You’ve decided you want to write a book. (Congrats!) You know what it’ll be about, the ideas for characters and the plot are flowing, and maybe you’ve already made a bunch of notes. The next step however is the hardest: finding a way to hunker down and get into the thick of the writing, and so you can do it consistently. Between your job, your family, your pets, and trying desperately to sew that button/buy a birthday gift/pluck an eyebrow once in a while, you’re at a loss for how to make that second part—the part where the writing happens—work.
To help you write your book, here are 10 of the best hacks to help you when you have no time. These will help you write every day without losing (too much) sleep, your s**t, or your shirt along the way.
Those professional authors who wake up early, write for four hours, take a long leisurely walk along a forest lane, have a nutritious lunch that’s delivered to their door by garden faeries, then go back for another four hours of editing are what we all aspire to (right?).
Book after book, they just churn them out. And we love that they’re out there, doing the good work (no, really, we do).
In no way shape or form however will that ever be you.
Instead, the best hack for you to find your focus will be in micro-sessions. A micro-session is a short burst of writing lasting anywhere from 5-30 minutes. Being a writer and writing a book in short stints means living with the book in your body at all times and grabbing at opportunity when it presents itself: while you’re brewing coffee, stuck in traffic, or commuting on public transit.
The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel, you will never be stuck.
Every time you begin a new micro-session, use the Ernest Hemingway method of picking up where you left off by rewriting the last sentence from your previous writing session to get into the grove and find your footing with your narrative voice, setting, and dramatic situation, and then off you go!
Micro-sessions seem so tiny as to not be consequential, but if you add up just three of them in a day, you’ll see you’ve yielded a couple of pages or so. And that, friends, is how books get written and how you can enjoy living in your body and mind as a writer (which always makes a person stand up just a little bit taller).
Walking around talking to yourself used to be cause for concern, but nowadays everyone’s doing it, just with their earbuds in! In your case though, rather than be negotiating a new phone plan or chatting with a sibling, you can use your phone to catch your story verbally. Use dictation software or your smartphone’s voice memo feature, and at any moment when you’re able, talk your story or content into your headphones and watch the pages form.
Perhaps you have great story ideas but need to warm up before you dive into their imagined twists and turns? In that case, start your book-writing journey by turning your daily operations into a plotline. Your life doesn’t even have to resemble a soap opera; it can be regular old standard-issue life.
But the next time you’re paying bills, sorting laundry, or doing dishes, think of it as research. Your protagonist’s disastrous dinner party or murder of a call center employee while you’re getting remote help with your Wi-Fi router, or some unexpected plot twist of any kind could be inspired by your own situation. Bonus points if you turn that Wi-Fi call into an epic battle scene (maybe throw in some zombies if you’re feeling extra feisty).
Rituals are powerful. They don’t have to be complicated—just consistent. To start a new habit, it’s suggested that you tether it to an existing ritual. (James Clear, author of the excellent book Atomic Habits, calls it “habit stacking”).
For example, if you want to drink more water, you might do it when you first wake up prior to brushing your teeth. If you want to add stretching to your nighttime routine, you might do it once you turn on the news.
To add writing into your day, you could keep a pad and pen beside your coffee maker and scribble while you enjoy the hot brew or stash your iPad or notebook in your lunch bag to jot down notes during your lunch break. It will take a little planning, but diving into the writing will feel less like a chore and more like an escape. Plus, it’ll give you an excuse to drink a second coffee, which can never be bad.
Habit stacking is a special form of an implementation intention. Rather than pairing your new habit with a particular time and location, you pair it with a current habit. [...] the reason habit stacking works so well is that your current habits are already built into your brain. You have patterns and behaviors that have been strengthened over years. By linking your new habits to a cycle that is already built into your brain, you make it more likely that you’ll stick to the new behavior.
Rather than considering your commute a mundane necessity—see it as your new writing nook! If you’re a bus, train, or subway rider, carry a small notebook or use your phone’s notes app. If you drive, keep a voice recorder handy. Anyone stuck in traffic beside you might think you are an actor learning lines or simply having a fabulous phone conversation. Little will they know that you’re a great literary mind in the making.
