TIPS TO BALANCE STUDIES & WRITING

Well, many of us are students, right? But we’re writers, too - doesn’t matter if we have a book published or not. If you’re here, you have an idea, and you love writing, then you’re a writer <3 and… a student.

I am, too! And I know it is difficult sometimes because you REALLY want to write that novel, but you want to graduate! Yeah, same.

So here are a few tips that might help you with that!

Disclaimer: this is about my personal experience, and just because it works for me doesn’t mean it will work for you. :)

Tips:

• Schedule all of your assignments!!!

“Omg, so obvious…” yes (and no). I often forget to write them down in a calendar. I have all the due dates written in a sheet, but not scheduled, which makes it hard to manage my time.

Scheduling will help you to have an easy overview of everything you have to do for school/college.

• Revise everyday

I’m sorry! But I find this SO important because this way you’re always up-to-date with your studies. It won’t be so hard when you have an exam or quiz approaching, AND it won’t take as much time as it would if you’re 100% lost.

• Prompts, prompts, prompts

Is it overwhelming to keep working on your novel after a long day? Okay, don’t worry, I got you. Search for a nice prompt and write about it. It doesn’t have to be a long story (sometimes less than 1k can work just fine!)

Why do this? So that you keep writing every day.

• Track your time

I knowww this is super boring for some of you, but please, this is life-changing!

I’ve been tracking my activities for more than a year now, and it really helps me to know how long I take to do a certain thing, and how much time I’ve spent on it (in a month, week, etc.)

I recommend an APP called TOGGL TRACK, and recently I’ve discovered ACTIE, which is almost the same, but it is more for you to work on your goals.

• Set goals

Don’t write down “finish a 60K word novel”!!! Such a hugeee mistake. I did that and guess what?! I started losing motivation because the goal was TOO BIG and was taking ages to achieve.

Instead, set goals & routines like these (for example):

- Write 500 words everyday of [novel name];

- Work for 40 minutes on [novel name];

- Finish writing [number] chapters of [novel name];

- Reach 5K words;

- Write [character]’s biography / backstory;

- etc.

I hope you found this helpful! If you have more tips, feel free to add them here.

Also, if you’re interested, check out my blog on WordPress, where I publish my poems and soon will bring more content, such as some tips, resources (pdf sheets, for example), and some other nice things!