I just finished penning a post over at Real Words about how difficult it can sometimes be to figure out how to work time for personal creative writing projects into your work day when you’re already a full time writer. This got me thinking about the bigger issue of time management for writers and freelancers.

People often think that I have a cushy job which allows me to work from home kind of puttering around and playing on my computer. While it is true that I have a cushy job that lets me work from home on my computer, the reality is that I do anything but putter around. In fact, I’m fairly certain that I put in far more hours of actual work time than do my counterparts in cubicles who have coffee breaks and time to surf the web for reasons that aren’t related to work.

As a freelance web writer, I am always online and every single minute that I spend online is related to my work. Even when I’m just on one of my social networking sites, I’m usually promoting some of my writing or connecting with other web writers or otherwise doing something that’s somewhat related to my writing work. Sometimes I really can’t even tell when my work day ends and the rest of my life begins. It just kind of blends.

For the most part, I like this blending. But there are days when I feel like I’m always at work. It helps to take full days off each week and to make one of those days a computer-free day. This allows me downtime to actually just be with myself and to think about where my time goes and where I want it to go in the week to come. I think freelance writers are always struggling a bit with their time and time management. What do you think?

Tags: creative projects, kathryn vercillo, real words, time management, web writing, writing