Tracking my writing (and flushing my life away on the internet)

Last week I mentioned tracking my writing life. As such, here are my writing times for the second week of 2010:

• Time spent on new short story writing: 3 hours
• Time spent revising and editing short stories: 3 hours
• Time spent on my novel: 3 hours
• Time spent on communications with editors/fellow writers/others: 2 hours
• Time spent on Facebook/Twitter/Blog: 4 hours
• Time spent reading the news and doing other stupid stuff online: 10 hours

Okay, I'm really ticked at wasting so much time on the internet this week. Writing content for my blog and talking with friends on Facebook doesn't bother me. But 10 hours reading news and goofing off online? Crap. Did I really gain anything from those 10 hours I couldn't have learned in 30 minutes? No. Especially when this time took away from sleep, exercise, and reading. This falls back on not wasting your life and is something I'll work hard to fix this week.

In some good news, I received Interzone 226 with my new story in it, finished a rewrite of my novel summary, made good headway on a new SF story, donated blood and money to the Red Cross, and spent time with my family. So I wasn't a total salted garden slug.

Comments

[T.W. Anderson]

I think I'd panic if I tracked how many wasted hours per week I have =P

I know the one main addiction for my wife and I is TV shows...24, Lost, Dollhouse, Battlestar, Dexter, True Blood, Burn Notice, Grey's Anatomy, Legend of the Seeker, Sanctuary, Castle, Heroes...I can't even keep track of how many shows we watch, both past shows and current shows (not to mention the list of upcoming shows, like Caprica).

We generally watch shows from 9 until midnight just about every single night, and I could definitely be using that time for writing fiction...but at the same time, life without some form of blatantly wasteful entertainment isn't really worth living, is it? :)

Facebook I'm pretty good with. I have that little D&D application called Tiny Adventures and I only spend about 30 minutes a day running checking on my little halfling rogue and sending him off on adventures. I browse the news in the morning after my workout while I'm drinking coffee.

I'm generally pretty strict with my freelance schedule. I work on contracts from 10 until 2-3 p.m., and I stay pretty focused. I usually do any fiction writing from around 4-6 p.m., then from 6-8/9 I slush for the zine. 2-4 in the afternoon is generally reserved for daily walk about town with the wife.

My major time burner is definitely the shows we watch. But really...by 9 p.m. I've put in a full day, even if I only spent 4 hours "working", and the rest of the time was spent on fiction/editing/passion projects. I kind of need those 3 hours or so every night to just unwind with some mindless pleasure.

My most productive fiction writing is actually Saturday and Sunday mornings, while my wife is still sleeping. I get up at 7-8 every day, and she'll sleep in until 11 or 12 on the weekend, so I can get in 3-4 hours of writing, then get breakfast cooked in time for her to peek out of the room before we go about enjoying our weekends. Plus there's something about writing on days when I know I have absolutely nothing else going on that just sparks some extra creative juices up in my head!