Freed from the paywall: Finding Time to Write
You can do it! I believe in you :)
I’m not going to lie to you. Unless you find the time to write, your book is not going to get written. Obvious, really! And you might be thinking ‘I don’t have time, I don’t even have five minutes to spare’. I promise you that if writing a book is really what you want to do, then you will have to make time.
This is the other reason why most people don’t write a book. They like the idea – they love the fantasy of being an author – but they can’t be bothered to actually put the time in to really do it. That’s fine – everyone is different. I’m exactly like that with, say, learning to dance. I like the idea of it, I have a nice shiny fantasy in my head of me skimming across the ballroom floor, not putting a foot wrong, but you know what? I can’t be arsed to actually learn. It’s not that important to me. So if that’s your attitude to writing, then really, this article cannot help you.
But if it is important to you, here are some tips.
Firstly, the key to getting anything big done is to break it down into smaller steps. You can then tackle one step at a time. This is known as the ‘eat the elephant’ philosophy – as in ‘how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time!’
If you’re sat here reading this and thinking ‘I don’t have time to even eat a morsel of an elephant’, I’m telling you that you do. You really do. Maybe not much time, but if you can find half an hour a day – even ten minutes a day – to write, then you’ll be surprised at how quickly the words add up. No matter how many small children you have, or how long a commute you have, or how busy you are during the day or night. Carve out a time slot that is just for writing and you’ll get your book written, I guarantee it. I’m not saying it’ll be easy – in fact, it’ll probably be bloody hard, but it’s do-able. You can do it too, I promise!
Here’s how you find the time.
Firstly, track your time for a day. By that, I mean break your day down into half-hourly sections and see what fills your time. When you can clearly see what you spend your time doing, you can pick out activities and tasks that either waste your time or take up more time than they should. You might be spending half an hour faffing around after dinner (I’m guilty of this. I’m a champion faffer). You might realise that you’re spending two hours a day just on the housework. However crammed your schedule, I can guarantee you that, once you confront how you spend your time in black and white, you’ll be able to find a little bit of time, here and there, that you can use for writing.
My best tip for finding time? Stop watching television.
Seriously, stop watching television. Did you know that the average person watches 25 hours of television a week? If that’s you, think about how much of your book you could get written if you cut your TV watching time down to half its current level. Think of what you could do if you cut it down to nothing and you had 25 hours a week in which to write.
‘But I watch TV to relax!’ I hear you cry. Fine, and nobody’s saying you shouldn’t relax. In fact, it’s even more important to relax when you’re busy than when you’re not, but as I’ve said before, if you want to get anywhere with your writing, then you have to make sacrifices in other areas. Record your favourite programs and watch them later, perhaps on a weekend night – although you may find that you forget all about them and don’t miss them much after all.
Can’t bear the thought of giving up TV? Try getting up an hour earlier or going to bed an hour later and writing then (I should confess that I tried the ‘getting up earlier to write’ thing. That lasted about a week. I am not a morning person).
If you’re spending too much time on things such as housework, cooking, ironing or gardening, then you have three options.
Streamline the process – e.g. spend a couple of hours cooking up a batch of food to freeze. You can then quickly warm something up in the microwave, rather than starting from scratch.
Drop your standards. Vacuum once a week instead of twice. Do you really need to iron everything? Do you really need to iron, full stop? I literally never iron anything. I mean, nothing. I don’t even own an iron.
Outsource. If you can afford it, hire a cleaner or gardener and let them do it. If you can’t afford it, can you bribe your partner and kids to take on some more domestic chores? You should be sharing them out anyway, seriously. Don’t ever be a domestic martyr – you’ll get no thanks. Oh, and my own tip (if you can afford it) is to buy a robot vacuum cleaner. Now, I type away and Robbie the Roomba potters about the room, vacuuming the carpets, which is just blissful.
Need more time? Here are some more tips:
If you commute by train or bus and you can sit down, you can use that time to write. Hugely successful indie author Mark Dawson wrote most of his early books during his three-hour daily commute. I’ve done it myself, in a notebook with a pen as well as using a laptop. Wear noise-cancelling headphones so you can concentrate and then type/write away. Even if you can’t get any actual fiction down, you can outline, make character notes or work out plot twists.
