Making Time to Write Monday: Using a Conference as a Deadline
Last weekend, I went away for a long weekend to the Mid-Atlantic SCBWI conference. I’d known about it for months, planned ahead in my job, my personal life, and even my writing. I set goals for myself of things I wanted to have accomplished in my writing before I got to the conference. All of these deadlines and goals were completely self-imposed because I know that I work better under a set time frame.
For example, in my writing life, I made these goals with the conference weekend as my deadline:
* have my website up and running
* have my blog set up and several weeks worth of posts up
* create business cards
* write another revision of my YA novel from scratch, completely changing the format
In the seven weeks between registration for the conference and attending the conference, I accomplished all but one of these goals for my writing. I was within 15 pages of finishing my revision when the conference started. I finished it two days after I returned from the conference.
The conference was a motivator for me. I wanted to be able to hand out business cards and connect with other writers. My business cards were going to have my website on them. I couldn’t hand them out if the website wasn’t ready.
I was meeting with an agent for a one-on-one critique and would have the opportunity to introduce myself to another agent who had shown interest in my work before. I wanted to feel confident enough in my revision that I could talk about it, if it came up. I know if I hadn’t had that deadline, I would be still wandering through the middle of that revision.
Was it worth it? I don’t have anything tangible to prove that it was. But I’m thrilled with the things I was able to complete in that amount of time. I’m a teacher, so accomplishing anything of value outside of school during the first seven weeks of school is a miracle for me by itself.
Stay tuned next week where I’ll post on my reflections from the conference and how a conference can motivate you to make time to write.
