The issue of time management for fiction writers is an ever-popular subject. If I received a nickel every time someone asked me, “how do you find the time to write?” I could take my wife out for a nice seafood dinner.
I’ve been fortunate enough to write full-time for about five years now. But it wasn’t always that way. I used to hold down a job as a systems analyst in corporate America, a demanding position that sometimes required me to work sixty-hour-weeks .นิยายY
And while I was working that job–and pretty much every previous job I’ve ever had–I was writing. I published two novels before I left the corporate world, and one of the novels was the longest that I’ve ever written. (Dark Corner, if you’re curious.)
How did I manage my time? By identifying blocks of available free time during the day, and using them to write.
Usually, I wrote in the mornings before I left for the office. Sometimes two hours; sometimes just one. And for many years, I wrote in the evenings, too, often not shutting down my computer until midnight.
Depending upon your lifestyle and your daily responsibilities, I recommend you try a similar method.
Of the two, morning or evening, I think morning is the best writing time. Your mind is fresher in the morning, not full of the junk that you’ve dealt with throughout the day.
Early morning is also the time when those in your household are most likely to still be asleep. People are creatures of habit. If you know everyone in your home always wakes up at six o’clock, decide to be at your desk at five.
Yes, five in the morning is early. But you’ll have quiet for at least one hour, and in one hour, you can accomplish a lot.
The work you complete during this block of time is the second part of this discussion. I think it’s important to set a goal for how much writing you’ll accomplish in that hour. It will keep you focused.
I suggest a minimum of one page. Two would be good, too. If you’re a fast writer, perhaps you can manage three or four pages.
Set the page quota at whatever level fits your natural writing speed. But you must do it.
Which leads into the third part of this discussion: you have to get the work done. You can’t wait for the Muse to visit.
You have to commit to regular production. No way around it. There will be plenty of days when the last thing you feel like doing is writing fiction. But if you write only when you feel like it, it’s very unlikely that you’ll ever finish anything of book-length.
If you’re serious about calling yourself a writer, you must do the work. Period.
Which leads into my question for you: What have you written today?