Maximizing Time for Writing - Part 1

Macro-level thoughts about creating and sustaining a writing practice over time

It’s easy to talk a big game in the mind about getting one’s work in, but in reality, it can be a Herculean feat to figure out how to find enough hours in a day, much less a week, to put your ass in the seat and write. There’s really no other way to learn to do it, after all, and even less so to finish something you’re proud enough of to send to others in hopes to publish. So how does a person of ambition, who also has a job and bills, perhaps a s/o and a family, and basic needs, carve out a routine they can rely on to give them space to succeed? Is writing really just a contest over who has the most time to burn in getting good, or are there choices you can make, at least when life allows, that help establish a practice that can facilitate getting where you want to go no matter what?

Since I started writing seriously, in my early 20s, I’ve made a point (sometimes to a fault) of sticking hard and fast to my practice in a way that prioritizes time at the desk over everything else, on the idea that if I was ever going to make it how I wanted in writing, I had to go all the way in and not look back. In the twenty odd years since then, the times and connotations of writing and publishing alike have changed immensely, and along the way, thankfully, so have I, at least in ways that aim to make my practice more efficient, while also still defending my time and space to allow myself the freedom to do what I wish, at least to the extent that I can plausibly control.

Everyone’s lifestyle is different obviously, and not everyone has the luxury to decide to be so inflexible as I have often in the midst of remaining snub nosed about my work time. I certainly wouldn’t categorically recommend choosing to work shit jobs in exchange for more creative space, nor would I imagine most people can be willing to forgo certain needs and luxuries that would allow them free time at the expense of their own health and happiness. It was easier in my 20s in the early 2000s to say I don’t want kids and don’t need to live in a super nice place or a big city—the cost of living, as well as the ability to freelance for a living, is a whole different ballgame than it was then. Maintaining flexibility so you can spend all day at your computer making shit up isn’t going to put food in your mouth (at least not reliably), and many times I’ve looked back and wished I’d been more easygoing on myself, more open to the world.

With that in mind, ambition does take sacrifice, and despite whatever misgivings I might bear about the foolishness of youth, I can say for certain at this point that my practice has not only given me the rope I needed to achieve my dreams, it has given me a life of a certain sort. I feel most myself, most free, when I’m in the space I created for exactly that mode of existence, and without it, I don’t know where I’d be.

The catch is that there no obvious right answers, and no single path to guide one’s way. You kind of have to make things up as you go, just like the writing itself, and be willing to walk a tightrope between camps when curveballs force you out of your box. I hope that by sharing some of the tactics and tips I’ve used to establish process alongside inspiration, I can help answer one of the most asked questions a beginning writer is likely to ask: How do I get time to write?

1. Identify the work of the writing itself as a priority worth having.

By this I mean that you need to distinguish the act of sitting down in your chair and putting your head into a project as separate and distinct from everything else that comes with it. There is work you do for pay, and there is the work you do to publish and promote your writing, and neither of those necessarily have much to do with the writing itself. It’s impossible to think clearly when trying to do too many things at once, and so it is important to secure the space you use to think and compose creatively in a way that allows you to go there without feeling tugged back into reality. Easier said than done, obviously, but also fundamental in giving yourself a chance to get where you hope to eventually go without having your feet tied together. Sounds obvious, doesn’t it? And yet how many would-be authors can you name who love nothing more than poopooing how much writing sucks, and how hard it is, and how you hate it? If that’s the case, you should probably get off the train in your mind while you still can.

2. Secure your writing time-space.

Early on, I preferred writing at night. I chose that time because the rest of the world was asleep and I felt undistracted, able to hear myself think without worrying about what I missing or neglecting. As I got older, though, and began to taking writing as a practice more seriously, I realized that often by the time the night rolled around I’d be running on fumes physically, or that it was too inconsistently a time I could depend on to be available daily. This became even more true when the work I did for a day job began to more and more resemble the same practice—sitting at my desk typing—and thus by the time I’d finished all my day’s paid work and social obligations, I’d already used up all the mysterious energy that I would normally use to inform my creative work.

Around this time, I began thinking of my writing career as having two hats: one that did the creative work that was my passion and yet would often take years to produce income, much less any attention outside my own, and the other being the busy person answering emails, corresponding with editors, querying for jobs, and later, preparing manuscripts for publication. Too often, when in the frenzy of being self-employed, I’d allow outside requests to waylay my timeline, and sacrifice my creative space for the relief of accomplishing professional tasks “to get them out of the way,” which quickly could turn to jumping around between goals wily-nilly—cramming in an hour here and an hour there, without any real structure besides wack-a-mole style. As long as I “hit my word count,” it didn’t seem to matter to me too much—I can take it, I thought; in fact, I have to—though clearly there’s nothing worse than coming back to a piece of writing you bent over backwards to focus on only to find you’d been dialing it in.

The trade off of waiting until night for the quiet time to dig in most deeply suddenly seemed backwards, and I switched to the style I use to this day: do the work I love and believe in first, being the creative stuff, and switching over to paid work and the more mindless upkeep responsibilities that come with publication for late afternoon into the evening. This pushed my best hours to the front of the queue, and made it easier to feel satisfied with how I’d spent my day for myself before I started using my time for things I might not need my most advanced thinking and imaginative skills for. While to an outside the work of making shit up might seem arbitrary, requiring just enough hours at the desk to type the keys in order, but anyone who’s spent serious time trying to finish even a solid short story knows—if you don’t put it on the page, it isn’t there. Much of the magic that makes a block of text into a compelling object occurs behind the scenes in a way that crude hour-to-word count can’t contain—which is likely why something like NaNoWriMo famously is responsible for manifesting junk: it’s not about force, it’s about finesse.