How My Own Advice Saved Me

 In my life, I’m quite the minimalist and live my life differently to most people. And what I love about my life, is that I’m not needy of money or company or social interaction.

I’m quite content to stay at home and write, and avoid socialising. Just recently some acquaintances were insisting that my husband and I go out for a meal with them and we REALLY didn’t want to. He’s  like me when it comes to socialising. Thankfully we managed to dissuade them without hurting their feelings.

I’m also quite the stockpiler when it comes to food. I buy things when they’re on special at the supermarket if it’s something we normally eat, or something we use like washing powder. I also keep a financial fund of 2-years income stashed away and never touched unless there’s an emergency like I’m too injured or ill to work, or there’s some other emergency that goes on for a while.

I used to think that I’d never need to touch that money because I couldn’t imagine a time when I’d need it, but it still gives me peace of mind to know it’s there.

But in 2020, when this whole “pandemic” situation happened and is still happening, my stockpile meant that I didn’t have to worry about “lockdowns” because we already had enough supplies to last (including toilet paper) so we didn’t even need to shop for weeks.

And I’m still hearing stories about people losing their jobs and wondering how to survive without their income. And I knew that if they’d had a stockpile and a financial fund in place, and a mission to go home to (like my writing mission),they’d be able to weather whatever happened.

I wrote all about these things in my book, Mission Critical For Life : How to Start Living Life on Your Own Terms.

If only more people had read it.

https://ruthiswriting.com/books/MCFL.html

A 10-Hour Writing Day

I previously told you about how I’d been re-reading one of my favourite books on productivity called, How to Have a 48 Hour Day, and in this book it says to work 10 hours a day, which I began to do.

I get up at 6am every day, even weekends, so from 6am to 4pm I make sure I’m productive - not busy.

At first I thought it would be difficult, but it isn’t at all. Some days I have to juggle things around, so if I decide to go to the beach for a couple of hours (I live at the coast) I make up the time later on, or I take some reading material that I want to catch up on, or take a notebook and do some writing or brainstorming.

Before I began the 10-hour day experiment, I was a quitter. As soon as something seemed too hard or too tedious, I’d quit. But now, I take a short 5 minute break and then carry on, no matter how much I feel like I don’t want to keep doing what I’m doing.

And the surprising thing is, once I sit down and get back to writing, it’s not that hard at all to keep going. It also works for other chores around the house, even cleaning the car isn’t hard once I add it to my daily to-do list, and then do it no matter what.

This is great for getting more writing done and for everything else I do.  It’s like having a deadline. I can’t stop working so it forces me to get as much done as I can. When I’m writing I force myself to stay in my chair, and soon I’m back in the ‘zone’ and getting plenty done. And it’s such a great feeling.

I also limit my online time to 30 minutes during my 10 hours, and use my writing computer for most of the time and only switch computers later to upload things.

10-hour days are actually easy to do and surprisingly fun.

https://amzn.to/2YbtGyw

4 Books Written in 3 Months

 It’s no secret that all writers look for ways to write more and earn more. And this time of year is when we’re all planning how much we can challenge ourselves in the New Year.

And as I’ve been telling everyone, I’ve been spending plenty of time reading about other writers’ plans for 2022. It’s always interesting to see what others are doing as well as collecting inspiration and ideas for myself.

And while I was re-reading my favourite time management book last week (How to Have a 48 Hour Day), which is so insightful as well as being entertaining as hell, the author, Don Aslett, talked about how he once wrote 4 books in 3 months.

What struck me about his achievement, was that at the time , he was vacationing at his holiday home and during the 3 months he was there, he also cut back over 100 feet of what he calls ‘the jungle’ (it’s a large property), laid several concrete steps, erected 100 feet of fencing, as well as catching up with other jobs like cleaning tools, weeding, and planting trees.

AND he still had time to write 4 books.

Inspiring?

Yes.

Makes me jealous?

Absolutely.

But it does spur me on to REALLY challenge myself next year to see not only how I can write more, but how to get more done in other areas of my life too.

Perhaps I can start having my own 48 hour days.

I’ll let you know when I finish my planning and hopefully it will inspire you to write more and earn more too.

https://amzn.to/2YbtGyw

Go Big Or Go Home. Write One Million Words a Year

I’ve been reading a lot of articles and blog posts lately about goals that writers have and how much writing they plan to do in the next year. And it’s all fascinating reading, not to mention inspiring and motivating.

But there was one blog post in particular that really caught my attention. It was written by prolific fiction author, Dean Wesley Smith. He talked about his goal to write 2.2 million words in 2022.

 https://www.deanwesleysmith.com/my-2022-challenge/.  

My flabber was ghasted when I read that. This is such a huge challenge he’s set for himself.

In a previous post, he’d talked in-depth about pulp writing speed which is how pulp writers used to earn their living years ago what was then called pulp fiction, because they were only paid by word count so they had to write at super speeds to be able to write for a living.

https://www.deanwesleysmith.com/pulp-speed-brought-forward-again/

In this blog post, he goes through six different pulp writing speeds, and the slowest one (Pulp Speed One) is 1 million words a year, and while that may sound like a lot, it breaks down like this:

Writing 3,000 words a day, is 84,000 words a month (26 days), which adds up to just over 1 million words a year. And if you can write 1,000 words an hour (which isn’t hard), 3,000 words a day is easy.

This all got me thinking about how much more I can write in a year if I really tried. 

To be realistic, I’ll have to divide my time and include everything I do, not just writing, but also sleeping, travelling, eating, cleaning, personal hygiene, family, TV, and everything else besides.

Plus I need to look at what writing I plan to do in the next 12 months, including books, ebooks, free reports, blog posts, articles, and freelance assignments.

Will I make it to one million words a year?

Who knows.

But I’m going to having great fun trying.

https://amzn.to/2YbtGyw