How to Write When You Don’t Have Time

Have you ever felt like you’d love to write, but just don’t have the time?

I certainly have.

For a writer, one of the most frustrating things in the world is having dozens (or hundreds) of ideas, but no time to actually write them. How can you find the time to get ideas down?

I have dozens of half-started ideas, but feel like I have no time to build on them and turn them into the stories I’d like. However, recently, I’ve been trying a different technique. I’m starting to concern myself less with having to find the time to finish an idea, merely find some time to make progress on them.

When creating something new, I can generally write 250 words in about 10 minutes. Since I always seem to find 10 minutes to use the rest room, eat something, or browse one of the various news sites I follow, I’ve started scheduling 10 minutes each evening to try to make progress on one of three ideas. I allow myself just a moment to choose which idea to focus on, and take those 10 minutes to try and get as far as I can.

If I keep this up for a year, and I’m able to keep most of what I write, I could potentially have a novel-length work after a year (over 90,000 words).

Now that’s an exciting thought.

How do you find time to write? What other ideas would you suggest?

This entry was posted on Monday, April 19th, 2010 at 4:31 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.