Finding time to write is one of our biggest challenges as authors. For me it was always about finding time in my jampacked schedule. I didn’t want to give up time with friends or family, but I knew I needed to make my writing time a priority.

I’ve always been efficient when it comes to my work. Monitoring calls and emails during the office season meant I had a lot of down time. When things were slow, I would spend most of my workday writing either my novel or marketing content. What I began to realize was that there was a difference between have “time” and having “productive time”. Perhaps I had 5 hours free during the day, but getting myself into the flow state to be productive with my draft took a long time.

Even when I finally did learn to enter that flow state quicker, my mental stamina and endurance needed to be strengthened and built up. How can I write for almost 8 hours a day? How do I keep my train of though from derailing when my 9-5 pulls me away? It may seem overly simple but the answer I found was: planning. I will spend my entire day off outlining either my novel or marketing calendar. Then when I am at the office, I know what I’m doing and where I’m going.

The more I know about the story or project, the easier it is for me to create for a longer period of time. Something I’ve had to get used to with this system is the fact that I now handwrite a lot of my prose instead of going straight for the keyboard. I grew up writing on a typewriter from a young age. Computers were certainly a thing, but they were expensive and bulky. Getting a portable typewriter from the thrift store was the next best thing.

I became a fast typer out of my obsession to keep up with the story as it ran through my brain. My handwriting is messy and too slow for my own good. Ultimately, I found that it helped me to take brief pauses throughout a page I’m writing by hand. Not only does it slow my racing mind, it gives my hand a break from my emotionally charged grip on the pen. By the end of the day, I’m so brain dead that my creativity felt drained. But this made the perfect environment for me to mindlessly type out my hand written notes.

Treating my writing as my career and making it one of my top priorities is how I’ve made so much progress. No, I haven’t published a new book in a while, but I’m honing my craft, I’m deeply defining my author voice, finding what I want to do with my manuscripts.

All this to say, you have to make it a priority if you want to move forward. Otherwise you’ll stay stagnant. Without fighting to grow, we’ll never have a chance of reaching our grandest dreams.