Nora offers help on time management

When I was in college, my mother gave me a little book on time management for writers called "The Clockwork Muse" by Eviatar Zerubavel. I never read it because I was too busy staying up all night finishing papers, but I recently gave it some long overdue attention.

Zerubavel addresses both the difficulties I faced in college and my current struggle to balance writing and a demanding job. He emphasizes that writers must avoid burnout and make time for their families, professional responsibilities and sleep.

To achieve this balance and complete your projects, Zerubavel argues that you must plan and schedule rigorously and write when your schedule calls for it no matter how uninspired you feel. Of the “inherent tension between routine and spontaneity,” he writes, “Deromanticizing the writing process is … of utmost importance to any writer in the making, and it basically challenges the way we traditionally associate creativity with structurelessness and spontaneity.”

Zerubavel explains how to schedule writing sessions, break work into manageable chunks, revise drafts, create realistic project schedules and keep momentum. While much of his advice applies to shorter pieces, Zerubavel developed this guide for authors of books and other longer works. He recommends finishing the first draft of the entire book before revising individual chapters so you don’t run out of energy mid-book.

Finally, Zerubavel addresses one of my greatest difficulties: My writing never feels “done” because I can always further revise it. “Setting firm deadlines for completion is the single most effective way of ‘closing’ essentially open-ended tasks that lack inherent limits,” he writes. We should set deadlines “even when we are not forced by others (professors, publishers) to do so.”

I expect Zerubavel’s advice will help me relax and enjoy writing more, which we know from Zinsser is essential to writing well.