Fitting it In: Writing With a Day Job

I write in the evenings and weekends when I have the time. I can't write in the mornings. My brain is pretty much useless that early, so it would be a waste of time for me to wake up earlier to get some writing in before work.

I try writing when I can. I get up too early to write in the morning, so I usually do it some time in the evening, or during the weekends. I do a lot of daydreaming at work (a lot of my work is editing photos), so I'm able to have an idea about what I want to write by the time I get home.

I go to school all day ( college) and I work as a tutor in English and Math so I dont have much time for writing either. The best way I have found to get it done is to wake up earlier. Make yourself get up and set that time aside strictly for writing, I also keep a notebook with me so I can jot down ideas at work that pop into my head.

In my old job, I wrote in the evenings and during w-e's. Never made much progress, despite the fact that I had a very flexible schedule. However, my mind was always split in two, between the book on one side, and the things I had to read and do for work (it wasn't the type of work you finished once you walked out of the office; it often spilled over into my free time).

So I took a radical step. I changed jobs, and took several months off in-between. Made a lot of progress on the book for a while. Not so much lately, so it looks like I'll need a strategy for writing after starting my new job. But the strategy seems clear: I'll be commuting by train, so will write for an hour in the morning and one in the evening while riding to/from work.

Write when you can. For awhile, I was able to use naptime and the after I tucked him in at eight.Whatever fits into you schedule is the correct answer!

I just write when I can - some days this means I write more, and some days I write less. You mentioned that the structure of NaNoWriMo was the only thing that could get you to make significant progress - what if you adopted a similar approach, and set yourself a word count each month that you worked towards?

no one sleeps and works for a combined 24 hours a day. figure it out.
but really, force yourself to write everyday. i went from a 10 year 1st draft to a 10 month 1st draft doing that. every day. even if it is a sentence.

Now and then I like to write while I'm on my lunchbreak. I usually can't get much in, but sometimes its nice to just get those few paragraphs in there during the day.

I would write on my lunch break. Hellz if you're doing 3-500 during your pre-work coffee, add that lunch break and you'd be close to making 1000 per day. (I finished the draft of a novel writing about 600 words a *week* - talk about slow and steady.)

I have three 45-minute lunch breaks in the week (I work part-time). I take a sandwich, a meat pie or some kind of small, hand-eatable food. Having an easy to eat lunch ready means that I can spend almost all of that time writing. It's ironic, but if I go back to work full time - I'll end up writing *more* than I do now.

adipose said:

I've written two almost-finished-then-abandoned novels during NaNoWriMo, and up til now had found that the structure of NaNoWriMo was the only thing that could get me to make significant progress on a project.

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So, you didn't actually abandon the works, you abandoned NaNoWriMo. The idea behind NaNoWriMo is to put you in a routine that you keep year round. Just do it.

Jeff

I wrote for half an hour on the weekend for a awhile. The key is to schedule a time and stick to that schedule. It also helps to treat it as sacred so other people will leave you alone. When my mom apologized for calling when she knew I'd be writing, I knew I was good.

When I wrote my first novel, I had a full-time job. The ms. was cranked out whenever I had time--the rule was, if I had less than ten minutes, I could surf the internet. If I had more than ten minutes, I had to write.

So I wrote:

--in the 12 minutes when the pasta was cooking, or the 35 for the casserole to heat

--instead of watching TV at night

--in the 15-20 minute gap between when I was ready to leave and when my husband was (predictable!)

--on those nights when I woke up in the middle of the night, instead of tossing and turning I'd go downstairs and fire up the WIP

I can't even remember some of the others--I just fit in writing time around family and work wherever I could squeeze it. Not so much on weekends, though, unless I got up before my husband and son.

When I went to half-time at my job, I didn't get more productive with my writing--I just got more of my life back.

I saw a piece in the last couple of weeks about writing around your day job. Let me look...

Here you go. Tom Pollock on Writing Around A Day Job: http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2014/08/11/tom-pollock-writing-around-a-day-job/

Find a city with mass transit commuting. Where I live, Chicago's a one-hour train ride. I work downtown Chicago.

With a laptop and a good battery, that's two hours of writing, every workday. Even if I nap coming in, that's still time on the way back.

Every free moment: write.
http://www.pinterest.com/pin/create/extension/

I only work part time and my husband and I don't have any children, so I have plenty of time to write in the evenings.

