I currently work full-time 9-5:30. I am exhausted and struggling to find the time to write. I do write in the evenings and on the weekends sometimes but I wish I had more time.
I am thinking of going part time which will halve my income and how much i can save. This is the only downturn. I am back living with my family so my expenses are low and can afford to do this for idk how long it will take me.. i know it totally depends but curious how long it took others.
Do you have any suggestions for me? I would love to hear how you’ve managed writing alongside your other responsibilities.
Comments
I haven’t published but I’m getting close to start querying and have been working on a few different projects for the last few years trying to get one complete that I can move toward publishing. My workday is 8-5, which means 7;30-5:30 when factoring in my driving time. I’m not a morning person so I don’t do anything of value before work (I just get up, get ready, and go to work). That leaves evenings and weekends for everything else.
Typically I exercise at least 3 days a week after work (we have an onsite gym so I try to do this before going home because it cuts a little time out and guarantees that I get it done). So by the time I shower and eat dinner and chat with my husband a bit, it’s usually between 7:00 pm and 8:00 pm before I have time for creative stuff. I would say that I try to block 2 hours in the evenings at least 3 workdays and then I also do some things on the weekend related to writing. Sometimes I’ll write during my lunch break or other snippets of time during the day if I’m particularly inspired. But generally, it’s 2 hours 3-4 times per week on weekdays and then usually another few hours over the weekend. Sometimes I’ll have long writing sessions one or both days and sometimes shorter.
I don’t have kids, so that helps a lot. I’m really just responsible to myself and my husband, but he’s creative too so we just kind of parallel play a bit and work on our separate creative endeavors at the same time.
My situation was a bit different as I was working as a freelance writer while writing both of my books, albeit juggling multiple other writing & podcast projects alongside the book-writing. However:
The most useful thing for me, both times, was breaking it down into very manageable chunks and pre-scheduling those on my calendar so I’d know exactly when I’d be writing each section and couldn’t wriggle my way out of it. (My partner also offered me rewards/incentives at the end of the week if I finished all my writing goals for that week, lol.)
I used Scrivener to write my books and found it hugely helpful too, because you can set word count goals and deadlines and it auto-calculates how many words you need to write per working day to hit your goal. I found this quite motivating, in a yay-dopamine kind of way.
Best of luck!! 👏🏻👏🏻