There is nothing more valuable to a writer than time to write.

Yet daily distractions, family commitments, financial responsibilities intrude in a never-ending stream. Always, it seems, someone is asking for our time. And, usually, we give it away, forgetting its value.

Writers simply must set aside for themselves blocks of time reserved for writing. No one is more important than yourself, as a writer. Put yourself first when making scheduled appointments. Create your sacred time for creativity. Hang out the DO NOT DISTURB sign for all to see.

Easy advice – but difficult to implement. The phone rings, there’s a knock at the door, the TV beckons, the stomach demands a snack.

Fortunately, there are some tools to help you.

Most useful is EssentialPIM, a free program that should be on every writer’s computer – well, at least those with PC’s. Aside from word processing programs, there is perhaps no other tool that can be tailored so perfectly to fit a writer’s needs. Let’s take a look.

The first step is to conceptualize your day in blocks of time. Specific To Do Lists can come later. EssentialPIM will help you to think this way about your time.

Think through each day of a typical week. Is there a block of time that can be set aside for writing? Block out — on Mondays, for example – a four-hour span as your writing time. We’re talking not about just THIS Monday, but ALL Mondays! As you add the block to your schedule, categorize the time as “important,” which colors the block an insistent red. Then set the block to repeat itself on Monday of every week for the entire year. Do the same for every other day in the week when you can set aside writing time.

Maybe you don’t have four hours every Monday. Don’t be discouraged. Even two hours each Saturday and Sunday will get you underway. But do try to make weekly commitments to yourself, even if you know there will be times that you must break the appointments with yourself.

A final important step: set the program, using the Tools/Options screen, to open at start up and uncheck the box “EPIM Today.”

With these steps complete, what do you get? Whenever you turn on your computer, the first thing you see on screen is your schedule for the day, hopefully with your sacred block of writing time staring you in the face. And you will see it day after day after day. You will be amazed at the effect on your brain: before long you will indeed view that block as sacred, to be treated with respect. It’s a powerful motivational message.

With your writing blocks in place, you can then add daily activities and commitments as they arise. If you must intrude on your writing time, force yourself to manually delete or alter the block for that single day. Over time, you will find this a painful step, a clear signal that you are not respecting yourself and your commitment to writing.

As you turn to thinking about daily activities, you can add to your schedule more specific writing commitments. Today, I’ll work on Chapter Three, tomorrow I’ll dash off that travel article, next Wednesday I’ll outline my presentation to the neighborhood book club. As you add specific activities, both writing and non-writing, begin each entry with an action verb, capitalized: WRITE this chapter, ATTEND this meeting, CALL this agent, BUY computer ink.

EssentialPIM offers another very powerful feature – a NOTES section. You can enter your notes into a hierarchical tree, which can be expanded or collapsed by simply clicking the + or – sign. For writers, this offers a powerful tool for listing all of your writing projects, along with salient notes about each. To maintain your focus, do not add non-writing notes here, as they will only distract you.

Now it’s time to view the dreaded To Do list. EssentialPIM offers a sensible to-do tool, allowing start and due dates, percentage of task completed and a notepad for additional details. The program likes to list these items in alphabetical order. It is far better to work around this limitation by starting your writing to-do’s with a priority number. This technique will force your top priorities to the top of the list. You might also enter a higher number without any to do item subject, which effectively adds a blank space, visually separating your top priorities from less important to do items.

The Contacts section of EssentialPIM is another important element of the program. Since you are using the program principally to assist your writing career, you may wish to add here only the contacts relating to writing, placing your personal contacts into another program. The Contact section can hold a lot of information, including personal notes and digital photos of individual contacts [a useful feature: just grab photos via your cell phone camera and place them here]. One cannot categorize contacts into groups, such as personal, business, agents, and the like in the free version of EssentialPIM. However, a PRO version adds this feature, which may alone justify the cost.

EssentialPIM can present your schedule by day, week, month or year. Reviewing the weekly view on Monday mornings can be a useful step for planning the week ahead. The monthly view allows one to easily clear the schedule of WRITING TIME commitments during, say, a vacation period, if you are certain you will not be writing during that period. The EPIM View pulls together a three-day schedule, along with the To Do list, a useful overview summary.

Remember: EssentialPIM is free. There is no excuse not to use it. Installing it is certainly the most important step you can quickly take in becoming a serious writer.

Also, a companion version can be run off of a USB memory stick, a valuable feature for writers who travel a lot. If you really like the program, you may wish to upgrade to the PRO version for $29.95. In addition to Contact categories, the PRO version adds synchronization with Microsoft Outlook, PocketPC or smartphone, advanced backup, categorization of tasks and events, hierarchical To Do lists, stronger outline features, linking attachments, and data encryption [an important feature for writers traveling with laptops].

You can DOWNLOAD the software at its homepage:

www.essentialpim.com

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