I had a tweet yesterday that was a great question for any writer. “If you have a full time job, how do you find time to write?”
Full time or not, making or finding time to write can always be a challenge. After all, life doesn’t stop happening because we have this wonderful story in our imagination we just have to write. Relationships, partners, friends, children demand time and attention. Earning money to pay mortgages, rent, bills for food, fuel, must be acquired somewhere, somehow.
Even the writing itself has so many demands. First draft, editing, submitting and waiting for rejection or acceptance, publishing, promoting, signings all take time from the fun and the challenge of creating that next work. If you have chosen to self publish as I have, that list is even longer with tasks such as cover design, interior design and graphics, music for videos, social media content, promotion and marketing.
As you can see from the title of this post, I am up and writing before dawn.
The first reason for this super early start is I am a morning person and the house is silent, no cell or phone ringing, no one needing anything. This is my favorite time of day. The world is quiet and I can hear my characters quite clearly. The second reason is that this day, like every day at the farm, is filled to overflowing with tasks. There is mowing to be done and it hot as an oven right now so that means an early start unless I want to court sunstroke. Lunch with a friend, I’m cooking, so that means time in the kitchen. The visit is a joy and a delight, but still time consuming. Then there is work on social media, this is just part of that, which takes more time. Animals to feed morning and evening. And somewhere in here, I have a list of calls to make for the farm and writing. A couple of them won’t be short.
I am currently working on Light the Fire, Book Five of the Live Oak Series. Finished page forty on Saturday. The plan is to reach page fifty by today’s end. Ten pages doesn’t sound like much but it is three hours, at least, of listening and typing to get the words into the document. Which reminds me, I need to make another call. This one will definitely take a while as I have some ideas for Light the Fire’s cover I want to discuss with the graphics designer. We have discovered in our collaboration that the earlier we start on the cover, the better we like the results. I think our last cover, Truth Tells which was just released in paperback and soon to be available on Kindle, is my current favorite.
As you can see, finding the time to write can be a challenge. But, despite having to juggle a number of tasks and engagements, it is well worth the effort for me.
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