Writing schedules are a pain. While it is true that this an occupation that often times allows one to work from home, and keep the hours they choose, it also has some of the strictest deadlines. Some writers who have managed to land in-house jobs at publishers, studios, or magazines do maintain a nine-to-five work day, but they also have to spend most of their evenings either corresponding with other writers, working on their own projects, or, in most cases, both.
Those who strictly write also have to take time to communicate with editors at these establishments since that provides them with updated deadlines, and suggestions to keep their work on track and in theme, but they also have to manage their own daily completion schedule on whatever it is they hope to have published. This is done by maintaining a word count, and it is the bane of my existence. A writer usually has an idea of how many words they want their work to be. Usually it's a rough estimate rounding up or down to the nearest ten thousand, or hundred thousand words. Then divide this by the number of days between now, and a week before you want to get it to your editor, (trust me you still won't have it done in time) and you have an idea of how many words you need to write each day. As a daily goal it's great, it serves as a simple, achievable goal to do whenever throughout the day. In most cases, however, your personally set deadline is a matter of weeks, and if you are doing anything bigger than a small novella, your word counts will give you carpal tunnel just by looking at them.
God forbid you go grocery shopping, meet up with a family member, or do some dumb adult thing during the normal hours of the day. This will, most likely, cause you to stay up until two, one eye tracking the words you write, the other looking at your counter in the bottom of your screen. Sooner or later, we all go a little cross-eyed. For our editors who have to deal with similar problems, and maintain a nine-to-five schedule, my heart goes to out to you. Of course, most of us don't complain, without a little tongue-in-cheek. We have one of the best jobs in the world, we get to create worlds, and give people fun. This is something I, and many of my peers, are very passionate about.
We usually lose track of time when writing, and I find myself, more often than not, going over my word count at three in the morning. This still does not mean the work gets done on time. Usually our visions are more grandiose than time permits. If you recall, or simply rotate your eyes to look at paragraph two, I said that it's good practice to set your personal deadline at least a week before your actual deadline. That week will be you frantically trying to tie up lose strings in the story, condensing and revising chapters, and giving your story a conclusion that doesn't feel as abrupt as it actually is. Of course the time for this varies. If it's a short fiction, or novella one to two weeks should suffice. If you have written a full novella, you may want to give yourself a month for damage control, as you probably forgot a character you introduced in chapter two by the time you wrote chapter five.
This job is a lot of not sleeping. Whether you're writing comics, films, games, or books you will dedicate yourself to perfecting each work, while your publishers believe you can crap each one out in one night. It's an amazing ride though, so grab some coffee, find a place with a view, and start smashing your keyboard for weeks at a time.
