I’d like to say I have these great writing organizational skills, and every day I wake up, grab my cup of coffee and sit down at my neatly cleaned desk to pound out the pages, completely uninterrupted.

Ha! It never works that way. The phone rings, I have to deal with emails, to-do lists, promotional tasks, things that pop up that have to be dealt with immediately, and sometimes those kinds of things can take up the entire day.

So how do I manage to write for multiple publishers, have nonstop deadlines and put out several books a year?

I hate to steal from Nike here, but I just do it. I know what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, and I manage to get it done. Why? Because I want this.

This is the life I dreamed of. This is the career I always wanted. Now that I have it, I bust my butt to make sure I make my deadlines. And before I was published, I devoted as much time as I possibly could to write a book, edit it and then write another.

So if you want this, you have to work at it. And if that means 6 pages a day, 1500 words a day for 70 days to get a book done, then it’s worth it. It’s not that much if you break it down into small increments instead of looking at the big picture. Write a paragraph here and there throughout your day. Fit it in where you can. Sometimes I’ll do a page, other times I’ll pound out anywhere from 2 pages to an entire chapter in one sitting. It all depends on what else is going on, how many interruptions I have, and what kind of day I’m having. But if I set a goal, you can bet I’m going to achieve it.

I’ve set a goal to get this book done. I’m going to get it done. I love a challenge. It gets my blood fired up, and knowing other people are out there doing the same thing really spurs me on to write.

Don’t come up with all the reasons you can’t do it. Come up with just one reason you can. Don’t you really want this bad? I do. I always have.

So write. And don’t compare your progress to mine, or to anyone else’s. If you don’t do 6 pages a day, don’t worry. Maybe tomorrow you’ll do 10. Maybe you won’t. But if you make progress on your book each and every day, isn’t that what counts?

I’m not a fast writer, nor am I a multi-tasker, and I find it takes me a while to get into the swing of things each day. The more things I have on my mind, the harder it is for me to focus on my writing. When I first quit my day job to write full time, I’d find my time was easily consumed by the minutiae of running my business and day-to-day life. Sometimes, I wouldn’t get a chance to sit down and focus on my book until late afternoon, and by then, I’d have too many other concerns on my mind.

And then my dear friend Kelly made a suggestion, and it changed my life. Fifteen minutes, she said. Set your alarm fifteen minutes early. Get up, maybe go to the bathroom and put the kettle on, but don’t do anything else. Don’t check your email, don’t pick up the newspaper, don’t read a blog. For fifteen minutes, stare at the blinking cursor on the end of your document. Maybe you write, maybe you don’t, and even if you do, you might not get much done in fifteen minutes.

But what you do is set your mind in story mode, when it’s blank and unconcerned with anything else. Then, later, as you visit the drycleaners or fight rush hour traffic or work at your cubicle — your head is still in the place of your book. Maybe you jot down notes on the subway or write a page or two at lunch. Even if all you write is a few hundred words, even if it’s total garbage that you delete later when you have a chance to concentrate, you’ve programmed your head to think about your book.

I don’t know why this works, but it does. I find that on days I do this fifteen minutes, it sometimes turns into two hours. And even if it is fifteen minutes, I find those two hours later in the day are twice as productive as on days where I don’t get fifteen minutes in. Kelly theorizes it might be because, when I sit down with my book at 2 pm or 5 pm or 10 pm, I’m not looking at a blank for the day. I’m looking at a few hundred words. It’s a jump start. I thin it’s more. I think if I do my book first, when my mind is still forming itself for the day, it gets the idea that, on a basic level, Book=First.

Try it today, or this weekend. Let me know how it goes.

Sorry I’m so late with this. The winner of the Box ‘O Goodies from August 19th is….

Maude Clare!

Maude, send me your snail mail address via joleigh AT joleigh DOT com, and I’ll send out your box of fun!