I don't know what the average age is around here, but I'm curious from the people that have full-time jobs (or just very little time), how you make time to write. I just wrote about this on my blog and what I do is write in the early morning before going to work, but blogging bites into my fiction quite a bit. When do the busy busy people on here find time to write? And for those of you that aren't super busy, I was once the same way and I never understood how valuable that time was. I suspect you won't either until you get more and more busy in life.
I started writing fiction novels in my late fifties. Why did I wait so long, because I could never find time out of all the consumers of time; jobs, spouses, family emergencies, etc. I have to bury myself away from the first page to the last. I see everything in my head like its alive, and I can't stop. I don't know how people do it part time. Even now that I'm retired, its still become a mistress that consumes a major portion of my life. After my third novel, I got burned out and but the pen away for three months. Now I'm starting to feel the itch again to get this darn story out of my head and on paper.
I usually write in the evenings while my husband watches TV and my daughter has already gone down for the night. I used to stay up late (before baby!) to write, but I'm finding myself counting more and more on those precious hours before she wakes up to nurse lately. I'm praying that she'll start sleeping through the night soon...I think I'm jumping the gun a bit, seeing as she's only two months old A girl can dream, right? It's a balancing act, for sure. Sometimes my husband gets annoyed, but I remind him gently that if I ever get something published then that means more money...not that I have plans to ever get something published, but that hushes him up for the most part!
I write on buses. And trains. And whatever public transport I may be stuck on. I also write on napkins, or bus tickets, or...whatever I have at hand. Basically, as soon as I sit down to do something else that is not important (like cleaning =P) I pick up the laptop, or a pad of paper and write&write. I have also reached a point of agreement between my partner and I. We currently have a bit of a balancing act going on, between time spent writing and time spent with him. Basically, with writing, you have to remember the give and the take. You have to remember to dedicate time to your craft, like anything writing needs practice, but you also have to dedicate time to the people that matter. If I sit in front of the TV, I write while I watch. I cook dinner early, leave it to stay warm, and take a few precious minutes to write etc. It is not so much about finding time, as making time.
I have two very active children and my parents to run around after as well. I never get a great deal of sitting down time to be honest. Even when I am posting on here, I am still doing stuff around the house. I learnt to multi task. I don't sleep much either.... But I bought a laptop so that when I am doing things around the house I can take it with me and jot down my ideas, poems, etc, as they come to mind. My parents hate me being on my computer, especially the net. THey always harp about it. But I get everything done each day so meh! to them Between my editting and all that, I find writing time is hard to find most of the time, so I just miss a few extra hours of sleep and get my writing done instead.
im 16, and its my summer holidays now so pretty much all i do is write and go out lol, but im new to this site so after a few reviews ill put up my own work.
Every time I think "I don't have time to write," I remind myself that Naomi, a friend of mine, somehow manages to pull good grades and write a novel every year during NaNoWriMo. Given the school we attend, that's no mean feat. I don't know how she does it though. Other than lack of sleep, which is also a factor.
i started writing seriously/full time in my mid-40s... at the time, i was a single mom of my youngest 2 [of 7], who were 4 and 10 at the atart... while being a full time ballet [youngest was a serious ballet student and became a pro, eventually] and riding [older daughter had her own jumper and competed for several years] mom, i also ran an upscale rooming house [rented out all the parts of my 6,000 sf house we didn't use] and a writing consultant business that i started... and yes, i still found time to write my own stuff just about every day... in fact, i turned out plays, a musical, song lyrics, fiction and non-fiction books, short stories, poetry, a screenplay, articles and magazine columns, among other things...
As a full-time college student, I pretend that writing is one of those classes I have to attend every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 8 to 10 in the morning. On my busier days this imaginary writing class takes a backseat, although it mostly works pretty well so far. Not sure how I will survive once I start getting a part-time job from this summer on.
