How To Find Time For Novel Writing

Novel writing takes time - and plenty of it. Okay, so it’s possible to write a novel in under a year, but more likely it will take you two or three years, or even longer. Put simply, the creative process just can’t be rushed.

I have always believed, though, that we can all somehow find the time to do things if want to do them badly enough. And for me - and hopefully for you, too - one of my main priorities is time for novel writing.
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So how do you find the time for writing a novel?

And what are the best ways to make use of this time?

First up, it is much better to write in short but regular stints than long and irregular ones. So if you have only three or four hours per week to work on your novel, try to do it every single day for 30 or 40 minutes - rather than saving the whole lot for Sunday. Here is why…

If you write fiction every day, even for a very short period, it keeps whatever you are working on fresh in your mind - meaning you won’t have to spend very long getting “in the zone” again.

Daily stints of novel writing will keep your “creative writing muscle” in peak condition. Use it only on Sundays and it will turn weak and flabby. (And yes, it really does exist!)

Small doses of hard work are a lot more manageable and far less daunting than weekly marathons.

If you don’t have to work full time, you will have the luxury of choosing your own novel writing hours. If you do have to go out to earn a living, you must choose between writing fiction early in the morning or late at night.

Personally, I prefer the mornings. The agony of getting out of bed is over by the time you’ve brewed the coffee, and my mind is so much sharper then than late at night. But whatever works for you, of course, is best.

Whatever hours you do set aside for working on your novel, be disciplined enough to stick to them. Your book won’t write itself. Allow nothing less than an emergency to interfere with your writing time. And if you can’t escape from the usual daily distractions, find somewhere quiter to write.

Most importantly, when you sit down to work on your novel, work on it! Checking your e-mails doesn’t count. Nor does reorganizing your stationery drawer, or dusting your keyboard, or the 1001 other things we do when we are supposedly hard at it.

Of course, you don’t always have to be turning sheets of blank paper into pages of prose. You might spend your novel writing time creating a character, or typing up yesterday’s handwritten draft, or doing some research. Just make sure you work on some aspect of your novel for the full time.

With practice, both laziness and hard work can become habits.

By: Harvey Chapman

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Harvey Chapman is a published writer and a full-time teacher of creative writing. He founded his Novel Writing Web Site in early 2008 (www.novel-writing-help.com). The Site offers free and expert advice on planning, writing and selling novels.

10 Tips On Offering A Free Ecourse
by: Radhika Venkata

1. Make your ecourse short like 5 - 7 days. The longer the ecourse easy for your subscriber to forget the matter of your previous emails.

2. Use double opt-in follow up autoresponders to stop accusitions of spam.

http://www.scripts4webmasters.com/arpproadv/index.shtml

3. Write one ecourse to promote

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Article Writers Can Easily Build eCourses
Over the past few years, online eCourses have rapidly increased in popularity When transforming your articles into an eCourse, you can distribute your articles if you want for free or you can sell them and make yourself a little bit of extra cash.

In today’s society, the internet is no longer just used for shopping or entertainment; it is also used for learning. Over the past few years, online eCourses have rapidly increased in popularity. What does this mean for you? This means that if are an article writer, you can easily build off of this popularity. You can do this by making eCourses with your articles.

Before examining how you can go about making eCourses with articles, it is best to quickly familiarize yourself with eCourses, namely what they are. Just as they sound, eCourses are courses that are offered online. These courses, which are often hosted over the internet, enable internet users to get an education or familiarize themselves with something new, often right from the comfort of their own homes. Although eCourses have similar goals, to educate internet users, those goals are accomplished in different ways. Many individuals, who are considered experts in their field, create eCourses and distribute them online for other internet users to benefit from. eCourses are also offered by many colleges and universities as a way to get an education from home.

Now that you know exactly what eCourses are, you can better understand how you make an eCourse. If you have never taken or viewed and eCourse before, you may not realize that they are just collections of information, similar to articles. In fact, that is why making your own eCourse may be a lot easier that you had originally anticipated. There are many ways to create an eCourse, but many article writers just take a collection of articles and combine them together. Of course, the articles should be combined in a way which makes them easy to read, helpful, and connected. For instance, if you are interested in making an eCourse that focuses on working from home, you will first want to explain what working from home is before outlining various work at home opportunities, and so forth.

Once you have successfully created an eCourse, your next step will be determined by your goals. For instance, is your goal to make money with your eCourse or is your goal to generate traffic for your website? If your goal is to generate traffic for your website, you may want to think about offering your eCourse materials free of charge. Many webmasters paste their eCourse materials on their website, for easy viewing, but others use it as email content. If you use your eCourse material as email content, you are essentially creating and distributing a newsletter. Newsletters are another one of the many highly rated and recommend internet marketing tactics that webmasters use.

If you are not a webmaster, just a professional article writer, you may be interested in using your eCourse to generate sales. If so, there are a couple of different approaches that you can take. For the fastest results, you may want to consider selling your eCourse to an individual or company who can effectively promote it. This will, in turn, generate income for both parties involved. If do have the time to market and promote your own eCourse, you may want to examine selling it on your own. As it was previously mentioned, a large number of webmasters offer similar eCourses free of charge. Despite this free competition, you may still be able to make a substantial profit from selling your eCourse material, even if you make it available for a low price.

Whichever way you decide to use your material, you are advised to make an eCourse with your articles. After all, what else would you do with them? Making an eCourse is a great way to put your old, unused articles to good use.

By Terry Detty
Published: 6/14/2007