E46 – Time Management
Show Notes
In this episode, Miss Catherine M.H. and V.E. Griffith discuss time management strategies for writing and editing.
The Revision Wizards are at https://www.revisionwizards.com
V.E. Griffith’s website: https://www.vegriffith.com
Miss Catherine M.H.’s website: https://www.scribes-pen.com
Transcript at: https://revisionwizards.com/?p=2448
Transcript
[Miss Catherine M.H.] (0:00 – 0:14)
Welcome to the Revision Wizards podcast. I’m Ms. Catherine M. H., and I’m joined by my expat witch doctor co-host V.E. Griffith. We’ll be talking about something I lack in everything else but writing.
[V.E. Griffith] (0:14 – 0:21)
This is episode 46, and today’s episode is about time management, especially when editing versus drafting.
[Miss Catherine M.H.] (0:22 – 0:22)
Yep.
[V.E. Griffith] (0:23 – 0:28)
So what’s time management about? It seems obvious, but how does it relate to writing?
[Miss Catherine M.H.] (0:29 – 1:26)
Great question that I have no answers to. No, I’m just kidding. So time management is, as it sounds, how you manage time, but it’s a little different when it comes to writing because there’s different types of time when it comes to writing.
You have the deadline, which is either self-imposed or imposed by your editor, your agent, those things. You’ll have that time frame where it’s, I have a deadline to meet and I have to manage this amount of time to get there. You also have writing sprints, which are a different type of time management, and those have different constraints depending on how you go about doing them.
And then there’s also the draft versus editing, which you and I have different ideas on, which is super exciting. So which one do you want to get into first?
[V.E. Griffith] (1:27 – 1:34)
Let’s do sprints. What kind of time management techniques have you seen in sprints?
[Miss Catherine M.H.] (1:34 – 2:56)
There’s the Pomodoro system. And with that, you’re getting a set block of time that you are going to be writing for with a break between it. The most popular version is the 25 minutes and five minute break.
That’s the one I least like. I don’t know why, I just absolutely despise that large of a chunk for word sprints. And that could come from old jobs where I’ve only had three minutes or five minutes in between doing something to write.
So that could just be a me thing. I prefer a 10 minutes writing, five minute break. Then with these writing sprints, it gives you a time to completely close your mind to everything else but writing.
So for some people, they will take that hour chunk, and they’ll break it into smaller pieces, which is how they’re managing that hour in order to get the most effective word count. That can sometimes make editing a heck of a lot longer though, depending on if you’re someone like me who will just bang out, and I don’t care what the spelling or grammar is, and maybe I forgot a period or two, versus someone like you who that would drive you insane if you had to not pay attention.
[V.E. Griffith] (2:57 – 4:24)
Yeah, see, when I do a Pomodoro, I typically shoot for something in the neighborhood of 45 to 50 minutes as a single session. That’s what works best for me. The 25 is just too short.
It takes me longer to sort of get my head into the work, but then once I’m in the work, I want to stay in the zone. There is an organization called the London Writer’s Salon that puts on four times a day, a one hour Zoom sprint session that anybody can join. I think it’s $6 a month or something.
It’s very inexpensive, and there’s a free option if you need it. But four times a day spread around different time zones, and you simply go, you write with other people who are on Zoom with you, camera is optional, and it’s 50 minutes of dedicated writing time, and it works very, very well for me because it takes me five to 10 minutes just to sort of get the words flowing, and I’m a slow drafter anyway, so it winds up being enough time to get something done that feels reasonable.
If I was only working at 25 minutes and I got 100 words done, that doesn’t feel very good to me because 100 words really is not a lot. If I’m working for 50 minutes, I might get 300 or 400, which still sucks, but is a lot better in the way it feels to me. It’s more satisfying.
[Miss Catherine M.H.] (4:25 – 5:19)
I couldn’t understand that. I will do writing sprints with myself to get me going, and then sometimes I will zone. So I have that ADHD zone that will appear, and then I’m locked in, and I’m good for writing until something or someone interrupts me.
But if I was to start off with someone being like, and we’re going for 45 minutes, I’m like, ooh, no. I need some breaks in between that, maybe like four of them. And so I’m a very much, I guess, micro sprinter when it comes to the Pomodoro.
If I do five and 10 minutes, those are perfect for me. And then I love to take my word count and see how much I can write per time and just keep trying to beat that word count.
