Time?

[Dearelliot]

Where do people find the time to write? I'm old, long retired, and can hardly walk, but with my wife and things to do, just everyday living, I'm lucky to get an hour a day in writing, and that with interruptions.
I can see if I were left on my own to write, I'd spend 4 or 5 hours easy, on writing. When I'm at my desk writing, an hour can go by in a few minutes, and often the water for my morning coffee has boiled away.

 

[WittyUserName]

Where do people find the time to write? I'm old, long retired, and can hardly walk, but with my wife and things to do, just everyday living, I'm lucky to get an hour a day in writing, and that with interruptions.
I can see if I were left on my own to write, I'd spend 4 or 5 hours easy, on writing. When I'm at my desk writing, an hour can go by in a few minutes, and often the water for my morning coffee has boiled away.

It can be difficult. I work full time and have other hobbies. It is not easy, sadly. And like you said, you can sit down and barely write anything, yet hours passed. It sucks!

 

[AlinaX]

I steal time.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Where do people find the time to write? I'm old, long retired, and can hardly walk, but with my wife and things to do, just everyday living, I'm lucky to get an hour a day in writing, and that with interruptions.
I can see if I were left on my own to write, I'd spend 4 or 5 hours easy, on writing. When I'm at my desk writing, an hour can go by in a few minutes, and often the water for my morning coffee has boiled away.

I wish that I knew. I work full time and it absolutely crushes my creativity - and when my creativity is thwarted my sleep suffers, which makes it double worse. It's by far the biggest reason why I have only posted one story since July. too much time working, not enough time writing.

 

[crookedletter]

It's definitely a challenge. I work full time, can't drum up the discipline to get up early and write before work, so I have to scrape together some time and motivation to write in the evenings. It can be a hard sell sometimes, especially when I've been busy with work, but I find if I can manage an hour or so to write I feel much better about my day. Work isn't satisfying; writing is.

 

[SinclairGroupLLP]

I have no idea where the time comes. I have the benefit of being a fast writer, so I can get a lot of words out quickly, but even then sometimes I'm shocked at my output. And that's with other hobbies, work and the rest all in there. I guess if you make it a priority, the time is there. I will say I find myself not doing certain things I used to do a lot more of, but that isn't a bad thing, necessarily.

 

[Erozetta]

I don't sleep more than 3-4 hours a day, usually. And I write at work because I can get most of my job done in a couple of hours. I just need to *look* busy the rest of the time.

 

[StillStunned]

I've made a deal with the devil: while I'm writing sex stories I don't age. So I make sure I spend as much time writing as I can.

 

[Dearelliot]

My wife often sleeps until 9am so I started getting up at 7am, and got a couple of hours in writing...but as the weather improved she started to get up earlier...
I can't imagine that I would have been able to find the time to write stories before I was 80. I just had too much to do.

 

[Writer61]

With difficulty.

Work and other demands have got in the way of me publishing anything here for a while. Over the last week I have made a concerted effort to finish a story that has been in limbo thus it was with great pleasure that I hit the submit button yesterday.

 

[Nynah]

Another tired 9-to-5'er with no time to write checking in. After work I'm usually very head empty so it's difficult finding the focus to write even if I still have the energy. Other life obligations also take time away from me so what precious little I have to write is definitely cherished. I wish it was more consistent and I wish my brain cooperated with me more, but c'est la vie.

 

[yowser]

I guess if you make it a priority, the time is there. I will say I find myself not doing certain things I used to do a lot more of, but that isn't a bad thing, necessarily.

Agreed. It is the old priority scale, and for many of us, it is variable, maybe even seasonal in nature, but if handled carefully, will work.

Right out of university, with first jobs, I remember asking, and receiving, advice about saving. This was always a variation of 'put a hundred bucks from your paycheck (or X percentage, whatever) aside in a savings account first, then work with the rest of your money for rent, food, spending needs, budget, etc.' If you don't do the first step, you'll never save anything. I find it the same with writing. Some real life stuff cannot wait, but a lot can, and it is possible to take a 'words first' approach to life.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

Another tired 9-to-5'er with no time to write checking in. After work I'm usually very head empty so it's difficult finding the focus to write even if I still have the energy. Other life obligations also take time away from me so what precious little I have to write is definitely cherished. I wish it was more consistent and I wish my brain cooperated with me more, but c'est la vie.

Watched a master Class by Dan Brown(Da Vinci Code) his advice was to set aside a block of time every day on your schedule dedicated to writing.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I have been dictating large amounts of my writing for years. That gets the ideas captured, characters developed, plots twisted, and keeps the flow going at times when I can't "put pen to paper". The recorded dictation gets converted through talk-to-text when I have the time to spend with rough edits of it, and reformatting.

You might want to consider your surroundings when dictating the steamer parts of your story.

 

[Baztrachian]

My work often leaves me with free time while I am waiting on other people to do their work.

