Writer but a student too? How much trouble is that?

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Are you a writer who wakes up with great and magnificent ideas of writing the next bestselling science-fiction or the next Romeo & Juliet. But before you put those thoughts onto paper, Siri says, "Ding-ding-ding-ding, homework due Tuesday". And you know that the day itself is Tuesday. Well you are not the only one out there. Many writers who also are students face this. You might feel like, "Uhhh! I am putting an end to this! Mom I won't go to school anymore!" but then realize, "No, life does not work like that. At least not in this house."

This blog post is dedicated to all the young writers like me out there!

The fact is that whatever you are trying to do, school will always get in the way. Be it your badminton tournament or your Battlefield team match. It's all the same. But that does not mean that you should give up. Because I have realized that if you want to get serious about your passion, there is no better time than school life.

True that there are numerous assignments and exams on the way, but once they are done, you are free unlike adults. They have endless work. Sure from the outside it may seem that they just work for a limited amount of time and then they are free. But in reality,, their work never ends. But then again you did not come here to praise your parents, right?

I say this as an A grade student (don't jinx it I am still in school) and a writer. We cannot do such tasks in our normal routines. With having ourselves preoccupied in school, cram school and friends, we can never find time to get in front of the computer with MS Word open. But this is where weekends help us. Recently I attended one of Chandler Bolt's magnificent webinars. In that he said that if we apply our minds in the right direction, a book can be completed in as little as a weekend. Of course this does not apply to everyone because it depends on you spend your weekend, your book length etc. But on an average, for a short 15 chapter book a weekend's time is enough to complete if you use mind-maps.

Basically, a mind map is a diagram which is a complete outline of your book. With the main plot or even title of your book in the center of a plain page (in like 2-3 words), you write everything that comes to your mind regarding the book and note it down. You can do this for like 10 to 30 minutes (for trial, Sir Chandler told us to do this for 2 minutes.). Now you will group the like topics and each group will be one section of your book. Preferably go for 3 groups so that it can be linked with the 3-acts convention too. Each topic inside the group will be one chapter. You will briefly elaborate on these topics to form an outline of each chapter and on the weekend, you will further elaborate this outline. And voila! Your masterpiece will be in front of you.

But now there's another thing which you might consider - daily habits. If you ask me, I have tried mind mapping. But my first commercial book which is under development right now was not made using mind mapping. I made it regularly. But how did it happen? I had to study to keep up my grades and then online classes and then anime and my guild grinding. I had to keep time for everything. My daily routine contained:

Excluding the time I slept, I still got around 6 hours in buffer. This is because the lockdown was going. Without the lockdown, the buffer will go down but the main structure won't shake. As for my writing habits, I wrote a specific number of chapters regularly. You can write whenever you feel inspired but I like to develop a routine because I love to manage time (I think I should start a time management crash course). But choosing when to write and when not to is your preference because you cannot rush your thoughts. If you do, the product comes out like a failure. BTW this is something mind-map prevents so if you use it, it'll be easier for you to develop a writing habit because you won't have to think much.

Well this ends my matter on writing as a student. My final message is that you should never give up to excuses like "I don't have time". Because (and sorry to sound like your mom) successful people and unsuccessful people, all have only 24 hours time in their hand.

Thank you for reading till the end. I'll meet you in the next post. Stay Safe!

PS. I wrote in first person today for the first time because this was not related to my upcoming book Hope's Tribulation.