Quiz time: What's your writing personality?
Discover your writing preferences and how you can make the most of your time to write. Plus, time-based links & recommended reads from the BBC, Chris Guillebeau, Oliver Burkeman & Jenny Odell.
This week we’re diving head-first into one of our favourite (okay, slightly obsessive) topics: time. That elusive resource that every writer wants to master – but how do we harness it effectively?
If you've read our book or are a regular reader of this newsletter, you might know we’ve been researching this topic for a long time. We’ve found that writers find time in four ways:
📅 Time Boxing: Strategically carving out dedicated chunks of time across your day or week to write.
🚀 Binge Writing: Embracing deep work sessions where you disconnect from the world to immerse yourself in writing.
🌞 Daily: Finding solace and security in the consistency of a daily writing habit.
🎨 Spontaneous: Igniting your creativity in fleeting moments, seizing the opportunity to write whenever and wherever inspiration strikes.
Sometimes people stick to one method - although that’s pretty rare. Other times they use several at once, often the method they use changes as their writing projects develop and they switch genre or type of writing, or more generally as life and responsibilities change.
No one method is ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than another. They key is to not get wedded to using an approach that doesn’t work and experiment with different approaches to find what does. And that’s what we are here to help you with.
To find out your time-finding preferences and how to make the most of what time you have (or haven’t got) we’ve created this unscientific but hopefully useful quiz!
➡️ What’s Your Writing Personality? Take the Quiz!
It takes about three minutes to compete and you get your writing preferences at the end. We don’t ask for your email or name or anything like that - it’s just for fun. We’ll share the combined results with you next week. Hope you like it! ❤️
A few time-related links ⌛
Bec here with a few reading recs. We wrote about time last year in How writers find time to write after reading Jenny Odell’s book Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock.
The author
is writing a book about time anxiety. He defines it as:“the fear of running out of time: both existentially and in the sense of day-by-day life. If you’ve ever felt ‘There’s something I should be doing, but I’m not sure what it is or how to choose’ - that’s time anxiety.” Chris Guillebeau
Read more about it here and take his survey to share your experience of this.
Yesterday I attended my aunt’s funeral. She had a long and rich life and there was much to celebrate with those who loved her. It was a moment to reflect on the passing of time, which Oliver Burkeman in his book Four Thousand Weeks: Time management for mortals described as the ‘paradox of limitation’.
Burkeman proposes that confronting our finitude and working with the facts rather than against them will lead to a more productive, meaningful and joyful life. Finitude, aka our 4,000 weeks, is not reason for despair but a liberating concept. He says:
“I don’t think the feeling of anxiety ever completely goes away; we’re even limited in our own capacity to embrace our limitations. But I am aware of no other time management technique that’s half as effective as just facing the way things truly are.” - Oliver Burkeman
And a reminder that Oliver very kindly wrote the foreword to our book, so if you are interested on his take on writing time, check out Written.
If embracing mortality is a bit too much for a Wednesday, a reader sent us a copy of a recent BBC Science Focus called ‘Get More Time’ which is packed full of science-packed strategies. Thank you Martin 😀
Do You Need a Routine? Angela Duckworth and Mike Maughan explored this question on the No Stupid Questions podcast last week. It is jammed-packed with wonderful advice, insight and research - plus a shout out to master of rituals Mason Currey.
Finally, I spoke to debut author
on her Book Deal Diaries about all things writing process. Read or watch on Substack.Take care
Bec and Chris
I am spontaneous, but I think that is due to circumstance, not preference. Given a schedule that did not involve a 40 hour work week that does not include writing I think I would lean toward the "blocks" method, but I am glad that I can adopt to small bits of time. I think it of it like when you have a new baby and they finally go nap- do something you can only do when the baby naps. Have 30 min? Go write.
So I'm spontaneous!! Which is no great surprise... although I think I cross between all of them at different times. It's so interesting though and has really made me think about the way I approach the big writing tasks... Interestingly I find I am so busy that it kind of prohibits planning weeks in advance as I have so many unexpected interruptions and pop-ups to manage, so perhaps there is another category out there! I feel like I also 'binge' but not in a very forward planned way, more in the 'ok, there are no immediate crises to manage, I'm going to clear the decks and go for it!'. Great tool for some self reflection x