Like @KevinMcCormack said, I have found that making time for writing, in my life, at least, is about making choices. I write on many of my lunch breaks, for example. I also try to be cognizant of how much time I am spending on the internet and watching TV, as those activities can eat up a lot of my time if I am not careful.
Thanks for mentioning TV. I forgot it, because it's never been part of my life (when I was a kid there were only 3 channels, and when I moved out of my parents' house, I didn't have the cash for cable... just never started that TV thing, not really a decision on my part, just the way it worked out), but of course it's a big block of time for most people. And here in 2017, with so many good TV series in progress, I did have to make TV choices, because these are *very good stories* and I consider them to be the equivalent of reading, for any writers who are trying to establish the 'consumption / production balance'. I'm treating my 3 hours per day commute as a glass half full. You read that right. 3 hours per day (90 minutes each way). I commute by bus, and I'm lucky that I embark early enough in the route to guarantee a seat, so I can spend most of that time reading. My goodreads.com reading challenge of 52 books per year, I'm +4 ahead of schedule and it's only July. But here's the thing: if I didn't have this aggressive reading goal, I'd be converting some tv shows to .mkv files and watching them on my tablet instead. I'm interested in SF/Fantasy, so WestWorld and American Gods are consumption I consider to be a good use of my time. Also, regarding my previous post... my choices were just an example. I'm not telling anybody to give up the banjo, or sell their boat. Some of the forum members, for better or worse, will undertake a comparison exercise like this and learn that they just can't be writing right now. I have a colleague who is exactly my age, but his kids are younger and he has three of them. You know what? He's not in a place right now where he should be striking out on a writing career. Postponing writing until his kids are in school is not defeat - it's mature insight. And I'd make the same decision. I would not trade writing time for time with my kids when they were that age either. My parents are close to the age where they may start to need more time from me for health reasons, and that's why I'm planning a career transition from my salary man job to a writer. But if they were that ill already, I would defer my writing to a future year, no question.
Thanks. It was emotional, despite my being fully prepared (my psychology undergrad was in life transitions). I'm 49, which is the age where people start to address their limitations and mortality, so there I was facing my remaining count of years and making a plan that included writing (yay) but does not include playing the banjo. I love the idea of learning to play banjo, but I love writing more, so the decision was made. Sorry if this sounds academic. There's a psychological model that takes into account that we are allowed to consider many future lives for ourselves, choose among them, and typically lose all but one version we are consciously pursuing. If one of the discarded ones is a coveted favourite, the proposal is to finalize it by literally grieving for it. So, I'm grieving for a version of myself who would be playing the banjo a year from now. That KMC's gone.
I know I have time, I just seem to always be doing other things, or 'too tired to write'. I find that writing for me is like my attempts at being a gym goer... getting myself there is the big challenge, but once I'm there, I really enjoy it. It's the same with writing, even if I'm shattered and I am struggle with motivation for anything, IF I move my lard a*s to the MacBook and start writing, I perk up a bit and really enjoy it... It's just the initial "I don't have time, I'm too tired, I have other things to do" issue I have
I have all the time in the world. Now if I only had a brain. I do feel my best time is in the mornings and evenings. When I was working as an engineer, I would often use my lunch to type out some thoughts and email them to myself. The way I figure it, is companies have people that have people, to get the most out of you. It was up to me to get the most out of the company. Besides my wages, but that's a given.
A few months ago when I was writing an idea I actually liked (I've shelved it now), I started to do this. Put some music on, ignore the colleagues and just type ideas/work on the story. I ended up with something like 4,500 in the lunches from Mon>Fri.. It's a great way to get words down when you're working during the day.. and I found it motivated me to come home and try and continue what I'd done
I just got a second job and I have been working 60-65 hour weeks, and then I have other things like cleaning and laundry to do when I get home, so I often feel like I have no time to write. Even a sentence sometimes just takes so much out of me that I can't keep looking at my computer because I've been staring at one for the past 16 hours and I just need sleep. Trying to balance everything has been hard, but I'm getting into a routine now, and finding the time is a bit easier. I also have some vacation coming up and my husband will be leaving for work and be gone for a month or more, so I'm going to have lots of free time to catch up on everything very soon. I also have begun to bring my computer to work and when I have my hour break, I sit down and I just write for that hour and so far I've come out to 105 pages for my latest story. It's all about balance and sometimes I just have to recognize that some days I won't get to write at all, but those lately, thankfully, have been fewer and far between now that I have a routine down.
I've never felt like there was no time to write or I had to give anything up. I guess it's different for everyone, but I see writing as a calling more than a choice.
I drive a lot in work. Many audio books, and time to think. I always record on my phone the ideas that come to me. I work a lot, but even if I am away staying at a hotel I always have my computer and always take an hour to write at night. If I'm working on a book, I always allow myself 2 hours every evening at least 4-5 days every week. And maybe more during the weekend, if nothing important comes up. I go into hermit-mode for a few months when indulged in a project.
I use my notepad and the microphone all the time. I even throw a few lines down while at my day job. It's risky but I love seeing my thoughts come to life. I think you just gotta love doing it.
Well lately I haven't had as much time to write as before because I have a girlfriend now, I'm getting a new job and I'm catching up on my daily Bible plans. I usually just submit things I already finished when I don't have time to actually write new work. I'll edit finished manuscripts and keep on submitting away. I have a literary fiction story being published this month so I'm also waiting for that to wrap up.
