Putting the Creative in Creative Writing

I've been working on a new novel lately. While that isn't particularly worthy of admiration in itself, maybe you'll be more impressed when I tell you that I've been writing it with my thumbs on a keyboard 2" wide.

You see, I have a nine-month-old baby. I also freelance from home, and my hours have been steadily increasing. These two facts combined mean my large blocks of time to write have shrunk to zero. I could have given up, decided to put writing on hold until my son is older or until I can carve out more time.

Instead, I figured out that I can squeeze in ten to fifteen minutes of writing on my phone while I'm feeding the baby. Sounds a bit rough, right? But you know what? I'm managing 500-600 words a day. At that rate, I'll be done with my draft by early June. Not too shabby.

If I can do it, so can you. Pull out your phone or your pocket notebook in line at the bank, on the train during your commute, or while waiting for your coffee. You might only get a few lines down--but that's a few less lines you need to have a completed draft. Need uninterrupted time to get in the drafting groove? Jot down some ideas instead, or write a few journal lines for one of your main characters.

I'd be remiss if I didn't close this post by mentioning the app that I use for my writing. Evernote is an app with versions for your phone and computer that syncs automatically, so there's never any need to do a complicated transfer. My only quibble with it is the lack of a word count feature on the iPhone app, but I get around that by taking a few seconds to copy the text I wrote and pasting it into the Wordcounter.net window. I'm hoping they add word count functionality in the next update!

You Have to Change Something In Your Life If You Want to Write

A few weeks ago a coworker found out about my upcoming book release and confessed that he's been trying to finish a novel for several years now.

"How do you find the time?" he asked, after admitting that time had been his greatest barrier.

I thought about sugarcoating my answer, but what good would that do him? So I told him the truth: if you really want to write a novel you have to suck it up and make the time. Period. Which means something in your life has to change.

We've all set goals we've failed to achieve (New Years resolutions anyone?) But I'm willing to bet that nine times out of ten, the reason we fail is because we didn't change anything about our current lives to better enable success.

Think about it: let's suppose you decide you want to run a marathon.  You currently allot one hour every day for exercise.  If you ever want to achieve your goal, then you're going to have to make more time to run, otherwise, simply put, you're going to fail. (Unless you're a scientific anomaly and can run a 2.3 minute mile.)

The same is true of writing. If you don't have time in your current schedule to write, then you have to give something up to make time for it. That may manifest itself in less sleep, less TV time, or even less time with friends and family, but it's a simple truth. Otherwise you are setting yourself up for failure, and that's not fair to anyone.

Truth be told this post is just as much for me as for all of you.  Since the holidays I've fallen off the writing bandwagon.  I want to say it's because I brought this guy home to live with me:

Meet Elvis Presley, The World's Cutest Dog 

How Can You Write When I'm Sitting Here Looking All Cute??

But really, it's because the time I'd previously carved out to write has been occupied with other things. Which means I need to reassess my schedule and give up something to accommodate my writing.  Otherwise I'm setting myself up to fail, and I love this new story to much to let that happen.

How do you make time in your busy day to write?