creating time to write

One of the most common struggles writers face is finding the time to write. 

We all live busy lives, in which we often struggle to balance a great number of tasks and priorities. Sometimes this busy-ness means we’re perpetually operating in a state of anxiety, where there never seems to be enough time to do anything and writing always gets bumped to the bottom of the list. 

Here are three practical techniques I started twelve years ago which have transformed my day-to-day focus and ensured I get more writing time each week.

Create a prioritized to-do list. 

I used to have a long laundry list of things to do each day, and I would work away at them until I was tired (which was usually long before I got around to writing). 

Now, I make sure to create a prioritized to-do list. After I make a list of all the things I want to get done that day, I circle only three that are the most important to me. And these are the only ones that I put pressure on myself to complete. The rest are “extra”--it’s great if they get done, but I don’t fret if they don’t. 

Set a specific time to write. 

I used to think it was enough to have a vague intention to write at some point during my day. But this vagueness allowed me to push writing off until the very end of the day, at which point, I thought, “Well, I’m just too tired. I’ll write tomorrow.” 

The fix to this was to set a very specific time to write (say, 10 a.m. on Monday mornings) and also to specify how long I needed to keep my butt in the chair for a writing session. It didn’t have to be a long time in order for it to be productive, but I’ve found that a minimum of twenty minutes is a good starting point. From there, you can work your way up to longer sessions if you wish. 

Write before all your mental energy is expended. 

I used to say, “I’ll write when I get all my other work done for the day.” In theory, it felt practical to do this-–after all, I’d get all my paid work done (at the time, I was editing textbooks) before I spent time on my novel. But the reality was that after I got all my freelance work done, my brain was exhausted and I didn’t have good energy to bring my book. 

So I had to flip my ordering of things. I wanted to bring my best energy to my writing (the thing that I most wanted to do for a living–I really didn’t want to edit textbooks for the rest of my life). 

So I began to write in the mornings and then transitioned to editing work later in the day. The result was that my novel work began to flourish. And guess what—the editing work went just fine too! I’d just stopped giving it my most valuable mental energy. 

(This is not to say that all writing work has to happen first thing in the morning, only that it’s helpful to consider timing your writing sessions for when you still have a good reserve of mental energy.)

This month, see if implementing one (or all) of these strategies helps ensure that you get more time to write!