keeping my day job and making enough time for my wife and dogs, a handful of close friends, and every “optional” after-work function that came up.

Sound familiar?

Probably not, unless you’re a lunatic.

Or a writer who’s trying to make up for lost time. Like me.

The truth is, I have no idea what my goals were at the beginning of the year. I’m sure I wrote them down, but if they were in a notebook, that notebook has been lost to the chaos of life. If they were in a Word doc or Google sheet, I can’t figure out where on my laptop they might be hiding.

It’s entirely possible I ripped the pages out of the notebook or deleted the doc in frustration sometime in March or April, despondent and hoping to erase the evidence of my failure. I really don’t know.

But perhaps that’s a good thing.

You see, my year has been wild and wooly. I started 2023 doing the best I could to support my wife as she recovered from a major back injury. Once she was back to work and things started to calm down, I took a breath and set about reprioritizing my time and goals. This was how I spent April — struggling to get back on some sort of track that accommodated work, writing, hitting the gym, and maintaining the semblance of a social life.

Then, on May 2nd, while sitting at my desk at work, I had some chest pain that lasted about five minutes.

I very much wanted to blow it off as an anxiety attack, but I’m fifty now, gifted with the accumulated wisdom of middle age and the almost certain knowledge that I have less time ahead of me than behind. So, I did the sensible thing and went to the emergency room.

Three months and one triple bypass later, I sit here this morning trying to get a handle on the rest of the year. My health is good, likely better than it’s been in a long time. My wife is healthy, and our relationship is thriving. I’ve found more time for friends and family, partly because I had more time while recovering from surgery, but mostly because there’s nothing like a mild heart attack followed by a triple bypass to make you understand how valuable your time really is.

I’m also back to work, which is a good thing. But also a difficult thing, because I was just starting to feel well enough to enjoy the bit of freedom that not going into the office for 40+ hours a week offered.

That leaves writing.

Hopefully your year has been smoother than mine. Or maybe it’s been tougher by far. We’re not here to compare. Life is almost never smooth, and there are always challenges, interruptions, and distractions around the next turn of the calendar to disrupt even the best laid plans and the most disciplined people.

Okay, maybe not the most disciplined people. But those people are outliers, true freaks of nature who get it done day in, day out. They probably would have been writing as soon as they were out of the ICU, and putting in extra words to make up the lost time.

For the rest of us, there are a couple of choices.

1. Let life be our excuse. Scrap the whole writing thing, enjoy the rest of 2023, get our Halloween costumes ready, start our holiday shopping, run up our credit card bills, take up a new hobby that takes more time than we have, and prepare to lament the whole thing and set brand new, overly ambitious writing goals for January 1st, 2024 so that we can start the whole cycle of failure over again.
2. Use today as a restart day. Set reasonable goals based on your available time for the rest of the year. Build some positive momentum leading into 2024 so that you don’t have to restart all over again on the most pressure packed day of the year, January 1st, when hope springs eternal and optimism couples with regret to make setting any sort of reasonable goals for the next twelve months almost impossible.

As appealing as option #1 sounds, I’ve been there and done that.

I’m going with option #2,

Which begs the question…

What does a reasonable goal look like?

Well, that depends on what your life looks like. Really, setting a reasonable goal is all about figuring out what available time you have and deciding how much of it you want to allocate to a given activity. In this case, writing.

“But Joe, I don’t have any time!”

I know. It definitely feels that way sometimes. A lot of the time, actually. Life is very busy, and the days get away from us before they even get started.

But you do have time. Trust me.

It’s just that you spend it doing other things.

For example, last week my phone told me I spend an average of 4 hours and 17 minutes of screen time every day. And that was down 29 minutes from the previous week.

Well, yeah, I went back to work. Those eight hour days sure cut into my social media browsing.

Seriously, though, 4+ hours a day of screen time, just on my phone. What the heck am I doing on there?!

I thought some of that time could be attributed to listening to audio books and podcasts, which is what I do when I’m driving, showering, and working out. A quick Google search informed me that, no, my phone does not count that time as screen time.

