There is all sorts of advice on how to be a successful (read: productive) writer. Perhaps the most common is to write x-x-number of words each day. Practical advice, it seems at first glance, but this advice is an insidious treatment plan that wreaks more damage than the disease it is meant to cure, along with destroying any shred of ambition or confidence the writer may have managed to hold on to thus far. If your writing companion is a chronic illness, you don’t need a cure. You need a plan.

Step one of this plan is something everyone, regardless of health status, can benefit from. Spend three days tracking your time; create a log divided into 30-minute intervals and write down what you are doing every half hour. This is for your edification only – do not fudge your answers, trying to look more or less productive than you are. Once you have logged three days of activity, it’s time to pull out the highlighter and make some decisions. Circle the work you hate spending your energy on. Cross out anything you know is a huge time suck for you. Now highlight the time you have spent on your current writing project.

The goal of this exercise, of course, is to pinpoint what busy work you can let go of in order to find more time and energy for your writing project. Good – do that – review your list and decide on two things you can let go for the next month. But now is when we come to the heart of the problem. You are not wasting time on busy work because you are a bum just pretending to be a writer. You are doing busy work because society determines our worth by how busy we are. When you realize that being busy doesn’t actually produce anything and that you are, on some subterranean level, just trying to win the approval of society – nameless, faceless – not important! – you can restructure your day, your work, and your entire life away from busyness and toward productivity. Of course, the reason you are filling up so much of your writing time not writing is that your constant companion, chronic illness, saps your energy. Luckily, there are workarounds for that.

Take a good look at your current writing project. If you have multiple projects, look at them individually. While people tend to think of writing as a stress-free (really?), low-energy job, it takes tremendous mental focus to take a project from idea to manuscript. Sometimes you are actually too tired to put words to paper. This is where the strategy of divide and conquer comes in.

You see, a great product involves more than the actual writing.

Make a list of all of the work, other than the actual writing, that needs to be done. This can include interviews, travel, photography, research, reading comparative and competitive titles, and getting to know your target readers. Break down each category into sub-categories, getting to the nitty-gritty of what the project entails. Who do you need to interview? Where do you need to travel to? What photographs do you need to tell this story? Exactly what questions do you need to further research? What are the top three comparative and top three competitive books you should read?

This list can be broken down again. And again, if necessary. You should end up with a very detailed list of the things you need to do in order to make your project a success.

Are there things on your list you can delegate?

Are there things on that list you can hire out?

When you have written all you can write but still want to work, pull out your list. What piece of the project can you do at your current energy level? Low-energy activities can include an internet search to find the contact information for the people you need to interview. You can also spend some time reading or listening to the books important for your project.

Requiring slightly more energy, plan any trips you need to take. Book accommodations and do some low-level research on the town you will be in. Or, write out a quick list of interview questions. Spend some time organizing your research so it will already have a flow when you sit down to write.

It doesn’t need to be a big step. It just needs to be a step forward.

If you confuse your writing with your overall project, you will find yourself sucked into a vortex of meaningless busyness. You will find yourself organizing your sock drawer or volunteering to spearhead a winter coat drive. You will have the spiffiest sock drawer in town and your neighbors will know you will say yes to any ask. But you will not have a completed manuscript.

So, it’s up to you. Tell your writing companion, whatever chronic condition you live with, to back the hell off. You have a Plan B, and a Plan C. Be sure you physically check each item off your detailed project list as you complete it so you can refer to it and see your progress. Also, don’t forget to eat, drink plenty of water, go for a walk, and soak in the tub. And naps! Don’t deny yourself. Naps are where the disparate threads of a project often twine together into art.