I think if you’re going to even attempt writing fiction, one of the most important skills you will need to acquire is time management. Woe to you that can’t – or won’t – organize.

In my early days of writing, back when I was in college, I used to be able to spend hours a day putting prose to paper (or Word documents, rather). My goal for each sitting, every week day, was five thousand words. If you’re keeping score at home, that’s twenty-five thousand words a week, in theory.

It was too much. Before I knew it, I’d turned writing into a chore and hampered my own ability to enjoy it as much as I had, stifling in turn my creativity. Over the past few years, I’ve trimmed down what exactly I’ll require myself to do writing-wise each week. This is for pragmatic reasons: I have more things competing for my time than I ever have, and until I go full-time as a writer I won’t be able to spend huge tracts of time writing. That, and it was never fair for me not to count the house-keeping items as part of my writing efforts.

Word count used to be my only barometer. Everything else was superficial, and I didn’t allow myself to consider it part of my “quota”. Big mistake. Over time, especially as I started submitting short fiction, editing stories both for myself and at the request of editors, etc., I realized writing fiction was about more than just putting down a manuscript to paper. I had transitioned into the realm of managing my fiction and my writing career.

These days I count so many things as time spent working on this multi-layered, organic thing called a writing career. Of course the act of creating prose is still the most enjoyable, but writing blog posts, working on this website, contacting agents, working with editors and editing my own work, and generally trying to get the word out in as many ways as possible – all these things factor into what I consider the writing workload.

You have be dynamic and flexible about the many demands this pursuit will make of you. Otherwise, I think you’ll bury yourself in frustration. There is no question that turning out fiction has actually gotten easier on me since I learned to balance it with what else I had going on. This isn’t to say I won’t work my butt off if I can ever go fulltime with this gig. Rather, in the interim being reasonable about I can invest in time keeps me from investing in a length of rope and a footstool.

Stay tuned.