I write, post on forums, manage a website, play video games, and etc. with the free time. Sadly, I have to stay close to my computer or I'd be out walking, gardening, working on the house, etc.

 

[TheLobster]

Watched a master Class by Dan Brown(Da Vinci Code) his advice was to set aside a block of time every day on your schedule dedicated to writing.

I’m compelled to never do that then, just on the off-chance that it prevents me from acquiring the same awful writing style as Dan Brown

 

[crookedletter]

What I find helps me too is having a daily and weekly wordcount/page goal. Something challenging but reasonable. That lets you make little deals with yourself: if you have nothing left in the tank at the end of a long Monday, fine, but that means you're gonna have to write more Tuesday to make up for it. And if you know you have plans for the weekend and will likely not have time to write, that means you have to try to make that extra push for those pages on Thursday.

That works a lot better for me than specific time windows. If I give myself an hour and find myself distracted by, say, a forum dedicated to writing erotica, that hour doesn't count unless I hit my word goal too.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Watched a master Class by Dan Brown(Da Vinci Code) his advice was to set aside a block of time every day on your schedule dedicated to writing.

I do often do this, although this does not work well with my muse. I am not very productive chipping away 1 hour per night. I usually use the first 20 minutes just to immerse myself in what I have written so far and find a good point to jump in and continue. If it has been sitting a while I will use the whole first hour or more to find the groove. I'm really only productive when I have a whole afternoon, a whole weekend, a whole week, to find the groove and start kicking ass. But I rarely get that these days, so an hour or two here or there is all that I get.

What I usually end up doing is every couple of weeks or so, find the groove in an hour and then stay up most or all of the night and go to work like a sleepless zombie, and take another week or more to get my sleep back on schedule, then I stay up writing and destroy my sleep again. The alternative is to not write and that's just not a choice, so I have to either skip sleep or work and I can't skip work.

Another thing to do is just let the dishes and laundry pile up and let the lawn grow. You wear crusty old socks and eat takeout every day and the yard looks like a wild jungle kingdom, but hey, you got a chapter done - a chapter that no one in your real life will ever read or few will even hear about, but now when I'm on my death bed I can rest easy knowing that I got that chapter done. That's what it's all about.

 

[StillStunned]

In a more serious reply than my earlier one, I actually enforced a break on myself over the weekend. I published 12 stories within 3 months, with a total of 72k words. I wasn't quite burning out, but I could feel the flames. Yesterday I allowed myself half an hour or so to put down some of the words that were itching in my brain.

So no, I don't really understand the whole issue of "where do people find the time?" The wife and I barely watch telly anymore, and that frees up hours every evening. Or I'll take time off while I'm working. Or I'll get up early. Maybe because I started writing less than three years ago, or maybe because I'm fed up of editing and rewriting other people's texts, but I love writing so much that I'll make time for it almost every day.

 

[HordHolm]

Work and childcare, childcare and work. Oh, yeah, and a partner. I sometimes manage an hour in the morning if I get up with the sun. Otherwise, it's a struggle.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

Is not about lack of time, actually, and I'm speaking as someone with time blindness. It's more about lack of commitment to me because, when I started the challenge of writing about the same thing for a year on December, I noticed that I can write in both sides of an A4 sheet of paper in less than half an hour. There's an article on the Writer's Digest about writing a novel through 9-minute sessions, which mentions books that were written (or started being written) during commutes. I'm actually writing a book in my phone, and I've been doing good so far. I can write in the bathroom, during commutes, while I'm waiting, or in a moment of nothing at work, or even before falling asleep because my phone has a solid night mode I set up.

I also happen to be a fast writer, and the more I participate in NaNoWriMo, the longer my works throughout November become.

That's why I don't post as often as I should be: I'm still not committed to Literotica, or rather I haven't found a way to commit, plus I'm dealing with a million different things already that really distract me.

 

[iwatchus]

It helps being semi-retired. All I do is teach now and even that is down to half time.

On the other hand, that semi is complaining at me. Probably something to do with 300K+ words over the last 2 1/2 months. My spouse complains that I am obsessive. I have no idea where that comes from.

 

[Voyeurkenneth]

There’s something calming about waking up early on a workday, setting up with a laptop next to the window, and start a writing session while catching the sun rise.

Then after getting a few hundred words in, starting my workday routine feeling already creative and somewhat accomplished.

 

[Voboy]

I steal it where I can.

It used to be easier, pre-children. But it’s still not all that difficult.

 

[NoTalentHack]

Fits and spurts. I’ll write 10K words in a week, then not touch it again for three. Work, family, other hobbies, etc. The thing to really avoid is the self-recrimination burnout cycle. Don’t get in a mindset of “I should be writing, so I feel guilty when I’m not, which adds to my stress, making it harder for me to write.” I got stuck in that last year and am just digging myself out now.

It’s a hobby for most of us, even if we love it. Treat it that way, or you’ll drive yourself nuts.