I'm a single mom to two boys, one with ADHD, I've had to put writing off for several years. Now, that they are a little older and I can trust them to play outside without my having to hold their hands, so to speak, I am getting more writing done. Before that, I would try to write when they went to bed. But many nights I am just too beat to do much more than read. Sometimes, I just need motivation...
Like Spider I use whatever's at hand at first I used scratch paper and sometimes my hand and arm! Then I got a laptop and now I have a notebook. I write before school, during class (don't tell my teachers!) during lunch, on the bus, and at night sometimes until one or two in the morning!
I'm lucky enough to have free time every evening after six, as long as I have the housework done. I usually force myself to write at least two hours, but when I have the inspiration, I've been known to still be tapping at ten... (Woot... I'm sure that's impressive...)
I write whenever and wherever I can. I write at work (if it's quiet). I write in the bus. I write at home on weekends and whenever there is a few extra minutes to share. I don't have methods or moods or certain type of music that I need. Julia Cameron has said that if twenty minutes is all you have, use that twenty minutes. It's better to write all the time than wait for a moment when you have enough time. For me, there's never going to be any such day when I have enough time and energy.
The weekends have always been my best time, usually at a cafe or a bookstore where I can set up shop with my laptop and work uninterrupted for several hours. The only problem is that I really shouldn't be allowed to self-caffeinate... one cup is too much, and two cups are never enough. I think that's part of what's been holding me back, though, because I never write at any other time. That's one of the reasons I joined here yesterday. By coming to this forum ever day, doing peer reviews, learning about writing, I think it will be harder to forget that I've got these projects out there waiting for me to finish them. And maybe I won't wait six months between writing bouts anymore.
I write before work (I get there an hour early) and I write sometimes in the evenings. I use my commuting time to think things over about plot lines or what I want to do, sometimes I make notes if something hits me good. But I hate writing stuff in front of people so my train time is my "thinking cap" time.
I was just curious... How long does the average writer take to write an average page of a decent first draft(500 words)? And I know its largely dependent on quality... but its nice to know the amount of time people dedicate.
Well, the slowest writers produce one book in a lifetime. Call it forty-ish years. The fastest produce two or three books a year (not good books, but books.) Call it three months, pure draft-writing time. Somewhere in between those two is the answer. For me, when I'm really in the zone I can blast out two or three thousand words in a couple of hours, but I've sat for six hours over a measly four or five hundred words many times before. Even within a writer's own experience, the variance is pretty wide.
I'm extremely slow but I haven't written much either. I guess I could get faster with practice. Best I can do is 1,000 words or so in a sitting. But that's on a good day. The other night I stared at my monitor for 3 hours and wrote just two sentences. No ****. I've been stuck for the past few days since then. Just a bit ago I was thinking that I might just dump the sequence I'm struggling with (It relates to a certain element of characterization.) and save that reveal for later in the book. Maybe that will get me back on track. I think I have the worse obsession of all: prose. I really agonize about how I'm wording things. I mean I really go nuts over it. That's too simple, that's too damned complicated sounding, etc. It isn't unusual for me to rewrite a paragraph ten times over. Some guys don't seem to give it much thought, not on the first draft anyway. They focus on story instead. I wish I could look at it that way but just can't.
One time Dean Koontz wrote a novel in 1 week, and that includes editing. He does all his own editing BTW. And that book was published. Several other books he wrote in two or three weeks, and they were also published. Dean Koontz kicks butt. I write about 1000 words in an hour. Then I can easily spend a few hours editing and rewriting, because I suck at editing. I am studying and practicing though.
1000 words in an hour is lightening quick. Pretty much unattainable for me anyway. I write about 500 words/hour. And thats for the scenes that aren't challenging.
Depends on how inspired I am and whether I have writer's block or not XD sometimes I can sit down and write five pages, and other times I'll spend an hour trying to come up with a couple of paragraphs.
It seems to usually take me about an hour or so to write about 1700-2000 words, so...someone else can do the math because I suck at that. :redface: I don't do drafts since I try to get it the best I can the first time. So the first time I write it it's "decent."