Being a night owl, I do my best work when he's asleep and the house is quiet. I'll put on some soft music (with or without words, doesn't matter), and let inspiration carry me off to wherever it may.

I have a day job during which I have not one second to write. I also have a small kid. I write between when he goes to bed and when I go to bed. Can't manage it every night, but that does give me 1-2 hours per night most nights.

This also doesn't work for everyone, but I write in my head while driving. Whatever the next chapter is, I think it through, right down to the wording. Then, at night, I transcribe it. Makes the writing go much faster.

chompers said:

I write in the evenings and weekends when I have the time. I can't write in the mornings. My brain is pretty much useless that early, so it would be a waste of time for me to wake up earlier to get some writing in before work.

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I'm a night owl too and tend to only write at night once the little one goes to bed and all the necessities for work are complete.

mdhight said:

Make yourself get up and set that time aside strictly for writing, I also keep a notebook with me so I can jot down ideas at work that pop into my head.

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I did the notebook thing in college and it ended up taking over my mind during class more often than not. I'd have a notebook open and write on the left side my class notes and my own story notes on the right and it was never even close which would be longer if I got going, lol.

I recently changed my regime. I used to write in the evenings on weekdays and in the afternoons on weekends. But I found I wasn't getting enough done and I was often too tired in the evening. I realised I was waking up earlier than I used to, around 5am. So I thought, well sod it, let's get up and write.

So I tried it for a couple of weeks and also on weekend days writing all through the morning if I didn't have to go out someplace. And it worked great! I was worried it might be a summer only thing, and once dawn was no longer around 5am I'd have trouble waking up. But dawn is well after 6am now and I'm still managing it.

I've upped the productivity and it feels great to get the bulk of that day's work under my belt before it's time to go to the day job. Or to have a load done by lunchtime on the weekend. I still do maybe an hour in the evening too, but it's no big deal if I want to just blow that off and go to bed early, or just do what I call busywork, non-core stuff like blog posts and promo instead.

So, yeah, I have joined the ranks of the get up early to write crowd and I'm loving it.

I'm a high school teacher. I'm not one to take work home to grade (I have the attitude that if I'm not being paid, I should not do work). So I work my butt off at school, going in an hour early and staying another hour, giving me three hours of pure grading time.

Then I go home, where I am dad. I take care of the kiddo, get her fed and put in bed (my wife and I trade days for that part), and then I write. During the school year, I write at least 300 words a day, often more if I can. During vacations, and especially during summer, my goal is 2000 words per day. I treat summer as if I was a full time writer, and treat it like a job.

At least, that's when things go well. There are also the days where Things That Need Doing take up a lot of time, or a special excursion with my daughter takes over the day. But most of the time, I get at least 1000 done on even those days.

This is all, incidentally, post-Viable Paradise. Before I got accepted to VP last year, I sat down to write maybe once a week, because I thought I was bad and didn't see it as something I could do for real; it was just a way to exorcise my need to tell a story. Getting that acceptance lit a fire that, thankfully, hasn't gone out.

I'm lucky enough to have a desk job that has some free time. Since I'm already sitting in front of a computer, sometimes my WIP opens itself up and I find myself typing away But if I'm in a busy period at work, I'll write in the evenings, after dinner. If I could get up early enough, I'd write in the mornings before work - when I write in the mornings on the weekends, when I'm fresh, the words seem to come a bit easier than when I'm tired in the evenings.

I schedule writing time in my day, and make it a priority. It's on the family calendar. It took a good long time to actually make it a habit, and to convince my family that when that 90 minutes is blocked out, I do really mean it, but now, it's part of the daily routine, just like the kids doing homework.

As an editor, I know how it is! I'm lucky enough to be able to commute via train and subway, so I can get nice sprints in before and after work. But I also do everything I can to spend my lunch hour whittling away. It doesn't always work, but it's helped me get to to putting in almost 10 hours of work a week.

One of the reasons these on-the-go sprints are important for me is that I actually have a hard time writing at home. Dog have to go out, dinner has to be cooked...you know the deal. So I make arrangements to have one or two chances to put in a few hours at a cafe or restaurant. It's nice to get the change of scenery, and it's easier to write when I'm not at either of the desks at which I work.