I started writing when I was a child, my first book was published when I was a freshman in highschool, and I have continued publishing a book a year since then. Through highschool, college, graduate school, relationships, marriage, divorce, and life as a parent, I’ve continued to write and publish, and my backlist now includes seventeen young-adult books, three short stories, three adult fantasy novels. Throughout it all, the hardest skill to master has been managing my increasingly-limited time.
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As I mentioned
before, I have always written. Sometimes I lost sleep over it, or missed
homework assignments (I admit, I was a terrible student until college), but it
wasn’t until I had my first child that I hit a point where my drive to tell
stories didn’t magically result in my having time to tell stories. That was
when my writing method needed to change.
Before then, I wrote
whenever I had time-- before school, during lunch, on the train, whenever I had
five minutes, and then in longer stretches on evenings and weekends. When
people asked how I scheduled time for writing, I always said, “I don’t
schedule. I just use every bit of time I have.” Writing on a schedule didn’t work for me. If I sat down to write at a
specific time, the words simply didn’t come. For you, that might still be the
way it is, in which case my advice is, “Don’t force it.”
When “whenever I have
time” stopped working for me, the first hurdle was convincing myself that
writing wasn’t just a hobby and a luxury, and I had the right to set aside time
for it. Partly because I started professional writing when I was a kid dodging
schoolwork, and partly because I had a long-term partner who was offended
whenever I prioritized writing over spending time together, I had this feeling
in the back of my head like I was wasting time and doing something wrong when I
was writing. In retrospect, this is completely absurd-- by the time I had my
daughter, I had been publishing for over a decade and made a successful career
of it-- but I don’t think I’m alone in this feeling. I think a lot of would-be
writers who say they want to write but can’t make time are probably thinking
this way, like it’s not acceptable to set aside time for art until everything
else is done (and frankly, everything else is never done). If you’re publishing, writing is your job. You need to make time for it. And
if you’re not publishing yet, it is still alright to make time for your
passions and dreams.
As for myself, I did
two things to develop a schedule: I started getting up early to work, and I
started regularly attending a local writing group.
4 am to 5:30 am might
not be the best time for most people, but for me, it’s the only time of day
when I can concentrate on writing before other real-life tasks. (Unlike now,
when I’m composing this blog post with Bolt in the background while minding my
3-year-old as she eats breakfast.) I had to learn to get focused quickly after
I sit down, and to set specific goals for the day so I didn’t dither about. I
had always said before that I couldn't work
on demand, but now that it was my only choice, I found a way to make it work.
Joining a group of
other serious writers helped keep me on track, too. It can be hard to find a
writing group that work for you, but I recommend it highly. My group mostly
just sits and writes together (sometimes we gather for critique groups, but not
on our regular Wednesdays), and that’s what I need.
In conclusion, as far
as I can tell, no one really has time for serious writing, much less the extra
time and effort required for publishing. Yet people do it. Whether you work by
whim or strictly schedule, do what works for you, as long as it works for you,
and trust you have a right to it.
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