*This product has been discontinued at this time.
When you're a writer, you're busy and you have a lot of things to do. You write, revise, read, research, outline, market yourself, submit, get rejected. You have 17,000 stories to write and 20,000 books to read and very little space on your to-do list to do it. For my particular life, this means I have a short story collection in the works with stories to write, revise, and submit, a publication schedule to get my stories out there, a whole novel to figure out, and, the muse is telling me, I may be interested in nonfiction essays too.
At the same time, you're human. You have a life, responsibilities, work. For my particular life, this means I have a day job I have to go to from 9 to 5:30 Monday through Friday. This also means that I am trying to start a business helping writers just like you. I have been hustling hard to create the exact things you need to succeed with your writing goals and your writing life.
You have to give your life the attention it deserves, but you also have to prioritize your writing if you want to eventually have a book on the shelves. It's a delicate balancing act between the two, and it can be really freaking hard to do.
Because life doesn't stop for your writing, and your writing doesn't stop for your life.
A few weeks ago on my birthday, I made time to be both writer and human. I spent the day at the pool reading "Sweetbitter" by Stephanie Danler, writing in the last few pages of my Moleskine notebook, and dealing with a rejection that stung more than I want to admit. I also went out to dinner with my significant other, had yummy cocktails on a rooftop bar, and dreamt of the possibilities for this next year.
Every year on my birthday I like to reevaluate where I've been, where I'm going, and set plans to make the most of the next year. It's my secondary New Year's Resolutions, kind of a midyear checkpoint, because my birthday just happens to fall in June. This year, I'm wishing for writerly happiness and a whole lot of life-living. I plan to publish my short stories, finish and submit my novel to agents, and create amazing resources for writers just like you.
I'm setting goals to accomplish all these big dreams and tackling them one step at a time. I'm being intentional with my approach, making the time and space for my life and the time and space for my writing. I'm doing this by taking consistent baby-steps so I can actually accomplish my writing goals, experimenting with my writing process to perfect my best writing routine, showing writing the love and attention it deserves to thrive, and balancing my writing with my life, so I can be both the human and the writer I hope to be.
And I created an awesome tool to help you do it too.
Say hello to The WriteLife Planner!
The WriteLife Planner is your three-month guide to infusing writer, and human, and you all together into one lovely writing life, and accomplishing one big writing goal while you do it. Through guided planning, daily writing tasks, weekend challenges, and consistent check-ins, you'll conquer your next writing goal, strengthen your writing practice, and live a writing life you love in the next three months.
(Plus, it's really pretty).
Writing isn't just about learning how to plot a bestseller or creating a complex character. It's also about learning to get the words on the page happily. It's about living a writing life you love full of confidence and courage. It's about balancing writing with the rest of your life, making the time and space for both.
The WriteLife Planner aims to help you with that balance so you can be the writer and human you hope to be. We're taking our big dreams and narrowing them down into a three month focus to get them done in a way that works with our life and allows us to love writing in the process.
I'm starting my WriteLife journey officially this week. Summer has just begun, and this gives us a solid three-month stretch of sunny days and humid nights to make some serious progress with writing in the next 90 days.
If you want to join me, you can get your copy of The WriteLife Planner at its special, introductory price of $29.99.
I've got a lot more amazing resources all about writing productivity coming to you so you can be strategic about how you want to move forward with your writing life now, and for the rest of the year. Because I believe taking the time to structure your writing goals, love your writing, and balance your writer-self with your life-self is a crucial step in transforming your writing dreams into your reality.
I hope you'll join me on this adventure of building our best writing lives full of creativity, consistency, and courage with The WriteLife Planner. But no matter what, I hope that you design yourself a wonderful writing life full of productivity, happiness, and balance.
