Blogger: Rachel Kent
We all know that life is often overwhelming–many writers are balancing work, family, home upkeep, writing and countless other things. I have heard of a few techniques my clients use for finding time to write and I’d love to hear what you do, too.
1) The first technique is getting up 1-2 hours before the rest of the household. Many mothers and fathers do this so that they have uninterrupted time to write before the kids wake up. I can’t imagine getting up so early and being able to focus on work, but moms and dads are amazing people. I assume this technique works at night as well, but I haven’t actually heard of authors setting aside writing time late at night. Are you an early morning or late night writer?
2) The second technique is to set aside one entire day per week to power through and write a chunk of your book. This technique works well for working writers or for writers who have young children. If a writer has young children it’s best for the kids to be out of the house on this one day a week. Perhaps it could be grandma/grandpa day or that writer’s spouse could take the kids out of the house for the day. The hard thing with this technique is keeping on task and avoiding burnout. It’s easy to let your mind stray if you are working on the same thing all day long. Do any of you have a one-day-a-week writing schedule? How do you avoid burnout?
3) The third technique I’ve heard about is the “fit it in” technique. This is when a writer takes whatever time he or she can find to write. It’s not the most organized approach, but for some people it really works. I think this technique only works for people who are able to easily put down writing in the middle of a thought and pick back up again without losing that writing rhythm. Are any of you “fit it in” writers?
These three techniques only work if the writer actually makes the time to work and sticks to the plan. Procrastination or allowing distractions to seep in can completely derail any of these three techniques.
Which of these techniques do you use or do you have something else you do to fit your writing in to you life? How do you avoid distractions?
Count the Costs Before Writing a Project
I started writing several months before I retired. I would rise at 6:15, work a full day, and start writing about 6:30-7 in the evening. I would finish between 12 and 1:30. Sleep, work, write, repeat. It helps that insomnia for me is 30 seconds instead of 3 between my head hitting the pillow and me being in REM land. It also helps to be genetically blessed with the metabolism of the Energizer Bunny that makes me both night owl and early bird. Having a husband who cooks and helps with housework is a great help, too. I couldn’t have done it without him being so wonderful.
Now that I’m retired, I can write full time. I usually rise between 7 and 8 without an alarm. If I take a nap for 30-60 minutes between 10:30 and midnight, I get my second wind. I usually back up my files and shut the computer down around 2:00 to 2:30, but I have been known to hit 4 am if I’m really in the flow writing a particular scene. I sleep in ‘til 8:30 on those days. Sometimes, like tonight, I check the next blog post before shutting down.
With my college kids in apartments and my husband working on various projects, distractions aren’t a problem. Long blocks of time are naturally available, but I’ve always found that using the 10-15 min chucks that free up during the day can get a lot done. Carrying a notebook when out of the house lets me use the small bits of time when I have to wait somewhere or when I’m riding in the car. That was a habit I developed for keeping current in the literature when I was working full time in research and raising children. You can often find an extra hour a day in small chunks.
I need a metabolism like yours!!!
I’m a mixture of the stay up late and fit it in types at the moment. I’ve got two littles and we just moved and had several other big life changes, so there’s not much time or energy for writing to be more of a priority.
Ideally, I’d like to have two half days a week to write. Working towards that.
Curious to hear what other solutions people with little kids have found.
My daughter LOVES play-doh and so we got a little table and put it next to my desk so she can do play-doh while I get some work done. I do a lot of my work at night, but play-doh gives me 1-2 hours during the day. 🙂 She just discovered Kinetic sand and is very interested in that, too. We don’t have any yet. I think it looks messy.
That’s an awesome idea! We just moved so I wonder if when I get the playroom set up, I’ll be able to sit with my laptop and my 3yo will play.
I used to be both a stay-up-late and start-early writer. Illness has forced some changes; while I do most of my writing between 2100 and 0000, Iam no longer well enough to start early (with the exception of commenting on blog posts, and answering comments on my own).
* Now it’s write-when-I-am-up-to-it. I was always able to pick up writing and put it down with no serious problems; it’s how I wrote my PhD dissertation. That 450-page beast was written wherever my laptop and I ended up; sometimes sitting in my truck, and often during air travel (both in the terminal,and on the plane).I used to think this was a good way to meet women (“what are you writing?) but eventually I realized that the title, “The Inelastic Seismic Response of Reinforced Concrete Pile-Columns” was not the best conversation starter, and the description of the contents was a sure cure for anyone unable to sleep on an airliner.