[V.E. Griffith] (5:19 – 5:21)
What’s your top right now for about 10 minutes?
[Miss Catherine M.H.] (5:22 – 5:27)
An average 10 minutes, I can get one to like 250.
[V.E. Griffith] (5:28 – 5:30)
Holy cow, that’s fast.
[Miss Catherine M.H.] (5:31 – 6:12)
But then again, like I said, my editing for that is really rough then, because it is word vomit onto the page. There is no, like sometimes I’m forgetting who’s talking, because it’s just happening in my head, so I’m not putting down who it is, and it makes my editing a lot longer to do. So the writing part for me, very fast, but we’ll get into that in a little bit here.
So word counting, which is funny, because if I start going into like the 25 minutes, I’m reaching like three, maybe 400 words, and then I blank, and then that’s it. I’ve got that much longer of a time, I take that much longer to write for some reason.
[V.E. Griffith] (6:13 – 6:15)
What about editing? How does that work for you?
[Miss Catherine M.H.] (6:15 – 7:38)
Editing is the longest thing on the planet for me, which is really funny when you said that editing was super like fast for you. Editing for me can take years. Yes, literally.
It’s rough. My editing process goes in chunks, which we’ve talked about, so each time I’m editing, I can’t word sprint for an edit. I’ve tried, like where I have those focused times, and it’s really annoying to have that time chunk where someone’s like, all right, and now break, and I’m like, ooh, but I’m not like, it’s a different brain set for me.
So for me, managing the time of editing, deadlines, most of the time will work for me. If I have to get it out to someone, which is I think what I’ve done through almost every one of my edits, is I’ve had someone waiting for a chunk at the end. So I’ve done chunks and have sent it off.
So I’ve had someone waiting and that deadline of you’ve got to give it to them because they’re waiting on it. So that for me, I’ve used the deadline to help me with my editing time management. How do you time manage for editing?
Because that is not something I’m very good at. Time managing for writing? Fine.
Editing? Nope.
[V.E. Griffith] (7:39 – 8:51)
My drafts tend to be pretty clean because I’m a line editor in terms of periods and punctuation marks and things like that. So what I’m looking for is either larger structural stuff. I’m looking for word tweaks that I can make, words that I can cut, words that I can add, descriptions that I need to put in.
I have found for me, again, about 50 minutes is my limit in a single session. So if I sit down with the London writer salon, works great. I get, I can get a scene done usually in that amount of time.
The problem is of course, that if I have 70 or 80 scenes, well, it’s going to take me a while. But, you know, I’m in a position right now where I can devote that kind of time. I can see, I can envision that I’ve lived in a world where I couldn’t because, you know, day job and stuff like that.
So it makes it hard sometimes to fit it in. But it’s just like writing, writing first drafts. If it’s important enough, we’ll find the time to do it.
We’ll find the method to do it, to make sure that it happens.
[Miss Catherine M.H.] (8:51 – 9:50)
Yeah. For me with the time management with writing, I find that if I have less time to write, I will write. If I have set chunks of time to the side, I’m filling that with researching and trying to find the right playlist.
So the smaller chunks work really well for my time management when it comes to writing. And for editing, I need those huge chunks. Because if I’m sitting there and I’m going through, I’m giving myself a, you’re not allowed to stop until you’ve reached this page.
So I would hate it if someone came to me and like interrupted in the middle of trying to edit because then it’s gone. Like I’m like, great, now I have to figure out where I was in the story, which is a very strange feeling to me. Because if I come to the page to write, all I need to do is like, look at the last three words and I know exactly where to pick up from.
[V.E. Griffith] (9:51 – 9:53)
But if you’re editing, it’s harder to pick up.
[Miss Catherine M.H.] (9:53 – 10:16)
Yeah. No, it’s like, I have to go look back, see where I was at, where are we doing? What kind of edit am I doing right now?
And after about 30 good minutes of that, then I can sit and edit for an amount of time. But I would rather have that one to two hour chunk of time to do edits than try to break that up.
[V.E. Griffith] (10:16 – 10:20)
How far can you get? How many words can you get through in that kind of time period, do you think?
[Miss Catherine M.H.] (10:21 – 11:03)
So if I’m doing just my edits, it depends on where I’m at in the book. If it’s the beginning of the book, I’m extremely slow with editing it. I tend to hate writing the beginning of the book.
