There's Power in Scheduling Your Writing

Welcome to Writing Week on Author Audience.

Welcome to the Author Audience show. The podcast that helps you reach more people with your message, create a book, connect with your audience, change lives. Here's your host, Shelly Hitz.

Welcome to day two of Writing Week. This is a special, special week on my podcast where I'm talking all about a seven day nonfiction writing challenge which I have titled Writing Week. You can join for free@writingweek.com and today is going to be about scheduling. You know, it's true if it's on the calendar, it happens. However, when we say we'd like to get some, some writing done sometime this week, it usually does not happen. So I know I'm not alone here. I know there's many of you that struggle with the same thing where your writing gets pushed off to the last priority just because of life. You know, life gets busy and things happen. But I want you to think about your writing as an actual appointment, as something that you are putting on your calendar like, like you would a doctor's appointment, like you would a coffee appointment with a friend and that you keep that appointment. It's important that you have a schedule and that you keep it because whether it's 15 minutes, which that's the least amount of time, I recommend that you write in during writing week, at least give 15 minutes a day. But whether it's 15 minutes or two hours, it's important to continue getting your message to more people. Whether that's blogging, whether that's sending emails to your autoresponder or a broadcast to your email list or it's writing a book. It's important to make progress and yet it's so easy to push off to, you know, push it off on our schedule to the last thing that happens. Now in Writing Week, I actually have a members area I've set up for you. It's free. You know, you can sign up for the first seven days for free. There is a full 30 day challenge that you get if you're an author audience academy academy member or you can upgrade for a one time fee. But in the free seven day challenge on day two today, you I have created a 30 day writing calendar for you. Now this is pretty cool if I can say so myself. It has each of the different days on it and it's generic so you can just, you know, write in. You know, you actually want to print this off, but you can just write in the date at the top of the box. And then in each day there's a section for your goal for that day and a word count. Now, if you don't write every day, then you can just skip that day. But then there's a little check and you can just check it off when you've met your goal or when you've met your word count. And something I decided to add to this calendar are affirmations, writing affirmations for every day. So, for example, one of the days says, I enjoy finishing what I start. Another day says, my story matters. And so each day, not only do you have a place to record your progress, but there's also encouragement right there for you. A writing affirmation. And then at the left hand side for each week, you can total up your word count and you can write the total there. And then at the very bottom right hand corner is a place for your total words for the month. And so this is just a very fun way to keep track of your writing, especially when you're focused and working on a project and wanting to move Forward. And this PDF is available for you in the members area of WritingWeek.com that's w r I t I n g w e-e k.com Now, I decided to launch Writing Week for the first time in correspondence with national novel writing month, NaNoWritemo. It's a place where fiction authors come together and they say that, you know, they're going to write 50,000 words in the month. Wow. Now, I'm not saying you have to write any certain number of words during this challenge. My main goal is to get you in the habit of writing daily, even, even as little as 15 minutes every day to develop a riding habit. The more you do something, the better you get at it, the more you run. I'm a runner and I've done different races. The more that I would exercise those running muscles, the better I would get, the faster, the more efficient. And honestly, right now, I haven't been running a whole lot, been doing more walking and hiking, and so I'm a little bit out of shape. Well, you may be a little bit out of shape with your writing, but you can develop this habit at any time. You can jump into Writing Week. I have not made this just a specific time of the year for this challenge like nanowritemo. It's just for November, the month of November, because if you tried to do that every month of the year, you would burn out big time. But this writing challenge, Writing Week, you can sign up at any time, any day of the week, any month of the year. Now that we've officially launched. So if you're Listening to this podcast two years later, you can still join us@writingweek.com I hope that many, many people join this free challenge, get help, get unstuck and find what works best for you. That's the beauty of this challenge. It's finding where is your sweet spot, what is the environment, and what is the time of day that works best for you. You'll only know that when you track it. And in day one, like I mentioned yesterday, you get to download three different types of tracking sheets. So you can use either the PDF, the Excel or the Word document. Whatever works best for you in the members area you download that first day so that you'll be tracking your writing throughout the week. This isn't something you have to do long term, but it does give you insight in the short term. So I'm excited to see people taking action and getting results in the Writing Week challenge. And Matt Johnson is one of those people. He's a very, very busy person. He's a professor and yet through Writing Week he has found time to write and he's developing a habit. Actually, he told me he's going to continue with the full 30 day challenge. I'll let you hear more directly from him.

This is Matt Johnson from Worcester State University. It was great to participate in the seven day Nonfiction Writing Challenge. If you're looking for a way to jump start your writing, Shelly Hitz's combination of techniques, tools and encouragement will do the trick. Try it. You'll like it. This is Matt Johnson from Worcester State University signing off.

I love hearing of my members and those that are taking action on my challenges, getting results. I've said it before and I'll probably say it a million times before I die. I, I just get so much.

I just have so much passion to help authors and to help writers and it's just, it's so rewarding to me to see that and so I would love nothing more than to help you. So you know, join for free. There's no obligation. You can just sign up, get started, download the tools, get the encouragement in the members area, start commenting, let us know what you're accomplishing every day and I'll see you on on the inside. You can join us@writingweek.com and I'll see you soon.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Author Audience Show. Connect with us online@authoraudience.com where you'll find all the resources mentioned in today's episode. While you're there, grab Shelley's free video training on how to write and publish your book using her Six Step Ascent method. Join us again next week to learn how to reach your audience with your message.