Friday, May 27, 2011

How Do You Find the Time?



Ah, the eternal question. It seems between jobs, school, family, etc. etc. life just gets in the way of your sitting around time, or as Whitman used to call it “loafing.” So how are writers supposed to find time to hear themselves think, let alone write?

I address this query more to my fellow bloggers and fiction writers, but anyone who spends time on an intensive passion in their lives knows what I'm talking about. Everyone has preferable hours when they do their best work. For some that's at the crack of dawn, whereas others prefer to function as night owls.

Regardless of your preference, how do you get your daily dose of writing into your life? Do you set aside specific hours or have a certain word count you aim for each day? Maybe you don't write every day, but instead do every other day or just weekends or only on weekdays. So to sum it up, how do you find the time?


3 comments:

  1. I've tried it all :).

    I struggle more with energy/focus than finding time, so specific goals are usually more effective than just setting out blocks of time.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I just do :) That's all there really is to it. If you want to do something, you will. You'll carve out seconds and minutes wherever and whenever you can.

    I'm luckier than most - I get to write full time, especially since both of my children are now in school full time. But that wasn't always the case. In general, I carved out writing time from my sleeping time :) When I was in the midst of a project, I usually got about 3 or 4 hours of sleep a night.

    But then, most writers I know are insomniacs, so it wasn't too bad LOL In fact, we'd often have chat windows open while we wrote into the early hours of the morning :)

    But really, you just do what you need to do. I would sit on the floor and write during my daughter's dance class; hang out in the car and write during my son's soccer practices; stay up late and wake up early so I could write when everyone else was asleep and didn't need me. You do what you gotta do :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hektor - too true. Energy and focus seem to go hand in hand with how much time a person has available. Funny how that works:)

    Michelle - Simple and straight to the point, you must be a writer;) Personally, I'm no insomniac, but I've spent plenty hours with less sleep and more writing. Strange how that can be soothing:)

    ReplyDelete