Since I work out of my house, I like to break my day into three parts:

morning

afternoon

evening

I consign writing jobs to each portion of the day, stopping for lunch and dinner. Often, those three portions will be 1) freelance writing, 2) WIP, and 3) research.

Every once in a while, I like to look at what I accomplish on a daily basis with my writing. I don’t count words like some writing efriends. I count what I get done. My writing To Do list includes:

• a weekly article for an edtech ezine, TeachHUB
• a monthly article for my collaborative writing group, Today’s Author
• a monthly article for #IWSG–the Insecure Writer’s Support Group
• ongoing work toward the sequel to To Hunt a Sub, named Twenty-four Days, due out next summer
• ongoing work on the first book in a different series I’m working on about the life of earliest man. This book is called Lucy: Story of Man, due out the summer of 2018. Right now, my critique group is helping me with that, one submittal at a time
• 3-5 posts on my three blogs, WordDreams, Ask a Tech Teacher, and USNA or Bust
• reviews on books I get from NetGalley and Amazon Vine
• prepare for an upcoming online class, The Tech-infused Teacher, which starts Monday

That’s the goal. Here’s what I actually accomplished this week:

• edited and researched Lucy: Story of Man. That has grabbed my passion at the moment, as well as most of my daily morning and afternoon writing time. I’ve learned that when I can’t let go of a book, don’t. Everything else will wait.

• wrote 3-5 posts on each of my three blogs, WordDreams, Ask a Tech Teacher, and USNA or Bust

• spent time marketing my debut novel as well as my non-fiction edtech resources.

• thought about the upcoming AtoZ Challenge. Yeah, I know that’s not until April, but if I’m going to do it, I’ll need all 30 posts ready by then. So, this week, I trundled through what a good topic would be. Let’s call this ‘research’ for future writing.

• visited efriends on social media to support them, check in, and learn something new. I use this as breaks in my writing activities. It rejuvenates me to see what the rest of the world is doing.

• attended a webinar in my area of interest, in an effort to keep up to date. This week: Hack the Classroom by Microsoft.

• prepared for my online class

It doesn’t seem like that much when I list it out. Where DOES all my time go? What do you do with your day?

If you’re curious what other writers do all day, here’s Kate Harrison’s wonderful video on the Life of a Writer and Amy’s Day in the Life of a Writer.

More on writers:

What’s My Writing Space Look Like?

14 Things Writers Do Before 8am

How to Talk to a Writer

8 Things Writers Can Do No One Else Can

Jacqui Murray is the author of the popular Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy and To Hunt a Sub, her debut fiction. She is the author/editor of over a hundred books on integrating tech into education, adjunct professor of technology in education, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer,  a columnist for TeachHUB, Editorial Review Board member forJournal for Computing Teachers, monthly contributor to Today’s Author and a freelance journalist on tech ed topics. You can find her nonfiction books at her publisher’s website, Structured Learning.