“I don’t have time to write.”
We’ve all said it. Or thought it. Or heard our friends say it. And when faced with all the crazy demands of modern life, it seems so obvious, so irrefutable, so crushingly insurmountable. It’s the one excuse that always rings true: I want to write. I try to write. I’d love to write for hours every day. I just don’t have the time.
I’m here to call bullshit.
Don’t get me wrong. Limitations on our time are real. Work, health, relationships, sleep, errands, chores, childcare, elder-care, our own sanity—or simply the need to relax sometimes and enjoy life—all of these, and much more, put real physical limitations on our potential productivity, especially as it relates to writing.
But… The reason why we get all of those other things done—maybe the only reason we ever get things done—is because we schedule them and we show up. We show up to work at the scheduled time, barring catastrophe or severe illness (because if we didn’t, we’d get fired). We feed our pets regularly (because if we didn’t, they’d starve). We take our kids to school on time (because if we didn’t, they’d get in trouble). We never miss the latest episode of Better Call Saul or Scandal or Game of Thrones (because if we did, we’d have nothing to small-talk about by the water cooler—and our lousy co-workers would drop spoilers!).
We do all of these things because they matter to us. We take them seriously.
So, if we want to write, we have to take our writing seriously, just as seriously as we take all of our other responsibilities (and pastimes). If we don’t, we’ll never get our writing done. And we’ll be forever in wistful awe, or resentful envy, of those people who do take their writing seriously, who do get their writing done, and who—heaven forbid—actually make a living writing.
Sadly, that’s what most “aspiring writers” do. They watch in awe or envy as other people do the kinds of things that they’d love to do themselves if they could “just find the time.” But that’s not going to be us.
We’re not mere fan-boys and fan-girls. We’re professionals, or at least professionals-in-the-making. We admire successful writers, and we give them their due respect. But we’re not going to let them hog all the glory, either. We’re going to stake out our own literary territory, and we’re going to win it and hold it through planning and effort. We have a battle plan.
The following six tips represent a part of that battle plan. They’re a no-nonsense approach to tackling issues with time management, both real and psychological. They’re pretty basic, and nothing magical. You’ve probably heard/read them all before. But if you’re a beginning- or early-career writer, or even one of the aforementioned “aspiring writers,” these tips might provide useful reminders, or even the kick-in-the-pants you need, to stop making excuses and start making masterpieces.
1. Schedule time to write
I mean it. Actually block out time on your calendar for writing. You do the same for anything else you take seriously, whether it’s your sister’s wedding or your taxes. Writing should be no different.
For that matter, barring acts of God and other unforeseen emergencies, your writing time should be the same day(s) and time(s) every week. The reason is that habits produce better results than willpower. Think about the things you do every day, like brushing your teeth or making your bed. Do you do them regularly because you’ve learned to marshal the necessary massive willpower? Or do you do them by force of habit—in other words, you’d feel strange, awkward, or nasty if you didn’t?
If we’re honest about it, we all know that relying on willpower alone is a sure path to failure. How many people try, and fail, to keep New Year’s resolutions by willpower alone? The fact that willpower eventually runs out is why dieting doesn’t work—people almost always gain back the weight when the diet’s over—but changing eating habits does. It’s also why it can work to swap one addictive habit for another, like chewing gum instead of smoking. So, rather than relying on force of will, and the occasional vacation-time writing binge, plan writing time as a regular part of your schedule. Develop a writing habit.
Work produced is a direct function of what writing pros like Anne Lamott and Heather Sellars call “butt-in-chair” time. So the main obstacle we face is scheduling butt-in-chair time, and keeping to that schedule. As Steven Pressfield puts it: “It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write.” Knowing that, we should make a writing schedule and stick to it.
2. Make the scheduled time realistic
If you work full-time, have a family, or go to school, you’re probably not going to be able to sit down to write for four hours every night. That’s totally fine. Instead, make a realistic compromise with yourself. For example, you could commit to writing for 15 minutes every weekday (of course more is better, if you can, but we’re being realistic) plus two hours each day on the weekend. Writing guru and prolific author Wendy Belcher is big on the idea of writing for 15 minutes a day, and she has a track record of success, her students’ and her own, to back it up (Google it if you don’t believe me).
If counting minutes doesn’t appeal to you, try counting words instead. For example, you could commit to writing 200 words a day (about a half a page, if you’re using a 12-point font, single-spaced), or more, or less, depending on your available time and stamina. Everyone’s different—Graham Greene reportedly averaged 500 words a day, five days a week, while Michael Crichton averaged around 10,000 words daily. But even if you write only small amounts regularly, those small amounts add up to large ones as time goes on; consistency, more than the size of your daily output, is important when you’re starting out. Think about it: if you write just 200 words every weekday, that’s 8-10 pages per month. In a year, you’d have a (short) novel.
