How I Make Time for Writing

Three totally easy steps:

1. Do not have children, (a) significant other(s), family, or friends.

2. Do not have a job or hobbies.

3. Put everyone else in a spaceship and send them on a tour of the galaxy at the speed of light so while they experience only a few years, you can have almost a lifetime. SCIENCE.

I started my first completed manuscript when I was twelve. Although my age gave me several disadvantages, like lack of writing experience, lack of reading experience, and lack of life experience, I did have the one thing I’ve been scrambling for ever since: time.

Between the ages of fourteen and twenty-two, I wrote most of my fiction in class. I’d sit in the back of Multi-Variable Calculus or grade 13 French Literature or even Introduction to Drama and scribble scenes and dialogue longhand while pretending to take notes. I mastered the art of staring intently at the teacher or professor while my pen was doing its own thing. This, by the way, was also the result of me being incredibly lucky: I’m a visual learner who gets concepts by reading the book or doing the homework, so the lectures didn’t offer me much anyway. And I was fortunate enough that my teachers interpreted my actions as me having mastered the material already, not as me being insubordinate.

But when I hit grad school, I didn’t dare write in class. Not only had I switched to a new field where I felt like I needed to catch up on the basics, but graduate seminars were way smaller than undergraduate lectures, and the whole format was meant to encourage discussion rather than passive absorption of knowledge. There was lots of reading and lots of academic writing, and I got serious about going to the gym every weekday, which gave me even less time. By the point where I got deep into my dissertation, I’d written practically nothing for months.

Writing is hard. And even when it’s really hard, it’s also fun. Those two qualities can make it especially difficult to set aside time to write. On one hand, the difficulty means that I can’t just do it quickly without a thought. And if I’m tired or cranky, sometimes I don’t want to. On the other, the fun part means that I feel guilty for writing when I have other, less exciting work to do, like research or marking or lesson planning.

But writing and writing regularly is important for anyone who wants to write professionally. So I develop strategies to make it happen, no matter how busy I am.

My most successful strategy to date is the one I use for this blog: divide and conquer. Each entry is about 1000 words, and I try to complete one weekly so I have something to post each Monday. To make that happen, I work on the blog for 15 minutes each weekday. I keep my eye on the computer clock and type, research, or revise. Surprisingly, that’s about all it takes.

If I had to sit down for an hour and fifteen minutes and write every entry in one piece, I don’t think I’d manage it every week. By splitting up the work time into manageable chunks and having a clear end goal with a deadline, I get a lot more done. Sometimes I even finish two blogs in one week, which comes in handy when work gets hectic. In fact, my biggest struggle for the blog is reading, watching, and writing enough other stuff to keep my ideas flowing.

So my main problem is I still don’t have a permanent strategy for writing novels and plays.

In the summer, it’s easier: I can afford to write all day, because I don’t have classes to teach, papers to mark, or meetings to attend. Even so, routine can be deadly to me.

I start out using segments of time to quantify my writing: x hours a day, or else. But after a while, I start to spend more of those hours staring at my computer and daydreaming than actually writing, because apparently I only want to do things when I’m not allowed to. So I switch to goals, usually length-driven: write x words and revise x pages a day. When that stops motivating me, I move to bigger-picture goals: have this novel MS done by that date.

The trouble is, there’s no immediate “or else,” and I wind up banking days of un-met goals until I realize that according to my own schedule, I’ve got one month left to write and revise a novel, send out fifty queries, and write for twelve hours. Sometimes, I try to give myself “or else”s by telling my goals to my friends and family, but they’re too nice; they won’t actually yell at me if I haven’t finished my draft by the date I said I would, and, truthfully, I don’t think I’d want them to.

I’m making myself sound like I never get any words down. Obviously, that’s not true, considering I wrote and revised a novel and a play over the last two years and am halfway through two more novel first drafts. But I’m still searching for the most efficient mental game I can play with myself to keep the words coming. I want to stop feeling like I could be done both those novels already if I just found that magic literary Taylorism that would let me produce all day without burning out.

During the school year, writing gets a whole lot harder because my schedule gets a whole lot fuller. It’s difficult to revise when so many important things claim most of my time: when I work for short intervals, like I do with this blog, I can’t see the big picture. So revision often off the table except for weekends or urgent projects. Writing first drafts, on the other hand, is something I can do for five minutes at a time. My first drafts are already going to be fragmented; as long as I can get the bare bones down, I can turn it into what’s in my head later, over break or a free weekend or the summer.

I started out this year with the idea that I’d get 250 words on each of my works in progress each weekday, but my output’s been sporadic at best. It’s tough to power through when grading has sapped my willpower and/or physical ability to use a computer without my bad arm hurting too much. I don’t have any stretches of time that are long enough to try for an hour or thirty minutes (although I suppose I could try fifteen, like I do with this…).

So instead, I’m going back to the basics: I’m transcribing enough of the last page of my drafts (currently at 16K and 21K) to get started in Hilroy notebooks that can be shoved in my bag. I’m gonna try for a page of each a day. I can write in them anywhere without downloading my personal files onto work computers or relying on power. And for some reason, I’m more OK with mistakes that happen in longhand. I know I’m going to have to type it all up anyway, revising like mad when I do, so no biggie.

What are your writing-time tricks?