Tag: time

Finding Time to Write

Quan

In one of my very first posts on this blog, I wrote about eliminating your excuses to not write. If you have something you want to write about, you should be writing. No one is going to tell your story for you. (Okay, you actually can pay a ghost writer to tell your story for you, but you still ought to be an active part of the process.). When I tell people I’m a novelist, I still hear people respond with “I’d like to write a book someday.” I ask them why not now, and they say they can’t find the time to.

I call BS on that.

People will make time to do the things they truly want to do. And unless you are truly writing or a living (like a technical writer or a Journalist), then writing will not be a natural part of your daily routine. Only full-time writers can write when they want, but they have to because it’s their job. You have to make time to write, just as you make time to binge watch TV shows or make time to rant on social media. There are plenty of ways to eke out time to get your ideas out, you just have to be committed enough to do it. Here are a few techniques I utilize.

Wake up an hour early or go to bed an hour later

Sometimes making time to write means literally making time. If your story is worth the hours of lost sleep, then those moments are perfect fodder for writing. Heck, for some, the creative juices flow best right before bedtime or right when they wake up anyway.

Write during your lunchbreak or downtime if you can

I admit I’ve snuck pieces of scrap paper onto the floor when I worked at factories. When the machines are down I’d jot a few quick notes down before picking up my broom to clean the area (Not something I recommend, though). Mostly if I had a long enough lunch break, I’d write ideas down then.

Jot down notes

This is something every writer should do. You should always keep a means of recording ideas handy at all time, whether it be a pen and some scratch paper, a note taking app on your phone, a notebook you carry around, or whatever. Inspiration can strike any time and anywhere under any circumstance, and when it happens you need to write it down, and yes, even jotting down notes counts as writing.

Vocal recorders

If you don’t have access to pen and scrap paper, or like me you find thumb-typing ideas onto the note app on your phone to be too tedious, you can always turn on your vocal recorder and dictate your ideas onto your phone. I personally haven’t tried this because I just like the feeling of writing or typing my ideas out better and it allows me more freedom to better organize my thoughts. But if it works for you, then go for it.

Email yourself

A good way to record ideas is to send them to yourself via email. You can write as much as you want, and they will always be in a place where you can retrieve them. I’ve done this plenty of time. In fact, I’ve backed up entire manuscript drafts be emailing them to myself. I actually trust that more than The Cloud.

Write instead of doing something else in your leisure time

Instead of watching the game, or going out partying, or hanging with the crew, or playing video games, or watching cat videos on YouTube, how about taking a half hour to write about what’s on your mind? You would be surprised at how must time you spend a day on mindless entertainment. That time can be spent writing. Or you can even multitask. Keep your laptop or tablet handy and type while you’re watching TV, or in between gaming sessions.

Write when you don’t feel like writing

This is a big one. Oftentimes you just don’t feel creative. It could be fatigue from the daily grind, or you’ve been through something particularly discouraging. The thing is, this is a perfect time to vent out your feelings of despair or frustration or fatigue. You can pour those negative feelings onto the paper, and into your stories. My negative feelings about my life at the time were the genesis of my book The Hand You’re Dealt. The emotions you get as my characters struggle with their careers and relationships are very, very real and were things that I was dealing with when I concocted the story.

Write when something major happens to get the feeling and reactions while they are fresh in your mind.

Likewise, when literally anything of importance happens in your life, that is a perfect opportunity to record it and put it into a story. Take note not only of what happened and why, but how everyone reacted to it, and how it made you feel personally, and even speculation what comes next. This is a great exercise to help develop your skill as a writer, and may provide material fr future stories.

JUST WRITE!

Like I said, if you really wanted to do it, you’d find a way. For writers, the ideas and revelations will churn inside us, nag at us constantly, and pretty much drive us insane if we don’t get them out of our heads and onto some recordable form. It’s an unexplainable thing that drives us. If you have that type of creative passion, you get everything I’m saying. If you don’t, then you won’t. But you can generate that passion by taking the time, even making the time, to cultivate that germ of an idea you’ve got until it consumes you like our ideas consume us. Even something as simple as writing a sentence a day counts. And there’s no better time to get started than RIGHT NOW.