For decades, I had to squeeze my writing into odd hours, working it in among work, advocacy (two children with special needs), and coaching my son's soccer team (so he could continue to play). Then, my children grew up and I retired. For the 15 months between the time I retired and the time my wife retired, I had more writing/editing/querying time than I'd ever had before. Then my wife retired, and we sold our house and moved into a smaller place, and I had to go back to juggling. I still do a lot of advocacy work, and my children still need my support. Moreover, my wife is now looking to the kind of life we'd only wistfully hoped for - time for concerts, ballgames, museums, new pursuits, travel; the kinds of things other couples got to do before retirement. So, now I'm back to juggling. Since she's a nightowl and I'm an early-riser, I have a few hours in the morning where the apartment is quiet and I can work. For the rest, I draw no bright lines. I do things as and when I can.
Interesting. That's me too, WD. A "writer", I think, is simply someone who writes. It doesn't matter what. My son used to go out with a girl who described herself as a "writer", but never wrote anything! She was full of ideas but never ever got them down in black&white. I wrote every day when I was working, but mostly stuff similar to yourself. When I first "retired" I wrote almost obsessively in the comments section of the local newspaper until I realized that I could write a book in the time that I spent online and in other forums. So I did. It was a pretty crappy book but a start, and I'm now quarter way through a new book project that I am much happier about. I write when Mrs Genghis is watching her Australian cooking shows on TV! Amazing how much I can get done while she's planning how to feed me.
I am fortunate enough to have a job that allows me time to write at work. I'm a corrections officer, and so much of my time is spent sitting at a desk supervising inmates. So we are allowed to read books, or write, or do whatever (within reason, of course....I've even done cross-stitch at my desk before. And colored in those adult coloring books). So that's when I do my writing. Is it a calm, peaceful environment? Only occasionally. Do I get interrupted a lot? Yes. I have to do rounds every 15 minutes. But I make it work. I've managed to go from story-planning mode in February to chapter 13 by August, so though progress may be slow, it's getting done. It helps to focus on the end goal- maybe this book could make it so I don't have to do this dumb job every day. My suggestion? Look at your everyday schedule. Is there some place you can squeeze in some writing, even if it is in a distracting environment? Make what you are currently doing work for you. See if you can multi-task. Be flexible in how you write. Example: I normally type my story in Word. Sometimes, depending on where in the jail I am working, I don't have access to a computer. So I carry around my story planning notebook with me, and on days I don't have a computer, I continue my writing in my notebook, and type it into Word when I get the chance later. I also email myself my novel at the end of each workday. I title it "Roses, 8-14" or whatever the day is (Roses is my working title). Then, no matter where I go, or what computer I have access to that day, I can always pull up my email and have my story there.
My ratio is the product of circumstance, and I'm not happy with it. I have a 90 minute commute to and from work each day (on the bus) so I get a lot of reading done, over 2h/day. I set my 2017 goodreads challenge to 104 books and am on track (actually +3 at the moment). In contrast, I strive to get even 1 hour a day of writing in. (10 hours of work, 3 hours of commute, 9 hours of sleep, 30mins of exercise, 90mins groceryshopping/cooking/dinner with the family... that's a full 24 right there) Weekends give me more flexibility in principle, but we have a 100 year old house that's showing its age. I spent most of last Saturday repairing a broken bathroom fan. It was installed two years ago, but the contractor put a ceiling fan in the wall. Bolted on its side like that, it got out of balance and sounded like a 747 taking off, it was driving us insane all winter. I bought a nice quiet new one, expanded the vent hole (requiring trips to a tool rental shop for a reciprocating saw and trip to Canadian Tire for blades that can cut through stucco and steel mesh), sealed it against Vancouver rain, and patched the chewed up drywall. Whelp, that's half the weekend gone. Sunday was a twice postponed hike with an old friend, but I got up early and wrote for two hours between 5am and 7am when I finally had to put down my pen and head out to meet him. So, last week's ratio as follows: Reading: 12h Writing: 2h
I tend to do one or the other in excess. When I am feeling inspired to write, that's what I do with the majority of my free time even to the point of not eating as much as I should or being a little antisocial with the people in my life. When I'm not writing, though, I will read. Frankly I prefer reading to TV or movies, especially in the last decade or so when originality went out the window and all we see are remakes or neutered nonsense so my leisure time is spent reading or writing instead of in front of the television. Either way, I'd say I spend about three hours a day at it. What I don't do is mix the two, though. I'm always concerned that if I am invested in reading something that it will bleed into my writing so I try to keep the two separate. Maybe it's unavoidable or maybe I'm worrying over nothing but the thought of unintentionally pilfering someone else's ideas always bothered me so I make an effort to avoid it.
It depends on if I'm working on a project or what kind or project I'm on. I usually read around 2-5 books a week when I'm not working on anything. If I'm in the research phase of a project I'll spent like 8-10 hours a day reading and taking notes with like an hour of writing, If I'm trying to get a project finished I can spend about 16 hours writing at a stretch with only random breaks for vaguely human related activities. I try not to mix random reading when I'm writing or editing, though, just because I'm way too easily distracted. I have to stick to things in the general genre or mood otherwise I'll have a beast of a time with revisions.
I do most of my writing (or work in general) at night, and pretty much all of it after noon-2pm. The morning doesn't ever give me anything productive. What about the rest of you? Do you have a preference? Why or why not?
It used to be 7:30 to 8:00 AM because that's when I was at school but before any classes started, so I had nothing to do. Then, it became 11:00-ish AM because that's when I ate lunch and often had nothing to do. Now I'm getting busy, so it's just when I have free time in school, usually when I am assigned to work in the school store because we never have customers.
I usually get the most done between midnight and 6 or 7 in the morning because that's when I'm the most awake and least bothered by other people.