* The above, prior to meeting and marrying Barbara. Had I continued the practice, I doubt I would be here to talk about it.
Is that how you met Barbara? 🙂
No, we met on a Christian Singles internet dating site. The day after I first sent a message to her (she had not yet posted her picture, so I had no idea what she looked like) I nearly cut my arm off with a piece of woodworking equipment, so our initial correspondence was slow…me doing the hunt-and-peck thing with my left hand.
combo of two. I write most evenings after work for an hour to and hour and a half. Then four hours on Saturday. Sometimes on Sunday too. Hubby is retired so he does all the cooking and housework. He also plays golf, leaving me alone on Saturday to write.
You are a lucky wife! What a great guy you have!
I schedule in my writing like any other item on my to-do list. So I guess that’s a “fit it in” method. I mix writing and housework because it’s bad for me to sit at the computer for long stretches. We don’t have television, which I find gives me more writing/reading time. For me, it’s just a matter of setting priorities.
I do that, too. I’ll start a load of dishes, work for the two hours it takes for them to get clean in the dishwasher, and then put them away. It’s a good break from sitting and it gets something done around the house.
I do my best writing on days that I can fit in housecleaning alternating with writing, too. A load of clothes in washer, write, hang them out to dry, write, dishes in, write, cookie break, write. I get distracted so easily that I need to break my day up. I feel as if I am accomplishing so much more when I write this way.
I actually use all three techniques. Sometimes I’ll have an idea wake me up in the early hours and I want to get it down ASAP. Monday is typically my home alone day to write and the “fit it in” schedule also works for me. I love writing and cherish any moment I can get.
You are probably one of the few people who looks forward to Mondays! 🙂
Oh my goodness, I have to say I’ve done all three at one time or the other. There are times I make myself “unavailable,” ignore the phone, ignore the housework, and just hide in a cave to write and write some more. However, that can only be sustained for a short while or everything else falls apart. I am trying to put myself on a writing schedule because that works the best for me.
It is amazing how quickly things can fall apart. 🙂
I homeschool three middle schoolers, so I stay pretty busy. But I’ve found that scheduling regular writing times in the morning is the best plan for me. Although I’m a night owl and could probably write then, too, I don’t like to. That’s the time I save for reading and staring off into space.
If life gets crazy (and, of course, it does), I’ll resort to the fit-it-in approach. It works surprisingly well, especially if I think of it in terms of “better than nothing.”
The only one I don’t do is the blocking out of a whole day to write. My husband has given me entire weekends where he takes the kids to his parents’ house so I can write. And, the funny thing is, I end up only getting the slightest bit more writing done than I would have if my kids had been around. I believe I get more *thinking* done when alone for long periods–and that is useful, certainly–but not more actual writing.
I know some authors who set a timer for two hours and write as fast as they can for that time and then quit for the day. This method can be just as productive as those who take full days to write! It’s amazing what you can accomplish in a short period of focused time.
*In my head: all the time. In real time: fit it in.
*I get ideas all the time. Sometimes I jot down a word or two so I won’t forget the train of thought. I later shuffle the ideas into some sort of order.
God hasn’t called me to exclusively write. I have a full-time job that comes with a 2hr commute. A while back, I was tending toward a solitary life-style and God nudged me to make relationships higher priority. I haven’t yet found the right balance. I aim to write something every day.
*My big frustration: I write well in the morning and hate to get up from a good flow of words to leave for work.
No matter how hard I try, I can’t get up early to work or go to the gym. I am a night owl for sure.
Hello, Rachel. Great article… I think a big part of the key is for writers to know what his/her time limitations are, and be able to productively and effectively work around them. I am a mother of smaller children, and when I was writing my second book, there were many mornings that I was awake and writing before the sun rose. Not ideal, but it did allow me the time to work and think clearly. Writing is such a self-disciplined activity in and of itself, that if that is not one’s strength, it makes things difficult.
Although I have written early in the morning (starting at 4 or 5 AM) at times, I am definitely not a morning person. The times when I’ve written in the morning have been the times when I’ve been lying, half-awake, half-asleep, thinking about the book and wonderful ideas start flowing. So I’ve forced myself to get up and start writing while the ideas and creativity are flowing.
