How to Find the Time to Finish Writing Your Book.
Firstly, you need to rearrange your idea of time and, probably, writing. You do not need a dedicated and allotted time to write a book. Nice, you bet, but not necessary for completion. The idea that you need a particular place and a certain amount of daily writing will keep you from starting. It automatically presents conditions and obstacles that are not conducive to ordinary busy life. So, stop it. It’s great if you are lucky enough to have a quiet place to stare out the window and muse deep thoughts. But life is not really like that, at least my life is not really like that, and if it were, I’d probably never write a thing! As the saying goes, if you want something done ask a busy person.
It is far better for your mental frame of mind to plan and schedule the writing of your book primarily during stolen moments. It takes the pressure of perfect circumstances off. Plus, there is an awful lot of time spent between “appointments.” For instance, driving, cooking, commuting or washing up. This is your plotting and thinking time. This is your jotting down quick notes and working through dialogue time. This will be 50% of your writing time. Stolen moments. Unfinished sentences. Random thoughts. Overheard dialogue. But make sure that it’s planned. That’s the trick. By this, I mean you allocate a particular scene to a specific moment. For instance, I’m going to work on scene XYZ while I clean the bathroom. And take notes. Then, when you have the perfect few hours to construct the chapters, you will be rock and roll ready.
The image that most people have of writing is actually a writer engaged in sentence and chapter construction. But, that is far from all writing is, in fact, that’s only a small part of it. Writing is life and like life, it’s a glorious mess that oozes through the seams with inspired moments. Editing is the polished slog. A book lives inside you and doesn’t just surface whenever you have the time to window gaze. It is always there. Those characters are always there, and they never go away. Why, just the other day, while sitting at a stoplight, I saw a shadow box outside an antique store and thought, “oh my god, Birdie would love that.” Then I had to remind myself that Birdie was a fictional character. Birdie Dubois didn’t weave her way into my psyche through navel-gazing in the perfect studio. No, No, No. She’s there because I had conversations with her while I was folding my laundry. And, that is how you find time to finish a book. Incidentally, it is also how you create realistic characters that are friends (or foes) for life.
Be happy, lovely people.
Gret x
Gret Heffernan is the Editor-in-Chief of Backlash Press and author of The Sculptor and Dark Ansley, Book One and Two.
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