What if I didn’t have a career that required more ten+ hour days than eight hour days? What if I didn’t have three sleep disorders that force me to be at the mercy of three medications that my neurologist/sleep expert has prescribed after years of trial and error to get just the right meds and dosages? What if I didn’t have other health issues that sometimes take control of my life? What if I didn’t have a husband, six cats, three dogs, and two colonies of feral/stray cats that I care for before and after work? Do you see where I’m going with all of this? We all have situations in our lives that interfere with our writing time and seem to have more control over us than we have over them. And most of them are never going to just magically move out of our way so that we can spend more time writing. So we have to get creative with our time. Use the time that you are waiting for appointments to do a character sketch. Get a voice recorder or use your cell phone during your commute to talk through a plot hole you found in your book. Keep a notebook and pen close 24/7…on your nightstand, on your desk, in your purse/pocket…for those fleeting ideas that you have. Write during your work breaks and at lunch. There are ways to do it, you just have to figure them out. Sit down and make a list of things over which you have little to no control and then start getting creative. And think totally out of the box. Your first round of solutions don’t even have to make sense. Have some fun with it. Then start paring the list down until you get to some real, workable solutions that you can implement. Then start looking at everything else in your life that you actually let interfere with your writing, then make another list of what you are willing to stop doing so that you can use that time for writing. No, it’s not an easy task but it’s one that’s well worth your time. Every minute that you use for something else is a minute that you’re not writing. I’m not saying that you need to become a monk and never have any fun or leave the house but you need to become more aware of the time you use for other things. And if you’re using those things as an excuse to not write. Just some things to consider. You know your life and what it entails, so mine it for some extra writing time. It’s there…you just have to find it.
Inspired Writer 