3. Make writing time sacred
A pretty skilled martial artist once told me that the secret to kung fu mastery is saying “no.” He’d go to practice with his grandmaster early in the mornings, even on weekends, so developing high-level butt-kicking skills required him to say “no” to midnight movies, late-night parties, and coffee after 5pm. Did he miss out on those things? Sure. Did some people get frustrated with him for having such a Spartan schedule? Without question. Becoming a kung fu master requires sacrifice. But what he missed out on in socializing and caffeinating, he gained in esoteric martial arts knowledge, along with confidence, fitness, poise, grace, muscle tone, and sheer bad-assery.
If we want to get our writing done, we have to take the same ruthless approach. We have to stick firmly and religiously to our writing schedule, within reason, and if an emergency forces us to deviate from it, we need to do our best to make up the lost time.
This means getting used to saying things like “No, I can’t go to dinner Wednesday night at 6. Sorry, that’s my writing time.” And make no mistake: some people will get upset with you. But if they really care about you, your friends and loved ones will understand that you need to schedule time for yourself. For some people, that might mean going to a spa. For others it might mean watching sports or building model trains or practicing kung fu.
For you, it means writing.
Incidentally, “kung fu” is just the English version of a Chinese phrase meaning, roughly, “learned skill.” Writing, like kung fu, is a learned skill. If you schedule time for it, and stick to your schedule, you’ll be surprised at what you’re capable of accomplishing.
4. Take breaks, but don’t count them as writing time
Ever heard the legend about how the chemist August Kekule discovered the structure of the benzene molecule in a dream? He’d grappled with the problem in one form or another for years, and then one day it just bubbled up from the unconscious while his conscious mind was dozing off.
Whether the story’s true or not, it points to a very real fact: breaks, rest, relaxation, daydreaming, and meditation are not merely ways to rest and recharge. They also work wonders for your creativity. In fact, there’s an impressive body of research showing that generous allotments of mental “downtime” are essential for being creative at all. Your unconscious mind does work for you while your conscious mind is taking a breather, and periodically shifting between mental tasks can stimulate novel ideas and solutions.
The lesson for writers? By all means, take breaks. They’re necessary and even beneficial. Just don’t count them as part of your writing time. If you’re timing yourself writing, stop the clock; if you’re counting words, stay committed to your goals. Breaks are great for creativity and alertness, and should be scheduled on top of your writing time, just as they are at your day job.
5. Make writing time as distraction-free as possible
Log out of Facebook. Turn off your cell phone. Don’t check your email, and don’t you dare browse Snapchat or Instagram. If you can do without the internet entirely, unplug that too.
Do what you sat down to do: Write. That’s what your writing time is for.
Paul Sylvia, in his book How to Write a Lot, talks about how he wrote that very book on a home computer with no internet connection. If he needed to do some research, he’d do it on a separate computer at work (he’s a psychology professor, by the way). He’d print out whatever sources he might need and then bring them home to his non-web-connected computer, which was reserved for writing only.
Interestingly, he does acknowledge that reading, research, analysis, and other “prep” work are a necessary part of the writing process. If you have limited time, and can only do prep work some days, that’s completely understandable. Count that as your writing time for that day (or excuse yourself from that day’s wordcount). But be conscious about the decision; decide to spend that day reading, taking notes, doing background research, brainstorming, or promoting yourself on Twitter (whatever you have to do). The next day, start fresh on your time/wordcount goals. Otherwise, all of that nonwriting work can become an excuse to never actually write anything. “I’ll write after I read one more article,” you say to yourself. “I’ll write as soon as I have more info/data/background, or as soon as I’ve plotted out every nuance and detail of the story.” Stop it. There’ll always be another article to read. You’ll always have something more to plot out. Don’t let that prevent you from writing. In fact, once you start writing, you might find that new ideas and connections become evident, seemingly from nowhere, and that old problems melt magically away. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it, as they say. So get writing.
6. Reward yourself for getting your work done
Like scheduling break time, rewarding yourself for your hard work is essential. Just don’t reward yourself until after you’ve done your daily writing. Instead of thinking of your other interests as distractions, try to re-cast them as rewards. For example, I’ll go see the new Pirates movie, but only after I finish my scheduled writing or I’ll go get ice cream—but only after I finish my day’s writing.
If you train yourself this way, writing will start to become a habit, the necessary work that you do to “earn” your leisure time. In fact, Pressfield considers that putting-in-the-work-to-earn-the-bacon mindset to be one of the qualities that separates the aspiring (or “amateur”) writer from the real, productive (“professional”) writer.
Conclusion
These tips alone won’t turn you into a literary genius or a bestseller-launching millionaire; they say nothing about style, or content, or form, and they don’t contain some “secret sauce” for generating great story ideas. Ultimately, there’s no royal road to becoming the next Ernest Hemingway or J. K. Rowling. However, like the saying goes, “you don’t have to be great to get started, but you do have to get started to be great.”
I can’t tell you whether you or I will or anyone else will ever become truly a “great” writer, whatever that may mean. But I can promise you this: if you follow the tips listed here, and stick to them, you’ll be a writer, at least. Not a dreamer. Not a talker. A writer, and not the “aspiring” kind: a person who writes.
And that’s a damn good start.
Happy writing! –OAB
O. A. Beckett 