Writing is work. As writers, we understand what that means, however, our friends and family may not. This is especially true when you work at your craft from your home.
A number of writer friends have often shared their frustration with the constant interruptions they encounter from people they know. I confess to experiencing the same frustration as a writer. However, unlike the writers I know, I found myself in the perfect position for an experiment. With a Master of Science degree, I am quite familiar with experiments.
I joined a law firm as one of their attorneys in the areas of estate planning, business, and real estate more than a year ago. I confess to enjoying the practice of law more than I ever have in my entire career (I won’t reveal how many years that is, but suffice it to say it’s more than 20). I work with an incredible, brilliant group of attorneys and support staff. Another plus, is that although our main office is fully staffed (with 3 satellite offices), unless I am meeting with a client, I work from my home office — where the experiment begins.
I don’t write full time, but, I never did. I have practiced law since I graduated law school, however, when I moved to Colorado, I practiced more part time until I started with this firm. With the exception of my clients, my family and friends saw me as a writer, and interruptions were a constant problem. Once I joined this firm, while I worked out of the same home office, the interruptions ceased.
Writers Beware of the Legal Pitfalls
What does that tell us? That others considered my work as a full time attorney as a “real job” while my work as a writer was not. To say that is frustrating is an understatement, however, there are things we can do.
Treat writing as a “real job.”
Go to your workplace, whether it is a separate room in your home, an area of your home, the library, a picnic table in a specific park, or Starbucks.
Let your family and friends know your work schedule.
During your writing (work) hours, shut off your phone, do not answer your door, and do not check your email.
Karen Van Den Heuvel Fischer
Once they realize you are not available during work hours, they will understand that you are working. Fortunately, I am an early bird and my writing time takes place before most people rise. My “workday” for writing begins around 4:30 a.m. with my workday as a lawyer around 8. For me, a perfect solution.
Kathryn Ross is our guest today on Thyme for Writers as she shares the next in her Write Spice Series: Preparing Your Writer’s Garden to Grow: 6 Steps to a Fruitful Manuscript Harvest.
Preparing Your Writer’s Garden to Grow
March is still pretty chilly where I live. Unseasonable warm days are kept in check with bursts of unseasonable cold and the last few roars of winter snow storms. I am dreaming about springtime and harvest, but not keen to venture out into the yard with spade and hoe in preparation for such dreams to come true.
In fact, I tend to regularly make the mistake of waiting until a happy, sunny day in May before I venture to the local garden shop looking for some green veggies to plant or springtime bulbs the wise gardener buried last fall. With a patient smile, the shop attendant explains that the reason there are so few vegetable greens left for planting in May is that they should have been planted in March for a truly fruitful harvest. But in March, I was only dreaming about such a thing, bundled in my sweater and hoping the wind chill and gray sky wasn’t so foreboding.
Sweet Italian Basil — Home Grown
Better gardeners than I brave chilly March days with solid plans and preparations for lush foliage and home-grown vegetable goodness later in the year. Whether it is planting trays of select seeds to sprout indoors before replanting after the frost dies or taking hoe in hand to whack away at the winter hardened earth, clearing away the leftover debris of last season greenery, smart and serious gardeners get to work by March to reap rewards in summer and fall.
I may never attain Master Gardener when it comes to preparing my floral and vegetable fields in a timely manner. But I can apply this principle of preparation and planning to my writing life and the harvests I dream of reaping from my Writer’s Garden.
The Writer’s Garden
When we don’t take care to prepare our fields…
When we don’t take care to prepare our fields for the desired harvest of a fruitful writing life, we reap little, with no healthy green goods to take to market. Here are six things you can do for properly preparing your Writer’s Garden in hopes of harvesting a manuscript in due season:
Break Up Fallow Ground in your lifestyle to prepare your Writer’s Garden soil for creating life-giving words. Removing the things that block you from your writing goals. This can be bad habits like procrastination, poor organization, a cluttered workspace, or an overburdened schedule of busy activities that dry up your mental focus and vitality. List the fallow ground blockages that keep your creative soils from being prepared and whack away at them.
Plant Inspiration SeedsEarly by jotting down your ideas as soon as they come to you in a file or binder. When you come across a resource that you think will prove fruitful in the future, plant it right away. This could be a book (hard-copy or digital) you know will be invaluable to your research, or a computer file with website URLs saved to follow-up on later. Perhaps an image is inspiring to you for your project purposes, or even a physical object. Collect them as you find them and plant them in your creative space where you can brood over them for a time.
Water Ideas Daily with free writing on your project topic. If you’re working on a series of online posts, a fiction book, a non-fiction manuscript, poem, play, or what-all, visit your ideas on the project regularly. Discipline yourself to water it, in effect, by expanding on your previous work. This could mean reading another resource to add notes to your research. It could mean writing another chapter, or just adding another layer to a character description or plot outline. Visiting your Writer’s Garden with the water can of daily work feeds your inspiration seeds to take root and sprout.
Weed Carefully, at least once a week, with focused editing. Clear out unnecessary material and keep your writing and project work focused so only the strongest shoots are getting the nutrients of your skilled efforts. Don’t allow unruly vines to grow and choke out the full potential of your project.
Control Pests that seek to steal, kill, and destroy your precious harvest potential. Culprits such as Fear, Complaint, Laziness, Stress, Depression, Envy, Disobedience, and more can eat away at every new stem of writing produced if allowed to remain in your Writer’s Garden. Look for them hiding under the leaves of your work and brutally remove them.
Harvest on Time—not too early and not too late—to get the best nutrient return on your fruitful garden of words. In due season, under the blessing of the Lord, you will reap the benefits of what you have sown and stewarded, enriching both writer and reader.
This month, when farmers are already tilling the soil and planting crops for summer and fall harvests, are you planning how you’ll prepare and tend your Writer’s Garden?
(C) 2018 Kathryn Ross
The Write Spice: Writing Tips for Flavorful Words By Kathryn Ross
Writer-speaker, Kathryn Ross, ignites a love of literature and learning through Pageant Wagon Productions and Publishing. She writes and publishes homeschool enrichment and Christian living books for home, church, and school. Her passion is to equip women and families in developing a Family Literacy Lifestyle, producing readers and thinkers who can engage the world from a biblical worldview. She blogs and podcasts at TheWritersReverie.com and PageantWagonPublishing.com. Connect with Miss Kathy on Facebook.
The Gatekeeper’s Key by Kathryn Ross – Nominated for Christian Indie Awards 2018
Writer, speaker, teacher, and enrichment artist, Kathryn Ross, sweeps readers into the story-worlds of Jane Austen, C. S. Lewis, Hannah Hurnard, Marguerite de Angeli, John Bunyan, and others, exploring powerful truths to fulfilling God’s plan for your life in her latest publication, The Gatekeeper’s Key—nominated for the Christian Indie Awards 2018 in the devotional genre. Discern your place and season, with encouragement to see purpose in boundaries, find comfort in trials, and gain fortitude in going forth. Short story, personal testimony, excerpts from classic literature, visual imagery, challenge questions for discussion, and journal prompts for writing assignments draw you before the Gatekeeper. It’s quite a journey—but you’re never alone. Always in His Presence, with an Invitation, a Gatekeeper, and a Key. Perhaps more than one. Purchase on Amazon or direct from Pageant Wagon Publishing.
