Aspiring Advice: Priority

Priority: meriting attention to one goal before competing with other alternatives. This is one of several definitions, but I'll stick with this one.

No matter what you are doing, there is one thing that is always in your way--Time. It may seem for a writer that there is never enough time to do everything that you want to get done. Life has many things to be taken care of, and I'm learning quickly that it doesn't get any easier with age. If any of you writers are a young person, a teenager, etc, you may not have as much responsibility as you will later. Hence, more time on your hands! While I do not and will never regret getting married or having a child, I won't deny that it has taken its toll on when I can write, and for how long. Housework, finances, and relocating lost spiders who had somehow accidentally entered our home (silly spiders) is just the tip of the glazier--berg--thingy. There are other interests on your plate too, I'm sure. Reading, blogging, flaming people on message boards, bodybuilding, or anything else you can imagine. Mine happens to be movies and Counter Strike. I know. I'm not into World of Warcraft. Heresy is me.

Now, do your interests get in the way of your time to write, as well as your other responsibilities? If the answer is yes (which I recently discovered in myself) then you need to "sort out your priorities," as a popular Harry Potter character would say. During the LTUE Symposium, a good acquaintance of mine, James Dashner, author of The Maze Runner (how's that for publicity, bud?), mentioned his technique for how he gets things done. Write a thousand words before you do any blogging. Ah, I thought, so I gave it a try and applied it to other personal areas that needed attention. Behold and low, my productivity has increased tremendously. I also earned that sense of accomplishment which made my other interests more exciting (and a more thoughtful blog post resulted as well).

Set yourself small goals that can be accomplished and stick to them. Remember to take care of what is real first before you let your mind wander into fictionland. Time can be on your side if you know how to manage it. If you want to become a writer, you've got to treat it like a job. It's your work. I'm sure your boss wouldn't appreciate it if you're playing Mafia on Facebook as often as you can. There is nothing wrong with a little diversion, mind you, as long as it doesn't consume you and your time (which is why I like movies so much, I guess. A good two hour flick and I'm good for the week. Terminator Salvation was my recent pick. Interesting, different from the others. The last half hour was worth watching. C+).

I hope this was helpful to someone out there, or at least I got your gears greased. Now let your fingers fly over that keyboard in front of you and show me what you're made of, fellow Aspirees!

My name is David and I ate my son's goldfish--crackers.