Where do you find the time?

Ok, so the question I seem to get asked the most about writing this book of mine is, where on earth did you find the time?

I get why people ask. I work a 48 hour week, have a husband and four kids to organise and look after and of course now and then I have an actual social life. To the outside eye it would appear that there just aren’t enough hours in the week, let alone a day, to have managed to write an actual book.

Now, usually I just kind of laugh, shrug and say I don’t really know, or I crack a joke about how I just don’t sleep. The truth is really quite boring though. I wanted to write a book, so I just found the time. An hour here, a couple there. Mostly after 8pm when the kids are all fast asleep. Or times like now, when my toddler has decided to have an extremely late nap, and the others are occupying themselves. Suspiciously quietly, I might add.

I have spent a lot of time searching the internet for answers to questions just like this. When I first started writing, I wondered how I would find enough time to do it. I know some people prefer to set themselves a time target. For instance, today I’m gonna write for two hours. That doesn’t work for me. I can be sitting in front of my laptop for hours and not write a single word. Or I might spend the hour or two hours I’ve allocated writing blog posts instead of the book, especially if I can’t seem to find any inspiration to fix a certain part of the plot, or I can’t understand for the life of me why I’ve put something else in. It seems a complete waste of time for me, personally, to attempt to write words for the sake of it. The same rule applies to setting a daily word count. This was another technique I read about. But if you write 3000 words just because you have to, it doesn’t necessarily mean that those 3000 words are any good. (Although, since it has been two weeks since I have touched my book, I’m rethinking this idea. Maybe writing for the sake of it could lead to a stroke of brilliance?)

Again, this is just my own personal experience, and since this is still just a hobby for me and I don’t actually write for a living it’s probably a lot easier to think, hmm, I have no idea what to write today, so I just won’t bother. I might have a different outlook on this if I relied upon writing to put food on the table. Maybe one day soon I will be able to re-write this from that perspective. Until then, I will continue to just find the time whenever and wherever the inspiration and motivation strikes.