One of the biggest problems I face with making progress on my fiction writing career (I say confidently, because I hope it one day becomes a career too) is organising all the writing I need to do each week – the stuff that pays the bills – as well as squeezing in time to work on novels or short stories. A few months ago I started printing out a weekly “Writing Tasks” table that gets pinned on the board above my desk, showing all the blog posts and articles I need to write, their due dates, and a list of fiction writing tasks I hope to achieve as well.

It gets me on the right track, mostly. I’m a list lover, and crossing off posts and articles as I do them during the week is a great motivator (and between posts, a great reason to stand up so I can reach the pin-up board). I also felt my table must be on the right track when I saw a video at the Freelance Writing Jobs site showing how Deb Ng organises her weekly writing schedule, and we’re doing something very similar.

And all that works great for the paid blogging jobs I have. But it tends to fall down at the fiction writing tasks. Clearly, a big reason is that nobody’s paying me for that (yet?!), so the motivation is lower – I’m trying to get the bills paid first. But it’s not just the money either – I don’t want to have to explain to any of my editors why I’m missing a deadline. This is clearly wrong, but … it’s human nature.

I’ve come up with various solutions so far, and the best seems to be that I should do my fiction writing before I do anything else. Before I even open a web browser, especially, because then there’ll be all those feeds to read and emails to reply to. Open up a Word document, write for at least half an hour, then start the working part of my day.

Any other ideas? I need all the help I can get.