If you spend a lot of time walking, you might be able to use dictation as you walk. This is not something I do myself but I know a lot of writer friends who do. Dragon Naturally Speaking seems to be the software of choice, and some writers are reporting quite incredible word counts – unsurprisingly, as most people can talk a lot faster than they can type.
Once you’ve got the hang of it, you might be able to dictate when you’re doing the housework, or the gardening, or any other chores. Dictation can also be an excellent choice for those with back or wrist problems, or problems with sitting still for long periods of time
This is probably not something that I should be recommending, but in honest truth, the day jobs I sometimes had weren’t enough to fill the day. By that, I mean, I was expected to be at my desk but I didn’t actually have anything to do! (Temporary jobs are particularly bad for this, I find.) So, what I used to do was write a little bit of the novel I was working on and email the text to my personal email address. That night, if I had the time and energy, I’d write a bit more and email it back to my work address, so if I had any free time the next day, I could pick up from where I left off. Naughty? Yes, a bit, I’m afraid. I wasn’t being paid to write novels. But then again, I wasn’t being paid to sit around doing nothing, so there you go.
I used to fill my lunch break with reading books on self-publishing, or I’d take a notebook and write, or plot, or work out character development. I still carry a notebook around with me, because sometimes I’m struck with a great plot idea, or twist, or something creative. I have been known to whip out my notebook in the middle of the Sainsbury’s shop and scribble my moment of inspiration down. More sophisticated souls will probably want to use a suitable smartphone app.
If you have a partner, could you ask them to take over more of the childcare/petcare/housework/delete as appropriate? Could they take the children out to the park at weekends, for an hour or two, to give you time to write? Talk to them about your goals and aspirations and get them on the same page (perhaps literally!). If you don’t have a partner, are there friends with whom you could swap childcare with for an afternoon – or even an hour or so – at weekends?
If you’re really determined to make something of your writing, and to change your life for the better, don’t be ashamed to call in favours. Just be sure you do the same for others as you ask for yourself.
Now for a mention of the dreaded housework. It can be a source of friction between partners and flatmates, a non-stop drain on your precious free time and, most depressingly of all, an endless, Sisyphean task; never ever to be completed. Unfortunately, unless you want to be one of those people who appear on the news, being dug out of a house filled with forty years' worth of accumulated festering rubbish, you do need to do some housework. But did you know there are ways of actually doing less and not feeling guilty about it?
Don't wash your clothes so much.
Did you know that washing your clothes decreases their lifespan? If you shower every morning, put clean clothes onto your clean, perfumed, deodorised body, sit at a desk all day and don't break a sweat, take it from me, your clothes will not need washing after one wear (underwear and socks excepted).
Don't make your bed.
Every night you exhale and sweat out moisture into your bed. When you get up, pull the duvet/blankets/covers back and get some air to the sheets and mattress to disperse some of the dampness.
Don't use air fresheners.
Air fresheners mask unpleasant odours: they don't disperse them. Open a window (yes, even in winter) and get some fresh air in the house. This is even more important if you have a house with double-glazing, as mould spores can easily take hold in the warm, damp environment of a house unable to breathe.
Don't iron (you may spot a theme here).
When your clothes are dry, smooth and fold them and they won't get too creased. Your body warmth will also cause minor creases to drop out of fabric (if only the same worked with skin...).
Don't clean (much).
Some allergy specialists believe that the rise in childhood allergies might be partly attributable to people now living in houses that are too clean. Overuse of anti-bacterial sprays and cleaning products mean children are not exposed to a variety of bugs and germs, weakening their immune systems. Whether or not this is true, you really don't need to go overboard with harsh detergents. The best defence against everyday germs is to make sure you wash your hands regularly with soap and hot water.
Obviously, no one wants to live in a complete pigsty. But, in the grand scheme of things, housework is not something that should occupy a great deal of your time. Do you think that at your funeral, your tearful relatives will pay tribute to you by saying 'she kept a really clean house'? If in doubt, remember the words of Quentin Crisp, ‘There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse’.
Quick Recap:
Track your time to see what you can free up to write.
Streamline and outsource your chores.
Stop watching television!
Look into dictation if you spend a lot of time commuting or walking.
This is an edited extract from my non-fiction book How to Write a Novel When You’ve Got No Time or Money (and have a toddler hanging off your leg), available from Amazon.
Photo by Unseen Studio on Unsplash
Photo by Thom Milkovic on Unsplash