And it seems to be one of the hardest spots for me to write. I enjoy writing the middle and I enjoy editing the middle. That is my, I love writing the middle of my book.
And I think because of that, I really enjoy editing the middle of my book. If I’m working on someone else’s project, I usually give myself, depending on how long their chapters are, a chunk where I’m like, you’re starting on this chapter, you’re going to end at this chapter.
[V.E. Griffith] (11:04 – 12:42)
When I’m editing somebody else’s work, I’m trying to both edit and make their manuscript better, but I’m also trying to comprehend for the first read. And that makes it much more difficult for me. So sometimes what I’ll do is I will read a manuscript once through very quickly just to get the general gist of what’s going on.
I won’t read line by line. I’ll just read the same way that I would a throwaway novel for pleasure and get through it so that as I’m going through line by line on the next pass, I have a good sense of where each scene is, what’s going on in each scene, rather than have to both edit and comprehend the story at the same time. It winds up costing me more time, but it does help me produce a better edit.
But when I’m doing my own work, typically I can do 700 to 800 words an hour on an editing pass. So I’m going, I’m going probably two to three times as fast as I am when I’m first drafting. First drafting is very, very painful for me, and I hate it.
For me, it’s the worst part of writing. I love having written, but I hate writing. So, you know, the old saying goes, it actually goes the other way, but I’m always backwards.
That’s where I’m at with my editing most of the time. I’m going quicker, and I’ve found that a lot of writers have the experience that their editing goes quicker, simply because you already know the story.
[Miss Catherine M.H.] (12:43 – 12:44)
Well, I guess I’m the one who’s backwards.
[V.E. Griffith] (12:45 – 12:46)
We still love you.
[Miss Catherine M.H.] (12:46 – 13:19)
I also wonder if it’s different for pantsers versus plotters, because that would be something I’m very interested in seeing, is if more people who pants have a longer editing process than people who plot. Because that would be, I don’t know, I think it would be beneficial to have a plot in that sense, because you’re writing to it. You’re not trying to figure out if you need the first 14 chapters of your book versus someone who is like, no, I sit down and I write whatever comes to me as I write it.
[V.E. Griffith] (13:19 – 13:22)
Well, that about does it for me, unless you have anything that you think we missed.
[Miss Catherine M.H.] (13:23 – 13:36)
No, I think that’s it. Time management is different for people. Find a track that works well for you for writing, and then just be aware that sometimes what works for writing is not going to work for editing.
[V.E. Griffith] (13:36 – 14:21)
Yeah. And try different approaches, because even though you may find one approach that works, if you try something else later, you may find that it works better. I’ve done that.
I found that 15 to 20 minute pomodoros worked well, but then I tried a 50 minute and it worked even better. And if it doesn’t work better, then you can go back. And so nothing is immutable.
There are no hard and fast decisions, and there are no hard and fast rules. It really is just about what works for you. One resource that you have is your writing community.
Whatever writers are in it, usually are going to be happy to talk to you about their type management and their methods for getting the words on the page, so you can take ideas from them.
[Miss Catherine M.H.] (14:22 – 14:23)
That sounds like a good one.
[V.E. Griffith] (14:23 – 14:27)
Okay. Then I guess we’ll call it a day and see y’all in two weeks.
[Miss Catherine M.H.] (14:27 – 14:43)
Stay magical. Bye. Thank you so much for joining us for today’s episode.
You can find every episode on your favorite podcast player and on YouTube. For transcripts, please visit our website at revisionwizards.com. They go live the same day as our episodes.
[V.E. Griffith] (14:43 – 14:51)
If you’d like to reach out to us separately, you can find me at vegriffith.com and Miss Catherine at scribes-pen.com.
[Miss Catherine M.H.] (14:52 – 14:52)
Stay magical.
[V.E. Griffith] (14:54 – 14:58)
This is episode 46, and today… See, I fucked it up.
[Miss Catherine M.H.] (14:59 – 15:02)
Oh, come on. I had it. I had it so well.
[V.E. Griffith] (15:02 – 15:05)
You didn’t have it. And I’ll just chop. It’s fine.
[Miss Catherine M.H.] (15:06 – 15:08)
It’s okay. I can do it again.
[V.E. Griffith] (15:08 – 15:09)
You don’t need to.