Making Time to Write When You're Overworked or Just Plain Exhausted

If you’ve ever wondered how to make time writing, then this blog post is for you.

All right. Who just muttered “create a schedule”? That is exactly the kind of killjoy advice that drives people to Google in the first place. I mean if you could schedule it in, you would, right? You can’t. And that’s the problem.

Making time to write is a challenge for a lot of writers. It’s something I’ve wrestled with between working full-time and momming full-time. (I’m convinced mom is both a noun and a verb, so if you’re going to hang around with me, you’ll have to let it slide, okay? Okay.)

On top of working and momming and writing, I’ve also been a full-time student, I’ve volunteered for EVERYTHING, led teams of volunteers, and I’ve worked my fingers to nubs starting my own businesses.

I’m a woman. I’m busy. And that doesn’t make me special.

Being busy is something I had to learn to own as a personal choice and not wear as some badge of honor.

I always think with just a few more hours in a day, I could save the world. Or at least my little corner. But you know what? It’s kinda sorta bullshit. I do not need more hours in the day. And neither do you. The hours in the day, the days in the week, seasons of the year, moon phases... they're all pretty perfectly aligned. It's just like us humans to resist time. But we all have the same opportunity to decide what kind of impact we want to have based on what resources are available at any moment. We need to make the best of what we have.

What we’d *actually* do with more hours is probably just more of what we’re doing now. More of the great stuff, sure. But also more of the boring things. And more of the things that don’t really matter to us at all, because we really treasure our love/hate relationship with being busy. (Some of you are going to hate me for saying that. But it was my truth and I know I'm not alone.)

What we have is not (usually) a time problem. It’s a priority problem. There is no shortage of time for most of us writers. There is only a failure to acknowledge that we’re choosing how we spend our time and that we’re unhappy with ourselves for not choosing writing.

Lalala! Covering my earholes now. I know all the arguments because I make them. You know I’m right (at least a little) or you wouldn’t still be here. (And if you're the exception I mentioned above, hang in, I feel you, and this might even be more important.)

First, about those priorities.

Priorities aren’t that mysterious. Anything that you do first is a priority. Anything you’re squeezing in after the fact is not.

If writing is not coming first, then something else is.

That’s right. Something else is your priority.

If your priorities are not obvious to you, just keep track of how you spend your next week. All the working, the cooking, the shopping, the driving, the dishes, the homework, the folding, the Instagramming and Facebooking and Snapchatting, the volunteering, the sitting at the football game, the staring blankly at the television with a glass of Pinot Noir in your hand as you contemplate the sleep you’re going to be getting if your brain ever shuts up. (Nine hours a night for me. Gotta have it or I’m a total psycho.) Go on. Book mark this page. Make your list. I’ll still be here when you get back next week.

Now I want you to have a hard look at your list. Chances are good most of these things you do fit a handful of larger categories. What are your top five categories? Those, my friends, are your REAL priorities.

Did you choke on your contraband Cool Ranch Doritos when you saw what you were putting above your writing? (Does no one else sneak Doritos anymore? Is it just me?) Before you start defending, I get it. You have to work. You have to feed the kids and they can’t go to school naked, so dinner and laundry are must-do. And yeah, you need to make time for “self-care.” But have you ever looked really close at the things you call self-care just because you're kinda tired and burnt out when you do them?

Like how you watched Tasty videos and stabbed menacingly at your salad during your lunch break instead of powerwalking like you said you would so you could write when you got home? Or how easily you filed an entire Netflix series under Self-Care when writing that next chapter would have made you go to bed feeling way better? How is ignoring your most treasured goal “self-care”? How about the volunteering? Do you really love it more than writing?

(I used to volunteer upwards of 20 hours a week. And sometimes I did love it. But pretty often it left me feeling like a pile of garbage.)

This is where a lot of us resist. I’m betting some things you’ve been prioritizing are things you don’t actually want to give up. Am I right? You've been filing them under Self-Care because they feel good. And we're woefully in need of feeling good. But what if we looked at writing time as Self-Care? Would we put it first more often? Instead of thinking it’s an all or nothing switch, what if we asked “how could I change this?”

I get it. No one is going to convince me to stop watching television, either. But can you use Netflix as a reward for meeting a weekly writing goal? Or make a rule that Thursday is Pinot Night with your husband and your favorite show?

Maybe you could write in the car during your child’s practices and still be 100% present for their games and performances like you do now.

What about dinner time? Could you possibly do food prep on weekends to shorten the time it takes to get it on the table? Declare Wednesday pizza night so you get a couple hours to write at least once or twice a week?

When you volunteer, know your limits and say no before you hit them. Before you're tired and overwhelmed and resentful. Raise the bar for volunteer work. Make sure you really feel great about everything extra that you say yes to. Learning my yes and no limits was life-changing for me. It seems obvious, but we women have been conditioned to please and over-deliver to our own detriment. And yes, the group or the cause probably does need someone. But does it have to be you all the time?

When you figure out that something works for you, run with it. I have always been one of those people who needs a significant block of uninterrupted time to write. Coffee shops and libraries are out. No matter how many times people told me I would have to learn how to write at the drop of a hat, I just can't with public spaces. But when I found I could make steady progress in my little cubicle on my breaks at my old job, I wrote an entire novel in there during one of the busiest years of my life. It was kinda too bad I left that job because I might have written more the following years if I'd stayed. But hey, life is change. And I chose to quit looking at fingerprints all day and get an MFA. (If you want to know how I really feel about MFA’s versus just writing another book, read this blog popular post next: Should You Get an MFA or Skip It and Run Away to Bora Bora With the Money You’ll Save?)

But anyway, back to you and making writing your priority. I don’t know exactly what would work for you, but I know this is how you make time. Not necessarily these solutions. But this kind of thinking.

Question everything that you’re not completely comfortable admitting is higher priority than your writing. And if you love whatever else you're doing, then give yourself to it and enjoy it knowing you chose what mattered most to you. I can’t tell you how often I’ve talked with a writer who discovered that writing came after Netflix. It’s okay to enjoy other things and to put other things first. Just be really clear why your book is not getting written. And that it was and always is YOUR CHOICE.

Be honest with yourself about your priorities. Be scrappy when it comes to your writing time. It really matters to you, so show up for yourself. File writing under Self-Care with me. Small consistent changes make big wins.

Yours in turning Netflix off just one episode earlier next time,
Celeste

P.S. If this blog post kicked you in the bum in a good way, you should definitely subscribe down at the bottom of the page. ALSO, PLEASE DROP ME A COMMENT AND TELL ME THE LAMEST THING YOU EVER FILED UNDER SELF-CARE. Mine involves creating an entire family and their backstory in The Sims, if that makes you feel any better.