the secret to finding time to write

back to writing week 1: how to find, make, and steal time for writing

Happy Labor Day! I hope you’re getting a chance today to relax and recharge.

For this week of Back to Writing, let’s talk about making time to write. Last week, you set your vision. Being deliberate about time is the link between your daily life and that big vision.

two quick stories about writing and time

• I wrote my dissertation on the Wisconsin Rural Writers’ Association, a midcentury group that encouraged rural people across the state to take up creative writing. One of the things I loved about that research is how, even as those writers’ lives were in some ways very different from mine (they were writing between farm chores and 4H meetings, and I can’t keep a hanging fern alive), the way they talked about writing—why it mattered, why it was hard—resonated with my own writing life. As I was thinking about time for this project, I was reminded of a column from the organization’s 1951 winter newsletter. The column was written Fidelia Van Antwerp, a founding member and retired school teacher who spent her retirement driving around the state leading writing workshops in church halls, farmhouses, and university Extension buildings, and writing mildly scolding columns for the newsletter. In this particular column, she remarked somewhat tartly that

  “Some of our members are ‘writing with dry ink,’ hoping eventually to find time to sit down and write. Has anyone the secret to finding time?”

Fidelia Van Antwerp, from a 1950 article in the Wisconsin State-Journal. (Doesn’t she look like she’d cheerfully rap your knuckles for checking twitter during your writing time?)

• One of the things I love most about my Get to Work Book is the monthly graphic. I save them, and I rotate them on the bulletin board at my desk, depending on what kind of inspiration I feel like I need. I’d posted this one—Good Things Take Time—earlier this summer as a reminder to myself that sometimes progress is slow and each of us only needs to work at our own pace. But I realized with a jolt one day that I’d read it all wrong. The time that writing takes isn’t passive calendar time. Your book is not a little mushroom that will grow on its own in the dark. The chapters won’t bloom in a word file as you promise yourself you’ll get back to them when you can find the time. The time that writing takes is time at a desk or time talking with a friend who can help you untangle a structural issue or time walking and thinking and then recording what you’ve figured out along the way. Good work takes time, yes—but time is something you have to give to your work.

All of that to say: there is no secret to finding time to write. (There is no trick.) I know it. You know it. The freelancing farmwives knew it in all the way back in Wisconsin in 1951. Time to write will never just appear to you. If you want to write, you’ll have to find, make, or steal the time to do it.

For this week, three ways of thinking about writing and time:

1. Finding Time to Write

Look at your calendar for the week and block out your writing time. It doesn’t have to be hours, and it doesn’t have to be every day. 15 minutes three times a week will get you farther than waiting until you have uninterrupted hours. The idea here is to commit to your writing in advance.

Once you’ve blocked out your time, clear whatever obstacles might get in the way, whether they’re small children, work emails, or your own self-doubt. If you have trouble getting started, writing a note the night before about what you’re working on and why can help. If opening your computer to write is a portal to distraction, you could switch to writing by hand, or use a website blocker like Freedom or Leech Block to automatically cut off the internet or particular sites at regular times.

Plan a way to give yourself credit for what you’ve done.I like to mark my writing time in pencil in my planner, then when I’m done with each writing session, I note what I’ve done (pages, time, etc) and highlight the box in pink. (This links back to the scorecard we talked about last week; we’ll return to that idea next week, when we talk about accountability systems for writing.)

2. Making Time to Write

Maybe you’re looking at your calendar and struggling to find spare time. If you can’t find it, can you make it? Leave the laundry unfolded, let your kids watch a little more TV. Get takeout for dinner, or heat up something frozen. What can you give up or skip this week to make more time to write?

3. Stealing Time to Write

What little lost chunks of your day can you reclaim and put toward writing?

An example: now that I’m back to teaching on campus, my commute (an hour each way, though a pleasant, fast hour on the Atlantic City Expressway) is a huge block of time at the beginning and end of the day a couple times a week. I’m going to try to use that time more purposefully toward a new writing project, by using it to listen to podcasts and audiobooks I’m hoping will help with research and inspiration, and by using the voice recorder on my phone to collect ideas as I’m driving.

Victoria Chang wrote the first draft of Barbie Chang in her car while waiting to pick up her kids. What can you do with the spare snippets of time in your day?

two tasks for today

1. Commit to your writing time for the week. Where can you find, make, or steal time for your writing? Record it right now in whatever way will work for you, whether that’s in a paper planner, a digital calendar, or a reminder that will pop up on your phone. Remember: consistency is better than huge goals.

2. Share your goals for the week. There’s magic in writing things down, and there’s magic in sharing your intentions out loud. If you share your goals in the comments, we’ll all be cheering for you this week, and I’ll check in on you on Friday to see how you did. If that feels too public, you can email me (just reply to this newsletter!), or you can just write it down someplace where you’ll see it.

I’ll check in on Friday to see how your work is going. Happy fall, and happy Back to Writing!

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I’d love to hear about your plans for making, finding, and stealing time to write this week. If you have a friend you think would benefit from some encouragement in their writing life, I’d love for you to share this newsletter. You can always reply to this email, comment below, or find me on twitter (@nancy_reddy) and instagram (@nancy.o.reddy).