So what are you waiting for?

So You’re Thinking About Writing A Book…

Quan

Oftentimes when I tell people I’m a novelist, I hear them say “I’d like to write a book someday.”  I’ve even had friends explain at length their wonderful story ideas for a book they’d like to write…someday. Or friends and family would tell me of something about their lives they would like to make into a book. Someday.

My response to them is always, “why not now?”

Getting beyond all the hemming and hawing and shoulda-coulda-woulda, the bottom line is that either you’re going to write a book or you’re not. You either have it in you or you don’t. So if you believe you have it in you, then why wait to bring it out? Tomorrow is not promised, and God forbid something bad were to happen with you, you don’t want all of those wonderful ideas dying with you, do you?

You can make all of the excuses you want to NOT start writing. You have too many chores to do. You have to tend to your spouse or raise your kids. Your work takes up too much time. The Game is on. The bottom line is that you will make time for the things you really want to do. At the height of my writing, I was getting up an hour early to write my latest novel before I got ready for work, then I’d write during my lunch break, and if I had to, I’d go to bed a half hour later to finish that final thought before heading to sleep. If I had downtime at work, I’d pull out a piece of scrap paper and jot down ideas, then type them in when I got home. I’ve vocally recorded story ideas with my phone. I’ve written while waiting in long lines for appointments instead of reading a magazine or surfing the social networks. If you really want to do it, you would find a way.

And it’s easier than ever before to publish now, so being worried about getting your book out is no longer an excuse. If you don’t want to deal with the haggle of finding an agent or an established publisher, self-publishing is a very viable option. Sites like KDP.com offer easy, convenient and FREE ways to get your book formatted and made available for purchase and download. And some even offer free book cover creation. All you really have to provide is the manuscript, especially if you don’t want an editor. There are tons of networking opportunities on social media for writers and bookmakers, so it’s easier than ever to find a proofreader, a beta reader, a reviewer, and even an editor. Heck, I even typeset books and design book covers as a freelance designer; you could hire me to do that for you.

Here are a couple of simple exercises to get you started.

  1. if you are writing nonfiction, first ask yourself what you want to write about. Then, once you come up with an overall subject matter, then make a list of ten different aspects of that subject that your potential reader would want to know about. Now, for each of those topics, make a list of three things: what you know about it, what you need to research, and how will this benefit your reader. You can even apply this formula in writing a biography. Your ten subjects are ten most significant events in your subject’s life, and the three questions pertain to details of the event. Once you finish this, then you have an instant book outline to build from. And from there it’s just filling in the details.
  2. If you are writing fiction, start with that kernel of an idea that you have in the back of your head. Write it down. Now ask yourself why your idea would be such a big deal in your world. Write that down. Then ask yourself what would have to happen for that idea to happen in real time. Write that down. Now ask yourself how that idea would affect the normal, everyday people of your world. Write that down. Keep going. Ask yourself as many details around your idea as possible. Ask the WHO, the WHAT, the WHERE, the WHEN and the WHY of your idea. Ask how people would respond if your idea really happened. Ask why anyone would try to stop that idea from coming forth, and how they would do it. Ask yourself these questions and whatever others come to mind, and once you have answers, then Write. Them. All. Down. Before you know it, you’ll have a simple story bible to build your tale from, and you’ll be immersed enough in this world that the people in that world will start speaking to you. Write down what they tell you. And you do not have to start at the beginning. That is something that intimidates a lot of would-be writers. Don’t let it intimidate you. Start writing with whatever is in your head RIGHT NOW. If you write enough, the beginning will come to you eventually.

There. I just eliminated all of your excuses for you. Now, if you’re serious about SOMEDAY getting that book idea of yours out, you’re in luck.

Someday just arrived.

So get started.