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Making Time To Write

When you’re a writer, particularly one with a job or family (or both) it can be difficult to find the time you need to write. In fact, it can be downright impossible. This article will help you master your time so you can finally carve out the time you need to write

Make Writing A Priority

We live in a world that attaches an immediate monetary value to everything. In other words, if something doesn’t make us money instantly, it’s considered a luxury, not a necessity. Nowhere is this more true than writing. Because books make their money slowly over time, people feel that writers are ‘playing not working’ when they’re writing. This leads to our friends and families making impositions on our writing time. After all, they reason, we’re not really working we’re playing.

Don’t expect them to understand this, they won’t. Just learn to say no to requests made during your writing time. Eventually, they will get the message even if they don’t understand it.

Turn Off The Screens

Did you know that they say the modern American spends four hours a day on the computer or TV? Of course, this is four hours of leisure time. (Imagine what you could do with an extra four hours a day. Even if you don’t fit into this typical mold, turning off the television you’re bound to find a few more hours that you didn’t know you had.

Get More Sleep

There’s an old saying that if you want to put more hours in your day, you need to put more hours in your sleep. This flies in the face of most modern wisdom, which encourages us to sleep as little as possible. However, study after study has shown that when you don’t get enough sleep, everything takes longer than it should and more mistakes are made. Recent studies have also shown that creativity is linked to enough sleep. Lack of creativity means death to a writer, so for writers, even more so than non-writers,  getting enough sleep is essential.

Get Up Earlier

Though night owls among you will object, studies have shown that we are at our most creative early in the morning instead of late at night. After all, at night, your brain has already had a full day of work and life. What it really wants is rest, not being forced to be creative.

Another advantage to getting up earlier is it gives you extra time before the house wakes up or before you have to get ready for work. This extra time is your time to write. Of course, the secret to waking up earlier is to still leave yourself enough time to sleep for a full eight hours before waking. Trying to cut short your sleep just to get up earlier defeats the purpose.

It’ been said that you will never find time for anything, you must make it. Nowhere is this more true than with writing. Non-writers simply don’t understand that writing, researching, scribbling, and other things that look like ‘time wasters’ are actually part of how a writer works. If you make writing a priority in your life, then everything else will fall into place.

Until Next Time,
Mercedes Taban

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