How to find the time to write

You want to write but your life is crammed full of important and urgent things to do – plus a bunch of tedious and mundane tasks. Here are a few pointers to find time in your schedule and commit to your writing.

Creative writing of any sort is tough. Contrary to popular opinion, it does not involve wafting around by the ocean in a kimono, sighing dramatically whilst waiting for your elusive muse to seize you in a florid embrace of creativity. It involves commitment, graft and hard work.

It also involves the decidedly uncreative topic of ‘scheduling’ – auditing and then arranging your time so you can write more. So, here’s how you do it.

Decide what is a priority and what’s not

You want to write? Yes! Then you need to find out what’s going to give. Is it the housework? Is it going out with friends? Is it keeping your elderly father amused in his dotage?

Take a close look at what you do every day and decide what to stop doing. Work out what priority you place on writing compared to everything else you do. I’m sure dad will understand.

Make a promise to yourself

Once you’ve decided that you’d like to write for an hour each Sunday rather than groom the dog (he’s never suited a spiral perm) you need to stick to it.

Make a promise to yourself that you will write in the times you’ve identified. Write the times down somewhere special, like the fridge door or your forearm. Stick to them.

Be realistic – know when you can’t write

A huge part of knowing when you can write – whether that’s over the course of a day or week – is knowing when you absolutely can’t.

Go through your week – that includes all those nightly visits to the 24/7 off-licence to buy discount vermouth – and check off what you absolutely can’t give up. Then, stop beating yourself up for not writing at those times. You’re busy – get over it.

Order your time

Once you understand your time you need to order it. Split your day or week into chunks to identify:

Where are the prime writing slots where you’ll have no distractions?
Where are the slots that are more flexible so you can, for example, intervene if little Tommy sets the cat on fire?
Where’s the time that’s already booked cleaning the Bentley and watching Pointless that you can’t do anything else?

Work out your writing style

Horlicks writers, Weetabix writers, Absinth writers, writers that splurge, writers that like antonyms more than their immediate family – what type are you?

Keep a writing diary and know thyself:

When do you write best?
Where’s your top writing place?
How long you typically write for?
How much do you write?
How easy or hard was it to get the words out?

Look back to see if you have any writing patterns. You might be surprised to find that you’ve never had a good day writing on a Wednesday or that you’re at your writerly best lounging on the Chez Long with a glass of Mateus Rose.

A seven step guide to finding writing time

Decide how important writing is to you and prioritise it alongside everything else in your life
Audit your current activities to find what you can stop doing and what needs to stay in your schedule
Look across the week and cross out the times you can’t write to find pockets of opportunity
Keep a writing diary to get to know your writing style and preferences
Assess your writing habits to understand when you write best and see how this matches up with your schedule
Identify your writing opportunities and turn them into goals – make a promise to yourself to write at these times, write down those promises
Track your progress against your promises and use the feedback to rejig your goals so they remain achievable

Read these previous posts on finding time in your daily schedule and in your weekly schedule.

About the author: Co-creator of Write Track, Bec has spent a lifetime reading, writing and working with writers. From her first job in a bookshop, to a career in publishing, and several years managing a writers’ centre, she’s obsessed with working out what helps writers write.