Setting priorities with your writing

Life can be frustrating at times.

• I am trying to maintain a regular, daily posting on my three blogs. In this I am largely succeeding but it does take quite an effort.
• I am also trying to check out lots of other blogs for ideas and help with the whole concept of blogging.
• I get heaps of e-mails every day and that takes time to deal with.
• I recently conducted a major review for a medium sized organisation and have just completed writing a lengthy report as a result of this review. The whole process was enough to make my head spin and my brain hurt with the sheer scale of data to analyse. It was self inflicted pain because I tried to cover too much ground when I formulated the questions.
• I need to be getting several short stories sent off to publishers.
• Ditto several dozen poems.
• Ditto two novels for children.
• Ditto several picture book texts for children.

Then there is the long list of writing ideas I have for stories, novels and other writing projects, not to mention a history book of our church for its centenary celebrations in about five years, something I haven’t even started thinking about.

Then yesterday my daughter asked me to write several articles for a family history book due to be published later in the year. Now this last writing project is relatively easy – she has given me a deadline, and there isn’t much time left to write them. So they will have a higher priority than other writing projects.

See – it’s all about setting priorities and having deadlines.

Some tasks naturally have higher priorities than others, so they get done sooner – or should. Deadlines have a habit of focusing the attention. Match procrastination with a deadline and the focus gets sharper still. Throw in a few suggestions of panic – and it’s amazing how focused one becomes and what one can achieve.