Writing Ahead of Time - Having Things Done Before the Deadline

You probably noticed I started to post more regularly to the blog. Yes, I amaze myself. But I came to a conclusion that if I blog more often, I will naturally develop a writing schedule, just to fit in the time to write blog posts into my day. And everybody knows that a writing schedule is one of the sure tools to prevent writer's block.

But let's not kid ourselves, simply setting up days in my calendar and saying "oh, I'll blog on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, it'll be fun", doesn't mean I will have time or the strength to sit down, write a post, find links that go with it, and edit it to make sure there aren't any embarrassing typos. Knowing life, and my luck, I would never have any actual time to write on those particular days.

And so, for the last week or so, I've been writing my blog posts ahead of time, saving them up in my Google docs (oh how I love thee, I will definitely write a love letter to Googledocs later on) and moving on to another task. And then, on my posting date I just log into my Blogger account, do some copy/paste magic and bam, the post is up.

It actually improves on the entire writing experience, to be honest. Because it gets rid of a lot of stress.

Sure, like any other freelancer, I do incredibly well under the stress, and with my deadlines mere hours away. I mean, when I was finishing my big bang, I wrote over 5 000 words on that last day. And I doubt there's much editing needed in that section of the story.

But at the same time, I remember when I was blogging for Scribophile last year. And at some point, due to some life issues, I had to write several posts on the deadline. The stress of it all took the fun away. And if you don't enjoy writing... it shows.

So for the month of June, I'm setting myself a goal, to do all my writing well before deadlines. Which also means meeting my personal word count goal well before Friday. We'll see how that goes.