Wow. So I spend 4+ hours a day looking at my phone? I mean, I’m curious and Google a lot of things — everything from who an actor I recognize is when I’m watching a movie, to wine ratings when we are looking at the restaurant selection, to how many galaxies there are within 50 million light years of the Milky Way. (I’m a writer. It’s research…)

But I can’t possibly be spending more than a half hour a day looking up stuff. Forty-five minutes tops, right?

I also read on my phone, probably a half hour to an hour a day on average. But that still leaves three hours of screen time!

I’m spending an eighth of my day on my phone and I couldn’t even tell you why!

So, yeah, that’s got to get cut down significantly. And if I can take away half that time and turn it into writing time, imagine how much writing I’d get done?

I write about 1000 words an hour on average, assuming I write as clean as possible. Some things, like train of thought blogs, are a little faster, and some things, like fiction, are little slower. But 1000 words and hour is an easy number to work with, so let’s use that.

If I do nothing else but cut my screen time by 90 minutes a day and use that time to write, that works out to 1500 words a day. Simple math says 1500 words a day times 365 days equals 547,500 words a year.

If a typical full-length novel is 90,000 words, that means repurposing that ninety minutes a day gives me time to write six novels. Or five novels and about one-hundred eighty 500 words blogs.

That’s damn good productivity, and all I’m giving up for it is scrolling on Instagram and avoiding political posts on Facebook? I’m in!

What’s Important?

You might have other things you spend your time on, and maybe they’re important. But chances are, some of them are not.

So step one is figuring out what’s important. I mean, really important.

Obviously, if you have bills to pay and aren’t independently wealthy, work is important. So start there and block out those hours as necessary. However, if you are lingering at work or letting your work take over your whole day because you work from home and stretch your eight hour day into twelve, that’s probably worth looking at. Truth is, you could probably get your eight hours of work done in five or six hours, which would free up some time.

Unless your company is monitoring your screen time and activity, in which case I hope you really love your job, because your company sucks.

But let’s assume work is important for most of us. Same thing with sleep. So there’s 14–16 hours a day gone right off the bat in all likelihood, at least five days a week.

Hopefully, you work out and stay active, so let’s assume another two hours a day are gone because you take good care of yourself in order to live a long and healthy life.

And I assume you have friends and family that you want to spend time with. If not, get some. Socialization is as important to your health as exercise, maybe more so. But either way, let’s be generous and give up another two hours a day to maintain our relationships and enjoy the people we care about.

16 hours work/sleep + 2 hours active/exercise + 2 hours friends and family = 20 hours.

Bonus time with friends and family if you can be active and exercise together! That’s a really good idea, by the way.

That still leaves four hours a day for us to spend.

Apparently, I was spending my four hours looking at my phone.

Still, there are little things that take up time. Let’s call it another two hours of dining, using the bathroom, showering, shaving, getting dressed, and who knows how many little miscellaneous moments that occur throughout the day. Individually, they take only a minute or three, but they add up.

And honestly, we don’t want to spend our days rushing around any more than we already do. So that two hours is a little generous, perhaps. Especially if we include at least one meal, maybe two, as part of the time we share with friends and family. But we’ll start there to illustrate the point.

That leaves us two hours in the day. Two hours to do whatever we want.

Even if we go ahead and spend one hour on something random, like video games, television, reading, or whatever floats your particular boat, we still have an hour left over.

An that’s an hour to write.

Disclaimer: I don’t have children, just a couple of dogs. As needy as they are, they take no where near as much time and energy as children.

Now, I know your life may be different than what I laid out here. It probably is, but the point of this isn’t to try and fit your life into the layout I’ve given as an example.

The point is to look at your days and weeks and make an honest assessment of what you are choosing to do with your time.

Start small, especially if the thought of discipline is overwhelming or frightening. I’m sure you probably feel busy, but that feeling may not be the truth, and it may be what’s holding you back from following your writing dreams and achieving your goals.

Even if all you can find is fifteen minutes a day, and you have to create it by waking up a little earlier, staying up a little later, or barricading yourself in the bathroom and writing on your phone (ack, more screen time!), you can make a start on your commitment to writing today!

And when it comes to all the other things that you do with your time, some of which you may feel very attached to, you might have to make some choices.

Do you want to be a writer?

