Tips on carving time out of a busy schedule to write your novel now.

Scheduling time to write may seem impossible, with all of the distractions in a busy life. Just like any other task, though, setting aside an identifiable time to write goals is vital to accomplishing your writing goals.

Consistent output and persistence in approaching publishers are the two best predictors of eventual success. Writers who claim they need to ‘wait for the muse’ will most likely never hold a published book in their hands. The dirty truth is, you need to write when you don’t feel like it, write when you’re worried, write when you’re tired, and write even if you are sure you’ll never succeed.

Find Time for Your Dream

But, given that you understand that, how do you find the time? You’re busy. Maybe you have a full-time job, perhaps you have a spouse, kids, volunteer activities, senior parents, friends, and community activities. They all require an investment of time from you, but it’s vital to acknowledge that most of that is never going to change, or even if it does, life being what it is, some new task will flow in to take over.

So you need to start now to carve out time to give back to yourself, and devote that time to your dream of becoming a published author.

Quiz

True or False?

1. I need to be at my computer to write.
2. I need a good chunk of time to focus on my novel.
3. I need to write a lot at one point or it won’t be consistent.

If you said true to any of the above, you’re wasting precious time. They are all false! First, yes, your finished novel needs to be written at the computer, but the final draft is only one step in the process of writing a book.

Second, if you keep your novel plot in your mind by thinking of it often, when you do find a few minutes to work on it, it will be alive in your memory and you can instantly be focused enough to write a bit.

And last, the old saying is true, even if you just write one single page a day—about three hundred words—you will, at the end of a year, have a sizable novel, and a novel a year is fabulous output for any writer. If it seems disjointed while handling it that way, don’t worry, most faults can be repaired in the editing stage.

How to Find Time

Most people are busy for much of the day, but there are two things you can do to give some of that time to your writing.

First: take advantage of what spare moments you do have.

Do you…

• do laundry at a laundromat or your building’s laundry room?
• routinely stand in line at the bank?
• take a book to a coffee shop to read at lunch?
• wait in the car for kids after school?
• drive kids to lessons or hockey/soccer/skating practice or theater rehearsals?

If you do, be sure to have a notebook or binder handy and write!

Second: change a few habits to make some extra time.

If you…

• drive to work: take public transit, instead, and use that time to write
• surf the internet randomly: instead, spend that time writing or researching your novel.
• linger over coffee in the morning or afternoon: take that half hour to write and you’ll be surprised how the pages add up.

Writing is a choice you have made for yourself; if you’re serious about it, it will require some commitment to accomplish your goals. But that decision to write is just your first decision; hundreds of others will be required to give you the time and energy to write a novel.

Links of Interest:

Article by Moira Allen: Time and the Writer

Article by Karen Fenech: Finding Time to Write When You Have No Time to Write!