If you’re like most people juggling work and writing, you spend a good part of your day at the job that pays the bills wishing you were home writing.

When it comes time to take vacation, you probably use the time to write–not actually take a vacation.

It doesn’t have to be that way if you write at least an hour a day…and dedicate the occasional weekend to [mostly] writing.

Here are 12 tips to help ensure your writing weekends are productive:

1. Prepare During the Week

A writing weekend doesn’t begin the moment you clock out on Friday–it begins during the week in small segments.

Decide what your writing goals are for the weekend. Being ambitious is good, but be realistic. If you think you can only get a chapter or a short story done and you’re happy with that, go for it!

Make sure any notes and supplies you need are ready so when the time comes for you to sit down and get busy, everything you need is ready for your busy weekend.

2. Tell Others

If you don’t live alone, be sure to inform roommates, spouses, children, or relatives that you’re going to be in your own little world for the weekend.

That’s not an excuse to totally ignore them, but if it’s not a common thing, you should be able to request a weekend to focus and have that request be respected.

If you let people know your plans in advance (and be sure to take extra time out before the weekend to spend with them), when you’re ready to write, those around you will be more likely to respect your space.

3. Make a Schedule

I’m not talking about writing, “Work on Chapter 2 from 7:18 a.m. – 10:42 a.m.,” but block out time and set goals.

If it’s as loose as, “Morning: New Writing; Afternoon: Editing. Evening; Plotting,” that works!

With a schedule in place, you’re much more likely to actually stick to doing what you tell yourself you’re going to accomplish than if you just charged in with no plan at all.

4. Organize Your Writing Area

Most of us who juggle work, writing, and life share a desk either with others, or with other tasks.

Maybe family uses your area, too–or your desk is also where you pay bills.

Be sure to organize your writing area so all you have to focus on is writing. If it means taking care of bills early or filing some things away, do that during the week so that when the weekend arrives you’re ready to write!

5. Friday Night Off

Consider taking Friday night off from writing.

Yes, you are dedicating a weekend to writing, but…it is a reward for a week or working hard.

Watch a movie with your family. Meet a friend for dinner and drinks. Knock around town and have fun.

Getting it out of your system on Friday will make dedicating time to writing on Saturday and Sunday easier to take, instead of wandering into work on Monday morning feeling like you didn’t get a weekend at all.

(Oh! Getting to bed at a decent time on Friday night–preferably your normal time for bed–doesn’t hurt, either.)

6. Plan Meals

Whether it’s planning places to go out so you don’t have to cook, coming up with a menu full of quick meals, or deciding what you can throw in a Crock Pot that will last you all weekend, planning your meals and shopping before you begin is just as important as planning what you’re going to write and making a schedule.

You don’t want to spend the weekend making several trips to the grocery store because you’re out of food or an ingredient for dinner.

If quick jaunts out for a bite to eat aren’t possible, make sure your meals are planned and that you have everything you need when the writing begins and you can’t afford to be distracted thinking about other things.

7. Do Chores Early

The last thing you want to do is rush around on Sunday evening doing laundry or cleaning house.

Do laundry while watching a movie on Friday night. Don’t let dishes pile up over the weekend; take a moment to clean up after yourself as you make a mess. Spend 10-15 minutes in the mornings before sitting down to write cleaning up.

Taking care of things, here and there, as you work through the weekend will help ensure that you don’t feel defeated when the weekend is over and you end up starting Monday off buried beneath dishes and laundry.

8. Ask For Help

If you live with other people, ask for help. See if they’ll run an errand or two you normally run on the weekend.

Ask them if they can help with cleaning or dinners. If you run out of supplies, don’t be afraid to ask them if they can pick up some paper while they’re out and about, enjoying their weekend.

Obviously, repay the favor and then some by helping them during the week leading up to (and following) your writing weekend. As long as you don’t take advantage of others, you might be surprised how much they’re willing to pitch in so you can have a productive weekend.

9. Don’t Give In

People like doing things on weekends–and they like including people they know in the things they do.

Once your mind is set on writing all weekend, don’t give in if somebody says, “Hey, we’re all going out and you should come along!”

Stick to your writing plans.

Don’t give in.

10. Disconnect

An easy way to not be tempted by others getting out and doing things over the weekend is disconnecting.

Turn off the phone and don’t check e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter every hour.

Don’t plop down in front of the TV and watch just one episode of that Monk marathon…because you’ll probably keep watching (Besides, there will be another one in a week or two–trust me!)

Disconnect from distractions and focus on writing.