If you ever don’t want to bother using your commute to write because you think those few minutes per day won’t amount to much, remember how the great Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison wrote her entire first novel, The Bluest Eye, while commuting on the train to her job at Princeton (and while a single mother of two). That’s the book that set the stage for her becoming a household name. When there’s a will there’s a way, as they say.
The key to productivity is setting goals so low they actually make you laugh. Instead of aiming to write 2,000 words a day, set a target of 200 words. Or even 100!
The point is you want to meet your goal because meeting goals is motivating. Naturally if you’re able to write more, congratulations—you’re ahead of the game. But if not, hey, you still made progress. It’s like the tortoise and the hare, but with fewer turtles and more caffeine (see #4).
Importantly, your goals need to be clear. That specific word count matters as it helps your brain strive for something specific.
Like it sounds, keep a pen tucked in a pocket or behind your ear (or my fave, through a bun in your hair) and write in the margins of your life. Got a spare minute before a meeting? Jot down a sentence or two. Waiting in the grocery line? Scribble an idea on your shopping list. Every little bit adds up.
Even if you’re not writing specific lines that will end up in your book, you’re keeping your creative fires lit and your juices flowing for when you can spend a bit more time doing the good work of writing your book. Or think of it this way: all writing begets more writing. And if you are able to keep a tether on your book in the margins, in time, they’ll be so full, your book will surprise you with how far along you’ve come.
It’s never advisable to pretend to be engaged in your work when you’re doing something else but … sometimes, and you’ll know when, if you’re in a Zoom or other group virtual situation when you truly don’t need to be present, it could work for you to work on your book off camera while keeping one eye on the call.
For example, while you’re waiting for it to start you could gossip about colleagues on the page, imagine all manner of scenarios befalling the little virtual heads, or you’re simply able to grab a few minutes to duck into your existing story. Be sure to hold your face steady; otherwise be prepared for it to get awkward if you start reacting to what you’re writing about!
If you are blessed with a supportive family, rather than keep your writing life entirely separate, consider letting them into your process (and help make it a little more fun).
At best, they may serve you some fantastic ideas; at worst, it’s a great way to keep them in the loop and bond over how creative and awesome you are for writing a book.
Doing time trades with a spouse is also a great way to eke out a bit more time from your days.
Divide up the kids’ extracurriculars and take turns (they do soccer practice Monday and Wednesday, and you do gymnastics on Saturday mornings). Use that short found time to sneak off to a quiet corner or a café to have at it.
Perfectionism is the enemy of progress. Your first draft will 100%, with full certainty, do not pass go, be an absolute train wreck. That’s not only OK, it’s normal and expected as part of the process. A done first draft is your hero’s journey, one you can be extremely proud of (and why you will enjoy the break you’ll get afterwards when you hand it over to an editor for a manuscript evaluation and let them tell you what to do next).
During that time, you can revel in all the hard work you put into your book during all the micro sessions, while writing in the margins, and as you cobbled together lines and hours and energy from every corner. You did it, and you get to have that glorious moment when you can finally say, “I wrote a book!”
Any time you feel tired or lose sight of the finish line, remember that a done draft is a huge accomplishment. Just get there, and then you’ll have something finite to work with and shape into the book it’s meant to become.
Life isn’t about to slow down for you any time soon (or if it is and you’ve met up with some garden faeries who are ready to start preparing your lunch, more power to you!) so rather than wait—and wait and wait and wait—until your circumstances clear (they will not), it’s better to embrace the busy, use these 10 best hacks to write your book, and know that in time, you will have something wonderful to share with the world.
Our area of specialization is supporting writers with limited time focus, fine-tune their goals, and make the writing happen.
Contact us any time to let us help you get your writing to where you want it to go ~
Our 4-month Mentored Book Programs, Online Courses, & Writing Coaching and Editing Hours. From November 21-27, 2023
