How to Make Time for Writing When You Can't Seem to Catch a Break
Are you so busy you can't seem to make time for writing? Wondering how you're ever going to complete the first draft of your novel?
Life gets busy. Demands pop up. And just when you sit down to write, another distraction flies in from left field. It's hard to catch a break. And now you're beginning to wonder if maybe you're really not cut out to be a writer.
Before you give up hope, or get so frustrated you want to pull your hair out, there's a solution. But you'll need to have an open mind.
There's a common denominator when it comes to being so busy that we can't seem to find time for anything else. It's not work. It's not our long to-do lists. It's not all of the distractions. It's us.
We've already convinced ourselves that we don't have time to write. So… why would we bother? Why try to do something we know we don't have time for? Every time we sit down to write, something comes up and we get frustrated that we're so quick to set the writing aside. Why continue putting ourselves in that position when we already know we're going to fail?
So, what's the solution? How do you make time for writing?
We have to change how we view our dream of writing. And we have to change the way we're spending our time. We also have to change how we view success.
Most of us can find ten minutes a day to focus on something we long to do. But many of us are still thinking there's not much a person can accomplish in ten minutes, so why bother?
But the big thing to think about is that if we spend ten minutes every day doing something we long to do, eventually, we'll get the hang of it and be able to make the most of that time. We may even become quicker and more efficient with other tasks so we can reduce our stress and overwhelm and increase the amount of time we can spend on writing.
Stress and overwhelm work together to keep us from achieving our goals. The excuse becomes: I'm too tired. There's no way I can accomplish everything in ten minutes.
And, of course, that's true. We can't accomplish *everything* in ten minutes. But we *can* accomplish a tiny bit at a time. And that's better than accomplishing nothing at all because we're too frustrated to even get started.
It's not about not having the time. It's about making the time. And sometimes we have to fight for that time. We have to change how we view time. We have to adjust our thought process on how much we can accomplish in that time.
I'm not saying it's easy. It's going to be hard because it's something new. We've been putting our writing aside for so long that it feels so foreign to us. But once we get the hang of it and get our writing time in, even if it's just a quick ten minutes a day, it'll become second nature and we'll be able to make that time more productive.
If we long to write, we must get our writing time in. And there's no other way to do that than to make time for writing. Hang in there for the long haul and you'll start to make progress toward your writing goals.
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