My regular writing, though, is done in that one day (sometimes two days) a week chunk. I prefer to write on my days off simply because I can “power through” and write for hours at a time. I hate stopping in the middle of writing a scene, which I’ve had to do sometimes when I’ve gotten up early to write.
Since I don’t have a family to take care of, when I go into writing mode, I can write without interruptions most of the time. The big problem for me is making myself stop periodically to eat or get up to stretch my legs. I know those things are healthy, but I hate to interrupt the writing to do them. Once I stop, when I sit down at the computer again, it takes a bit to get back into the world of the novel and the flow of the writing.
Even though I don’t have a family to take care of, I still have to do exciting things like grocery shopping, cleaning house, paying bills, and since I’m in an MFA program, homework. So I can get in one day a week of focused writing, but getting more than that usually only happens when there is something like a three-day weekend. So I sneak extra writing in at night. The problem with that is, again, I don’t like to stop, so I’ve been known to write until 3 or 4 in the morning, which can take it’s toll. That’s what will lead me to burnout. The once-a-week writing through the whole day actually energizes me.
By the way, the once-a-week writing is separate from the MFA program writing. The program writing is class-specific. The once-a-week writing is focused on my WIP novel that I am working on with the goal of publishing. So while I’m actually writing more than once a week, I consider the class writing homework and the novel writing as my real writing. 🙂
Happy weekend, everyone!
One thing that I do to keep my hand in for writing to deadline is participate in a couple of weekly keyword-inspired writing challenges.
* Five Minute Friday actually has the keyword issued Thursday night (10PM Eastern); I try to make sure that I have that time cleared of anything else, and I write the post (limited to five minutes of work) immediately, no matter how I feel. If anyone’s interested, my FMF post is up now, and you can click the link to get to the host site.
* #BlogBattle is keyword-inspired short fiction, and the word is issued on Tuesday, with a midnight (Pacific time) deadline. The length is supposed to be less than 1000 words. I’ve been doing this for awhile now, and my WIP is essentially being ‘serialized’ there. I use the time from about 9.30 to the deadline to write and edit my contribution. Again, if you’re interested, you can click through my most recent entry to get to the host site –
http://blessed-are-the-pure-of-heart.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-distance-between-hearts-blogbattle.html
When I worked outside the home I got up early to write before getting my son ready for school or wrote after he went to bed. Sometimes I worked during my lunch hour as well, but I knew better than to depend on that time. It’s just hard to eat and write at the same time, especially when you have chatty co-workers around.
These days I find writing late at night more difficult. If I’m desperate to meet a deadline I can make it work for me, but my creativity tends to shut off when I’m tired from a busy day.
Now that I work completely from home I write while my youngest son is at school.
I am thankful for those years when I had to make the time to write around other work, kids, and church activities. It forced me to be disciplined and decide how badly I wanted to achieve my goals. Now I can honestly say that, no matter how much I find myself juggling, I can come up with a plan for getting my writing done. I don’t know if I could do one “power through” one day per week though. In my world that would be the day when something major happened that kept me away from the computer.
Rachel, I don’t do any of these! Though I once did the get up early method.
Well I still do get up early to write, but now I usually write all morning until lunch. I’ve streamline my job to where I can usually fit it all in in the afternoons. It’s taken me five years to get to this point, but it’s working out great and I love it!
(I know many people are at a different point with both family and work where this isn’t an option. For a long time, I was, but things do change.)
I’m someone who had to fit things in around work and family but it’s a very slow process.
I used to follow #1 exclusively when I first started writing, but I’m turning toward #3 more often now. My early mornings (like now) are spent on reading articles, answering emails, handling my social media accounts, etc., while I do my actual writing later in the day whenever I get the chance to. I carry my writing notebook with me everywhere in case an opportunity comes up to write.
I’ve followed the Books & Such blog for some time now and finally decided to opt in.
When my husband and I were still pastoring I would get up at 4:30 or 5 o’clock in the morning and work a couple of hours before going to the office. Now that we are retired, I still find my most productive work is done early in the day.
I use the afternoon to deal with emails and marketing.
Golden, that used to be my preferred working time as well. I’m now too ill to follow it – I only get a period of reasonable strength later in the day – but I do use that time for pain meds, a couple of cheap cigars, and reading, which keeps me in a literary frame of mind. (The cigars help with the absorption of the medication, and I like to think they give me a Churchillian presence.)
* If I may be the first to say this – I am so glad you decided to start commenting! With your background, I’m sure that we all have a lot to learn from you.