Q&A: How do you find the time to write?
My husband has asked me to write an e-book for him regarding his business. I'm a free lance writer, but I have never written more than a long article. How do you find the time to write? How long did it take you to write your last book? I have a 5 bedroom house with 6 people living in it. Between all my responsibility I have a tough time getting it all done. Homeschooling and the holidays make life stressful during this time anyway. I have a 15, 12, and 9-year-old daughter. I really want to do this right, he has never asked me to help in such an in depth way before. Any advice would be coveted! -Melissa
Hi, Melissa!
Great question! How exciting that you can honor and bless your husband through this project! However, I well know that transitioning from an article to a book can seem like a big leap.
When I published my first booklet, The Merchant Maiden, it seemed like a huge task and took dozens of hours and much effort to get it to completion. At that time, I was a stay-at-home wife expecting Kathrynne. Though I wasn't feeling too well my whole pregnancy, I had lots of quiet time on my hands to focus on writing. That was my first and last writing project before children and I've had to become much more creative in finding writing time since then.
So, when do I find the time to write? Basically, whenever I can! I am one of those people who can only do focused writing when things are completely quiet. My best writing seems to happen then, so I rarely attempt to have any focused writing time when I don't have a very quiet room to work in. Otherwise, it is just mostly wasted time. Sometimes I'll get up early in the morning and write for a little while before anyone is up. Sometimes I'll be up writing after everyone has gone to bed. For the most part, though, I usually set aside a little bit of Kathrynne's naptime to write. It doesn't happen everyday, but it happens many days and that's what works best for me. If I've just finished a big writing project, I usually give myself at least 4-6 weeks off. This helps me to not get burned out and when I come back to writing, I'm usually re-inspired and ready to hit it again!
How much time do I spend writing in a day? If I am working on a book project, I usually set a goal to spend 15-30 minutes a day on it in the initial stages. When it is closer to completion, it will often be more like an hour or so a day for a week or two, depending upon how large the project. There are usually a few days in the very final stages where it is longer than an hour, but those are rare occasions. On most days, I don't have much more than 15-30 minutes a day to write. Yes, I don't produce that many books and ebooks and what I do produce is all small in size, but I'm happy to have something to show for the 15-30 minute daily investment. 15-30 minutes is something and something is better than nothing. That's how I look at it. I always have many more book ideas than time, but instead of being overwhelmed by all those ideas and the lack of time to get them all down on paper, I just keep plodding along with my little daily time investment and it slowly adds up.
When working on a book project, I do set loose goals and deadlines for myself, as this seems to be beneficial in prodding me along, but I'm okay if I don't necessarily make these deadlines. For a 50-or-so-page ebook, I would allow myself at least 2-4 months to finish it. For an actual printed book, I would allow myself at least six months from start to finish. That is pretty reasonable for me. For others, it might be much too short or much too long.
Printed books involve much more time for me as I usually get a number of editors and reviewers to go over the final manuscript. Then you add on the time to have it laid out and the graphic design done and then the time at the printers. I also like to allow a few weeks for the final manuscript to rest and then I re-read through it aloud with my husband to make final edits and revisions. Depending upon the size of the book, once the book manuscript draft is finished, those many final details can take at least 4-8 weeks or longer. This is one reason I don't produce as many printed books!
I try to only have one writing project going at a time. I might be formulating ideas for a future writing project in my head or roughly on paper while writing something else, but I try very to stick with what I'm working on and actually finish it, before moving onto anything else. Sometimes that can be a challenge, especially to a flighty person like me, but it does pay off and guarantees the project is actually completed.
I've found that blogging is one of the easiest forms of writing for me. So, if I'm feeling "inspired" to write on something, I often will blog it and file it away in my memory to work that blog entry into a later writing project.
Another thing I've learned is that I write best at my desktop computer. Pen and paper are for personal journaling; computers are for public writing (at least that's how my brain computes it). I have a laptop and wireless internet so I can blog or type anywhere in the house (the perks of having a business!), but I've found that if I'm going to do focused writing, it really needs to be at my desk in the office. Again, this is what works for me. You might do your best writing curled up on the corner of the sofa! Try different things and see what is most productive.
I talk to many people who want to write and would love to publish things or at least produce ebooks. But I often hear them complain about their lack of time to do so. I always recommend they find a time in their day to carve out 15 minutes to sit down with a pen and paper or computer and blank screen and just write. Set the timer and get up after 15 minutes. Don't be disheartened if there are only 3 sentences written. Save your work and repeat the 15 minute writing time the next day, adding to and revising what you had written the day before. Keep doing this 4-5 days a week for a month and you'll probably be surprised at how much you'll have written.
If I were you, Melissa, instead of stressing over writing something mammoth compared to short articles, just view this ebook as a series of articles. Write one article at a time and then go back and work on meshing them together. Focus on bite-size pieces and it will make things seem a lot more manageable. Also, it sounds like your daughters are old enough that you could easily institute "Mom's Writing Time" sometime during the day. Ask them to give you 15-30 minutes of quietness sometime everyday. Perhaps you could even have them work on their own creative writing projects during that time.
Most importantly, pray and ask the Lord to give you wisdom, time, creativity, and so forth to be able to start and complete this project. Do it as an offering unto the Lord to honor and bless your husband and God will richly bless your efforts!
posted by Crystal Paine at 12:34 PM
1 Comments:
I enjoyed reading this, Crystal! Thanks for taking the time to write about writing! :)
I have found that having a blog gives me a lot of motivation to write articles about things on my mind. Also, people now sometimes come to me with topics they want to hear me write about, and that's always fun! :D I like writing, and blogging is a great avenue for me. :)
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