Well, you may have to sacrifice some of the other things you enjoy doing to achieve your goals and make your dream a reality.

It may not be easy, but if you are like me, if the writing bug has been with you for as long as you can remember, if it keeps coming back no matter how little time you give it, making you feel guilty for not writing more, for not committing, for not following your passion and giving it the time it deserves, the sacrifices will be worthwhile.

Start small. Fifteen minutes. A half hour. An hour.

Maybe all you have is an hour on Sunday morning before the kids roll out of bed.

That’s okay. It’s a start.

Commit to beginning, mark that time out in bold on your calendar, and make sure everyone who might interrupt it knows how important it is to you.

All it takes is that first word.

Life can change in an instant

You know the expression, "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans?" Of course you do. It's a quaint expression, but it's true.

A month ago today, I had a mild heart attack. I experienced chest pain in the morning at work, and I ended up in the emergency room. A week later, I underwent a triple bypass, and five days after that, I came home to my wife and pups.

I'm so fucking happy to be here. Had I not gone to the ER, I probably wouldn't be.

It's not shocking to me that people, mostly men, ignore chest pain. When it happened to me, I was terrified, confused, and wanted more than anything for it to be indigestion or an anxiety attack. I was convinced it was right up until I got the results from my catheterization

Three arteries, two completely blocked, one ninety percent.

And I'd thought I felt fine right up until the chest pain. I even felt fine after.

But those five minutes of pain and discomfort changed my life. Saved my life, even.

So here I am, a month removed from the pain. I'm mending well. Nothing is perfect, but I feel better every day, and for the most part things are going according to the recovery plan. I'm able to walk for thirty minutes straight now, albeit at a slow pace, and I should be starting cardiac rehabilitation soon. I'm eating well and have lost twenty-two pounds since I left the hospital three and a half weeks ago. I would like to lose another thirty, but slow and steady wins the race.

I even got to enjoy a couple of glasses of wine this week. Nothing has ever tasted so good!

And I'm getting bored, which I take as a good sign. I was never bored in the hospital or for the first ten days I was home. Scared? Yes. Worried? Yes. Overwhelmed? Fuck yes! 

I don't think you can be bored when you are in survival mode. I never was. I don't think I had the capacity for it.

How can you be bored when every little thing your body does is a question you need to ask the doctor about? Why is my chest creaking? Oh, that's normal? What about my blood pressure spikes? Also normal? And the bleeding from my chest tube wound that went on for two solid weeks? Normal? Oh, right, drainage.

I wish they had a list of all the things that could and would probably occur after open heart surgery that were normal. It would have saved me a lot of anxiety.

But yeah, I'm bored.

I'm still healing, and I have a long way to go. I have to take it slow. I have to get back in some kind of shape, and then surpass that and get in the best shape of my life. I want to take this moment and use it to make sure I get the most out of the rest of my life. I'm fifty years old, and if I can get another fifty years, I'll take every moment of it!

The funny thing about all this is the clarity. I always thought I was afraid of dying. I guess we all are. It's part of being human, right? We grow up and develop the knowledge through observation and experience that life is finite, that we will all die. It's the one thing we all have in common.

But I never appreciated life as much s I do right now.

How sad is that?

Fear of death as a vague future occurrence is one thing, and that's scary enough. Now that I've been through all this, fear of death has gained a reality that I've never before experienced. 

I never knew what I feared before. Now I know.

It's not death that's scary and upsetting.

It's no longer living.

It's the realization that someday I'll stop spending time with my family and friends, stop snuggling my pups, stop reading and writing and speaking. Stop playing video games and eating and drinking and laughing and loving and smiling and crying and trying. Just stop.

It's not the dark specter of death that I'm afraid of anymore.

It's the loss of this beautiful, precious, amazing life.

I always liked the song, "Live Like You Were Dying," by Tim McGraw.

Now I really understand it.

 I don't know how much time I have, but I know I'm above ground and more or less upright, breathing, smiling, and somewhat terrified.  I know I love my family and friends and want to have as many moments with them as I can. I know I want to be healthy and make the best of every single day.

And, as always, I know I'm a writer.

Write, fool. Live, love, eat, drink, smile, weep.

Write,