11. Allow Yourself a Few Breaks

You deserve to relax a little; it is the weekend, after all!

Take a nap…Run an errand…Go for a walk…Curl up and read on the couch for an hour.

Your goal is to be productive–not burn yourself out. Be sure to spend at least a little time enjoying each day.

If it feels like you never left work, you’re more likely to give in and not write much at all. If it doesn’t feel like work, you’re more likely to do it again.

12. Say Thanks

Be sure to thank the people around you who gave you time, help, or time and help during your writing weekend.

Take your spouse out on a surprise weekday date; take your kids someplace cool the following weekend and only sit down to write when the people who gave you time are doing their own thing next weekend.

If you show the people around you that you appreciate how much they respect your time on the occasions you ask for time to focus, they will be more likely to give you time when you ask.

Writing is great; it’s definitely something worthy of building a weekend around. But so is spending time with friends and family. Always be sure to show the people in your life how much you appreciate them.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to take my wife a cup of coffee and chat for awhile…

Outside Magazine has published some of my all-time favorite non-fiction.

Years later, this piece about a guy building a hovercraft in his basement and this piece about a bunch of friends on a four-day road trip to climb the highest peaks in the Midwest (yep, you read that right), still hold up for me.

In the March 2002 issue, they published a “25 Trips of a Lifetime” feature. In the introduction to the piece, Tim Cahill talked about being on a radio show to discuss some outside adventures.

The show’s host, true to many annoying radio talk show hosts, went on about how vacation is a beach and fruity rum drinks — not dog sledding in Greenland or hiking in Tasmania! The host’s message was clear: anybody doing anything more than loafing and drinking on vacation was clearly not in their right mind.

After saying that he sometimes likes a nice relaxing beach vacation, Cahill went on to defend all the people who push themselves to greater things when they have the time. He said:

“So I did my best to defend all of us who aren’t in our right minds. These — I said of the destinations and adventures mentioned — are dreams. Everybody has them, though they often come in clusters when we’re younger. A lot of us first aspired to far-ranging travel and exotic adventures early in our teens; these ambitions are, in fact, adolescent in nature, which I find an inspiring idea. Adolescence is the time in our lives when we’re most open to new ideas, the most idealistic. Thus, when we allow ourselves to imagine as we once did, we are not at all in our right minds. We are somewhere in a world of dream, and we know, with a sudden jarring clarity, that if we don’t go right now, we’re never going to do it. And we’ll be haunted by our unrealized dreams and know that we have sinned against ourselves gravely.”

I know many people who wanted to take trips to far off lands when they were younger — some have; most haven’t.

I know many people who wanted to write or pursue other creative endeavors when they were younger — some have; most haven’t.

Many of those who haven’t taken those trips of a lifetime or pursued their other passions are like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life: they’ve put their lives on hold to do “the right thing.” The day when they’d catch up to a dream or two never arrived because they were always too busy working.

There’s nothing wrong with doing “the right thing.” The Juggling Writer is a blog about juggling work, writing, and life. For most of us, having a day job — doing “the right thing” — is a big part of out lives and allows us to follow our dreams.

Still, there’s risk involved in what we do. We may not be heading out for 6 months to hike the entire length of the Appalachian Trail, but we will spend much more than 6 months of our lives, alone, reflecting on things and challenging ourselves to be better writers.

It comes with a certain cost; in many ways, we may not always seem like we’re in our right minds all the time. It may not be fun all the time — sometimes writing is hard and frustrating, but to not do it is to sin gravely against ourselves.

I hope everybody has a productive week!

When I was a kid, my father took me to movies I shouldn’t have been seeing when I was 5 or 6. When The Enforcer came out, the theater ran the original Dirty Harry along with it. More than remembering the movie, I remember the theater — how it smelled like smoke, sweat, and the bubblegum the woman in front of us was chewing.

Drive In Terror

He took us to see Hell House and The Exorcist at the drive in. My step mother protested, but my dad said, “Don’t worry — the kids will fall asleep.”

We got there as the first showing of The Exorcist was wrapping up; my sister, step brother, and I saw enough to terrify us. I did my best to fall asleep in the back of the car. I was dozing when my father, returning from the concession stand, thought it would be funny to shake the back of the car like the bed shook in the movie.

There was no way we could sleep after that.

I don’t think any of us in the back seat slept soundly for weeks after watching those two movies.

