As a content developer; I’ve got my nose in a dozen projects at any given time, not just my own. I can’t afford to be precious. I’ve had to come up with a few tricks to get shit done or I don’t get paid.

Let’s be clear here: writers need structure. This was a hard lesson for me to learn because I hate structure. But for a writer, freedom can be our worst enemy. It can lead to paralysis, procrastination, aimlessness, and indecision.

Now, the problem with creating structure for us whimsical types is that it doesn’t just happen on its own because we hope it will. We have to develop some very particular practices and commit to them.

I’m going to share these practices with you today.

Work In Block Time

Because the mind works best when you can focus, uninterrupted, on a task for a reasonable amount of time—not too little and not too long, something just right for you and your untreated ADHD—you’ll want to work in block time.

You’ll then want to schedule your writing blocks—this could be three two-hour blocks or two three-hour blocks— on your calendar, in blood. You know best what will work with your hectic schedule; what time of day your brain functions optimally.

You don’t have to quit your day job to fit your writing time in, nor do you have to give up your friends and family, even if you’d sometimes like to. If you’re an all-or-nothing-sort (raises her hand), the idea of scheduling six hours of writing time each week may make all the difference for you.

Stop Looking For Perfect

I’m one of those snowflakes who prefers to write along the Seine, sipping red wine, for eight hours at a time. Not too hot, not too windy, no noisy tourists around, definitely no background music.

Except, life doesn’t tend to provide me with those moments.

I’ve had to learn to be OK with grabbing ten minutes in a busy airport to tweak a paragraph. To type in the bathroom during a family get together to make a deadline. To stuff cotton in my ears at Starbucks. (Why must people talk so?)

If you want to finish your project on time, you’ll often have to take what you can get and modify to meet your needs.

Which leads me to the next practice.

Have A Deadline

You can putz around for years on end without a writing deadline.

Join a writers’ group, which forces you to produce and submit.

Find an accountability buddy or a writing coach who won’t hesitate to shame you.

Start a weekly blog that comes out every Wednesday at noon.

Nothing sharpens the mind better than having to come up with content for regular review.

Work On Bricks

Even if you aren’t a mason, I’d like you to consider your book as thought it were a brick house. Brick houses have different shapes and structures, just like books, but what they all have in common are bricks and mortar. You can’t build a brick house without a generous supply of bricks. The same goes for building books.

Start thinking in terms of bricks, forming a single, tiny brick of material.

Depending on the genre you’ve chosen to work in, a brick can be any number of things: a scene; one expanded, supported idea; a case study…

The beautiful thing about creating a pile of bricks is that you don’t have to work linearly. If you’ve only got ten minutes to work, then work on that single supported idea you’ll drop into Chapter Six.

If you’ve been dying to work on that final scene, great, mold that brick now, while the fire’s hot.

Finally,

Learn To Plan And Review

We overestimate what we can accomplish in a week and underestimate what we can accomplish in a year. I don’t know who said this, but it’s true.

If you’re demoralized by what you’ve failed to get done this year, then the previous four strategies can right your wagon.

But maybe, just maybe, all that self-flagellation is gratuitous. Maybe you’ve achieved far more than you think.

There’s no better motivation than looking in the rearview mirror and seeing how far you’ve actually come.

Each year I ask my writing clients to fill out a yearly planning template. You can access a copy right here.

First, you’ll focus on what you’ve accomplished during the past year, and what practices you believe afforded your success. Then you’ll set realistic goals for the year ahead.

Want something done, turn it into a realistic goal.

Reality checks? Priceless.