In every author’s dream, we have hours upon hours to idle away in a coffee shop, writing and reading and daydreaming about characters.
In reality, however, many of us have day jobs, school, family to take care of, or a dozen other responsibilities that demand our time and attention. This leaves us with precious little time to spend on writing.
I started working full-time almost exactly a year ago, and even before that I’ve always had to fit in writing around a busy life—I wrote the draft of my first book during my last semester of grad school while working two jobs. So I’ve learned to write in short chunks of time, rather than waiting for the ideal day of having a full afternoon to work.
I thought I would share a few tips I’ve learned that have helped me take advantage of those small writing sprints.
Shift your mindset
This sounds easy, but it’s the most important part. Instead of thinking, “I only have fifteen minutes to write,” shift your perspective to say, “I get to write for a full fifteen minutes!” So much of writing is a mind game—it’s all about how you frame things and your attitude going into it. While it’s tempting to complain (even just internally) about not having enough time to write, that ultimately won’t change anything! But being grateful for any time you have to write can change things, as it lets you focus on your work and your creativity instead of being distracted wishing for a better situation.
Always keep your document open
I know that I’ll enjoy writing once I get started, but sometimes getting started feels impossible. So I’ve learned that I have to remove all possible barriers to writing—including barriers as small as “starting up Scrivener and waiting for my project to load.” So, if my computer is on, I always have my current WIP open, even if I don’t plan to work on it soon. That way, when I do snag ten minutes to write, I can dive right in. I don’t waste a second waiting for my project to load and, more importantly, I don’t have a chance to wander off into Twitter “just for a few minutes” while I wait for Scrivener to open.
Have a way to write on the go
It seems like most of the small amounts of downtime tend to happen when we’re out and about—in line at the pharmacy, waiting for our Starbucks order, sitting in our cars outside an event because we didn’t want to be late but we overestimated so now we’re super early and need to wait until it’s a socially acceptable type of early to walk in (just me?). Instead of scrolling through social media, start thinking of those pockets of time as writing time!
Use Google Docs or another program that can sync between your computer and phone so that you can easily pull up your WIP and squeeze in a few sentences. If you can’t sync your full document, have a Google doc or even an email draft that you jot a few notes in when you finish a writing session. Then refer to this when you have a chance to write from your phone to reminder yourself where you left off.
Have you tried any of these methods? What works for you when writing in short amounts of time? Let me know in the comments!