The Power of Clint Eastwood

Clint Eastwood was the coolest in my father’s eyes. Not only was he Callahan, a no-nonsense homicide detective — he was The Outlaw Josey Wales. He was the guy I saw up on the big screen in drive in movie triple feature westerns on weekends my older sister didn’t come along for a visit with our dad. We dozed off during a triple feature one night; I remember a cop knocking on the window thinking we were two drunks sleeping it off.

And I remember when my dad took me to see Dog Day Afternoon.

Enter Al Pacino

I didn’t doze off in the car or spend my time taking in the foul odors of the theater. I watched every second of Dog Day Afternoon — it was unlike anything I ever saw. The story was different; I don’t think an ending hit me like that again until my dad took me to see The Deer Hunter when it came out.

What I remember most about Dog Day Afternoon: the characters.

It was the first time I really felt for people in a movie, even though they were bank robbers. I was still a bit too young to understand why they were robbing the bank, but I could tell through the two main characters that they really needed the money for something more than typical greed. They were desperate, and I felt sorry for them.

They were the most complex bad guys I’d ever seen at the time.

The Influence

To this day, in my own writing, I love characters who aren’t normal — characters people sorry for. Even if it’s a “bad guy,” I want people to feel for them, or at least understand why they became bad guys. Sure, I occasionally write a typical bad guy everybody wants to see dead by the end of the story, but in general, I think that’s an easy way out.

Since childhood, I’ve been fascinated by how a story goes from script to screen. I sat through Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits three times in a row, trying to imagine the process. I wrote comic book scripts and screenplays before I ever finished a novel (and that novel was a screenplay first).

My father only read two things I wrote before he died in 1991 — a 12-page comic book script and a short story — but all that time spent in theaters and at the drive in influenced my writing even more than books.

I stumbled upon The Nerdist Podcast the week the second episode came out. Since then, it’s one of my favorite things to listen to while working out or going for a walk.

The Nerdist Podcast is a weekly interview with creative famous people: musicians, comedians, actors and actresses, and even a writer. (I’d go as far as saying the linked interview with Scott Sigler is a must listen for anybody wanting to not only write, but do anything online.)

Writers often look for interviews with other writers for inspiration. I’m no different — my iPhone usually has a handful of author interviews on it at any given moment. But I find myself even more fired up and thinking differently after listening to the Nerdist Podcast.

Even if you’re not a fan of Rob Zombie’s music, listening to his interview — how all his life he was told he couldn’t be a writer, a filmmaker, or a musician (let alone all three at once), and what he did to get there (lived for what he loved and worked his ass off) — you come away with a renewed desire to make the mistakes necessary to figure out your way to better things.

I’m not particularly a fan of Ozzy Osbourne, but his interview is so full of genuine love for his fans that it’s no wonder he’s such a success. Hard work and integrity go a long way.

Listening to any interview of the Nerdist Podcast is a reminder that every successful person — even if they had a bit of a head start — got there through working hard doing what they love.

I often hear people say, “Yeah, but those people are just lucky — success like that can’t happen for the rest of us.”

Listen to these interviews and you’ll hear stories about people who started with nothing more than a dream and made it real.

I think that’s an important thing for writers to hear.

I’ve been accused of being a slacker. That’s okay, though, because I take it as a compliment.

Sometimes the best days are days when we do nothing…at least that’s what we tell ourselves. We also tell ourselves (it seems more times than not) that if we’re not rushing around doing something, then we must be doing nothing.

I disagree.

A rainy day reading, a sunny afternoon in a park, or just relaxing on the couch no matter what the weather is like — that’s all something! What’s nothing to many is the very thing most people doing something cherish more than anything. All that something is the reason why doing nothing feels so good.

I work overtime once in a while at my day job, but in general, I avoid it. It’s not that I’m not a “team player,” and it’s not that I don’t take my work seriously. I just value my time away from work more.

For some poeple, a weekly tennis match, an evening with friends or family, or even just lying on the couch reading is something that can easily be canceled for “work.” There will always be another chance to see your kid’s next baseball game, after all, and if you’re too busy — there’s always next season, right? You can easily reschedule that night out with family or friends, or do it during the weekend in between more work, laundry, cleaning, and errands. And writing…writing is just a long-shot dream, and long-shot dreams should take a backseat to real life.

The funny thing: busy people seem to love stories about characters in a hurry who ultimately throw their hectic schedules aside and devote more time to family and friends. Sadly, these same people often go back to working extra hours and rushing about a week after vowing to make more time for the things that matter most in their lives.

Don’t let others push their view of something on you. Don’t be afraid of doing nothing, because in nothing you have  something very few people doing something have: peace.