During the first semester of my MFA thesis, I was asked to write every day, working towards the final thesis book. I didn’t set up an accountability buddy, so I wrote every once in a while. At the end of the semester, it took me two full weeks of writing and editing to put my book together, and it was exhausting. For my final semester, our teacher was more specific and asked us to write 500 words per day, in addition to a formal writing assignment every week. I knew it would be difficult to accomplish this without a plan, so I created one! Here’s what I did to help me write more than 100 pages for my final thesis book. 

One of the first steps to creating my plan was listening to Sean Wes’ podcast about writing. He lays out a lot of great reasons for writing; it helps you remember, it helps you capture ideas, it helps you to be more articulate, and it helps you to see how far you’ve come. He talks about his personal writing plan which is Early Wake, Daily Write. I’ve modeled my plan off of this idea, but my “early” is not quite as early as his 5am wake up. 

The Plan
I start my day with the Sleep Cycle alarm app. It wakes you up during your lightest sleep by tracking your movements in bed. Sean suggested a similar app, and it has really helped me with waking up early, one of the hardest parts of this plan. I started waking up at 8am this first week, and I plan to work backwards until I’m awake at 7am. 

I make my breakfast and coffee and set up in my office area, which is a desk in my studio apartment’s entry way. The desktop is clear of everything except my breakfast and my iPad. I use Evernote as my writing program because it works best for writing on an iPad. It also syncs across all my other devices, so I can access my writing and to do lists from my iPhone and desktop computer at school. I start a new note every morning, and I leave the title blank until I’ve finished writing. 

Sometimes I have something specific I’m writing about, like the audience for my thesis. Other times I just allow myself to write stream of conscious to pull out ideas and to develop blog posts. The most important lesson I’ve learned is don’t try to edit yourself as you write; just write, then edit later. It’s easier to edit something once you’ve written it, and this makes it easier to begin writing. I write for 40-60 minutes usually, and end up with anywhere from 500 to 1,000 words. I notice that as I followed my plan, I’m writing more words in the same amount of time each day.

I try not to check my email or social media until after I’ve reached my writing goal for the morning. It’s the reward for completing my goal, and that way I’m not drained from seeing all the emails I need to answer. I’ve also been reading quite a bit about productivity and many articles state that your most important work should be done first before your limited cognitive energy is drained from information overload.

Conclusion
This plan helped me stay on track, writing ten chapters and 131 pages for my thesis book. There’s a lot of writing that didn’t make it into the final book and editing that helped make a cohesive story and documented my process in a meaningful way. Each individual has their own way of focusing and writing, but I hope that reading my process has helped give you new ideas on how to make your own!