Time Management: the glamorous side of writing

I can’t risk a month-long essay crisis in November

In my element: The Duchess of Richmond’s Ball in Thackeray’s Vanity Fair

As everybody knows, a writing life is one full of glamour. If I’m not hobnobbing with the Booker judges, then I’m at a chic literary soirée in north London a la Mrs Dalloway, a sophisticated book launch in a country mansion, or down the Emirates watching the Gunners with Nick Hornby.

And, *SNAP*, we’re back in the room.

The truth is that, as with many jobs, you spend more time as a writer trying to get on top of paperwork, working out how to fix the printer, and hanging around the coffee-maker talking to yourself about Bank Holiday bin day alterations.

One of the things that takes up a dull wedge of my time is just working out how to fit everything together and what order to do it all in. With most book projects, I tend to break it all down into chunks. So if I have a year before I have to come up with the goods, I work out how much time I’ll need to do the bulk of the research, then how much time do actually put finger to keyboard, breaking this up into monthly/weekly chunks and rough wordcounts. Then I leave a bit of time at the end to go over it all, make it make sense, and generally tidy it all up. I’m assuming lots of other writers work in roughly the same way since it’s hardly an earth-shattering approach but since I’ve never asked one, I’ve no idea. Perhaps it would be a good idea to do so.

Time management is especially important if you have overlapping projects. Again, I have no idea how other writers do this, but what I don’t do is work entirely on one book from start to finish, then start up the whole process again from square one. As an example of how this works in practice, here is what I’ve been working on this week. During the mornings I work at my regular job, as online editor at Fine Books & Collections magazine, so all the rest is happening in the afternoons, evenings, and, if I get into a bit of a panic, weekends:

Nil desperandum: The importance of being Lance Corporal Jones

Project 1

Today I’m going through the proofs of a book I finished earlier this year. They should have come a few weeks ago but, nobody’s fault, they’ve been a bit delayed. I’d been hoping to get them out of the way when I was a little quieter but, hey, ho, that’s life. Happily, the editor seems pretty pleased and it has only needed a very light edit and me pretty much agreeing with everything and wincing at some the mistakes that would have got through without a second pair of eyes.

Project 2

About a month ago, I was brainstorming ideas with a friend and a publisher. We came up together with something that we think could work well as a co-author title and I’ve just put the finishing touches to a pitch that we hope will do the trick. Not a huge job and one that will be hugely enjoyable if it comes off, but it will need to be written extremely quickly so I’m hoping to get a green light as soon as possible (even a swift red one would be welcome in a strange kind of way as it would ease logistics).

Project 3

A long burn project this one which I kind of started last year, am writing bit by bit throughout 2023, will submit to the publishers in 2024, and won’t appear until 2025. The problem with this for me is that because of the lack of urgency, I’m a bit worried that I’ve under-calculated how much time the writing will take as I’m still very much on the research part of the equation. A good one to keep me awake at night calculating how much there is still to do.

Project 4

A sequel-ish thing to a previous book that has been really quite successful. I’m right at the beginning of this so still getting to grips with it, including liasing with an illustrator. But I have to get on with it as not only is it due by roughly the end of the year, I need to let the illustrator have sections once they’re complete, so I can’t risk a month-long essay crisis in November. Again.

Project 5

The next one which is hurrying towards me, a book about the British weather which I have to get to the publishers by the end of July. It’s well in hand, but still plenty of work to do and to be honest I’ve not worked that hard on it this week as I’ve also had my regular columns to write for the Idler magazine (one on bothies, one on a hugely successful procrastinator).

I’ll do an update on all these in a couple of months so you can laugh at how hugely over-ambitious I’ve been in calculating my writing speed. In the meantime, feel free to buy my latest book, The Book Lover’s Joke Book, available direct from the publishers (the British Library), your local independent bookseller, or the usual online and high street titans.