Congratulations. You’ve got a great writing idea. Alas, you also have a full-time job, kids, and a commuting schedule. Or perhaps you’re still in school and you have loads of homework. How can you possibly find the time to write amidst all this craziness?
First, if you’re having trouble fitting writing into your life, you need to budget your time. I suggest you do a “time audit.” This means that, over the course of a day or a few days, or even a week, you track the amount of time you spend doing everything you do throughout the day (or days or week). Take particular note of how much time you spend watching TV, playing sports, sleeping, talking on the phone to your friends, playing solitaire or other computer games, noodling around on the Internet, reading magazines, newspapers, or the latest novel—you get the picture. Your task is to become aware of where in your life you are frittering away valuable minutes and energy.
Although these activities are pleasurable and relaxation is important, couldn’t you decrease the total amount of time you spend on leisure, and give yourself the gift of those same moments to write? My personal experience and my observation of my clients has shown that nine times out of ten the answer to this question is a resounding yes.
It is helpful to look at a project, such as writing a book, in a pragmatic, mathematical way. Although the time it takes to write a book may seem daunting at first, and loom large in your imagination, in fact it is a finite activity with a beginning and an end. Even when a subject is complex, if you’re well organized and at least moderately disciplined it is going to be a manageable task.
It is possible to research and draft a 160-page book in approximately 200 hours. Therefore, if you allot yourself only one hour per day to writing or commit to completing one chapter per week, you will be able to complete your book in under a year—with plenty of time left for revisions. Here are some important numbers to keep in mind: a typeset page is about 350 words, so a 160-page book contains about 60,000 words. So, let’s say you had ten 6,000-word chapters to write. That breaks down to about 1,000 words a day. Break your book project down into doable chunks, which you can complete if you give yourself undivided focus for relatively short periods of time.
You may find that it takes a little bit of diligence and ingenuity to create undivided focus for your writing time. For example, you may have to negotiate for some privacy with your family and friends. You may have to get up an hour earlier so you can write when everyone else is asleep. Or lock the door and turn off the phone when you write. Personally, I put the following outgoing message on my answering machine when I am writing: “Hi, this is Stephanie. It’s Monday and I’m in writing retreat. This means that I’m not picking up the phone. Leave me a message and I’ll return it within 24 hours.” Whatever you find you need to do in order to protect your writing time, do it!
Once you have carved out the time in which to write, consider how to best go about the writing itself. One way to approach a book project is to write each chapter as a blog, and then weave all of these blog entries together to form the book. The idea here is to write first and edit later. It’s much easier to get your material down on paper (or on computer, as the case may be) and then refine it, rather than editing as you go. This is particularly true if you’re a perfectionist and can slow yourself down by trying to get every sentence exactly right the first time around.
Keep in mind that you also have the option of hiring an editor or a ghostwriter to do the editing and refining for you after you have created your initial draft.
One last thing: if you’re having trouble dropping into writing mode, understand that writing is something you get better at the more you do it—especially if you do it regularly. So, even if you can only eke out a couple of sentences on a given day, give yourself the full hour of time to continue trying to write. You’re training your mind to focus on your project. Like a wild animal, it needs to be tamed. This is sort of like meditation. If you have it in your schedule that the first thing you do at the start of the day is to write for an hour, you’ll come to expect it and you won’t resist it so much.
See what happens when you apply these tools to your book project. I have no doubt that you will make huge progress with your writing, develop confidence, and then what once seemed an impossible dream will become a reality. Good luck and have fun.
Stephanie Gunning is a bestselling author, editor, and publishing consultant with more than 20 years’ experience in the book business. Her A-list clientele includes bestselling authors, major publishing firms, top caliber literary agencies, and innovative self-publishers. One of the most sought-after nonfiction writers in the publishing industry, she is the coauthor or ghostwriter of 14 published books and the audio program Partner With Your Publisher. She lives in New York, NY. For more information visit her websites: stephaniegunning.com/ stephaniegunning.com/ and publishing-partner.com/ publishing-partner.com/.
