The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 3 – How do you find time to write a book?

Do you find it difficult and frustrating to find the time to write a book?

This is one of the complaints we hear most often and here's our response. While for a lot of people there always seem to be something else taking up the intended writing time, and some have even given up entirely, we still have some advice on how can make the time to write a novel.

We promised you a link to a FREE writing course. Here it is: https://www.amwritingfantasy.com/product/ultimate-fantasy-writers-starter-kit-short-course/

New episodes EVERY single Monday. To subscribe on YouTube, go here: http://bit.ly/1WIwIVC

PATREON!
Many bonus perks for those who become a patrons. https://www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy

LET'S CONNECT!
Closed Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AmWritingFantasy/
Blog and Courses: https://www.amwritingfantasy.com/
Jesper on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SchmidtJesper
Autumn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/weifarer

Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Jesper (13s):
Do you sometimes get frustrated by the fact that you simply don't have the time to write a book? I think this is one of the commons that automate. I received the most for a lot of people. There's always seems to be something else. Taking up the intended writing time, or perhaps you are one of those who have more or less given up by now believing that you will never find the time to write a novel.

Jesper (43s):
Well, let's get to the bottom of this today, shall we? If you are a fantasy author, then you've come to the right place. My name is Jesper and together with the autumn, I host this a YouTube channel between us. We've published more than 20 novels and our aim is to help you in your writing and marketing endeavors. Finding time to write a novel is hot. Last time I checked, we all had 24 hours in a day and a, those hours gets filled up pretty quickly between, uh, you know, getting sleep, taking care of a day job, attending family needs and perhaps you have kids and then do his chores, like doing laundry, preparing food to the grocery shopping and so on and so on.

Jesper (1m 34s):
I'm already getting tired and I'm running out of time to write. So no one that we find it hard. It can at times seem more or less impossible. Am I right? At the same time, we've all heard the wisdom that you're supposed to write every day. Well, that's nice, but how in the world is that possible with all the things I'm supposed to do?

Old McGrumpy (1m 58s):
Oh, stop your whining. Perhaps if you worthless human, spend less time watching Netflix, you would have the time to write.

Jesper (2m 7s):
That was our resident co-hosts. The AI called old my grumpy who pitched in there.

Old McGrumpy (2m 13s):
Or if you need help from us, we can take over the writing for you. Humans don't have enough imagination anyway.

Jesper (2m 21s):
W what do you mean by help from us?

Old McGrumpy (2m 23s):
Us artificial intelligence. Of course we can write books. How hard can it be?

Jesper (2m 30s):
Well, all my grumpy last time, one of your colleagues attempted to write Harry Potter. It produced sentences like this, leathery sheets of rain lashed at Harris ghost as he walked across the grounds towards the castle run was standing there and doing a kind of friend ceased tap dance.

Old McGrumpy (2m 52s):
And what's your point?

Jesper (2m 55s):
Well, that's not exactly what our audience is looking for and in fact, not a helpful advice whatsoever. Bugger life. You were Solice human. Okay. But the reality is simply that with the busy lives, almost all of us lives, you'll never find the time to write. You have to make the time to write. I'll get into how you can do that next, but I also have to be honest with you. What this comes down to is how bad do you want to write a novel for any of the advice that I'm going to give you a to be applicable, you have to start by taking your wife writing very seriously.

Jesper (3m 37s):
It's not something that will all of a sudden find its way into your life when it's sort of conveniently shows up for you. You know, writing a novel is a lot of work and if you aren't willing to commit to it and make the necessary sacrifices, everything else I'm about to say is well rather pointless. I needed to get that out of the way first. But if you're still here, that means that you are taking this seriously. So let's talk about how you make time to write.

Jesper (4m 8s):
Instead of finding time to write, the first thing you want to do is to decide when it suits your schedule the most to carve out some writing time. This is not a matter of finding three hours every day where you can write. For most of you, that would most definitely be impossible. Your rule of thumb is that a little is better than nothing. So ask yourself where I can carve out 15 minutes, half an hour, an hour or something like that.

Jesper (4m 39s):
If you can only find time to write 300 words a day, that's still 100,000 words in a year. And then that's a full fantasy novel. This is an agreement that you are making with yourself, so don't break it. When can you fit on some writing time on a daily basis basis and for how long? That's the question and only you can answer it, but I will say that it's probably best to either aim for late at night when the other members of the household has gone to sleep or in the very early morning when you're the only one awake.

Jesper (5m 18s):
The reason is that at these times the likelihood of distractions getting in your way are the lowest you're on any tissues or something like that that you need to attend to at these hours. And I'll get back to distractions in a minute, but I also want to clarify that while I'm recommending to schedule writing time at evenings or early mornings, I'm not advocating that you should skimp on sleep.

Jesper (5m 49s):
I am a very strong believer in how we humans need our sleep to function well. So if you like to write in the evenings, don't stay up until midnight. If you've got to get up at 5:00 AM the next morning, you know, instead tried to watch less or no TV and then right. Instead, if you want to get up at 5:00 AM like I do, then make sure you go to bed early enough that you can still catch your eyes like seven or eight hours of sleep.

Jesper (6m 21s):
So once you've decided on a time slot for your writing time, you'll need to turn it into a daily routine. I'll say it again before we move on. Decide at daily slot for your writing because if you think that you will be able to find a bit of time, you know, here and there, then you're kidding yourself. All right? You need to establish a routine because we humans are creatures of habit and routine can be anything. You know, perhaps you brush your teeth, grab a cup of tea, and then you start writing.

Jesper (6m 56s):
Perhaps you take some comfortable clothes on or you light a candle. As I said, it can be anything that the point of a routine is more than you do it at the same time every day. And the ritual around it is the same every day. So you're basically making writing a part of your daily life. And that's the way it should be. For some, it can be extremely helpful to set some daily goals.

Jesper (7m 27s):
So writing a novel is a huge, huge task. And uh, it can be quite daunting when you're standing in front of a mountain of 100,000 words and you've got a client that one. So if you break it down into smaller chunks, you don't have to use word count for your daily goals. For example, you know, uh, although you can, if that's how you want to break it down. But a daily goal can also be that you want to finish one scene every day or that you want to be actively writing for one hour a day, no matter how many words that turns into, you know, everyday when you achieve your goal, you can set a Mark in the calendar and you'd basically just keep going and make sure that you do not break that chain of marks in the calendar.

Jesper (8m 13s):
Note that if you miss one day, it'll be that much easier to allow yourself to skip the next one and then the next one. So don't do that. Okay. I used for trick I wanted to mention is to think about what you're going to write tomorrow as you end today's session. You know, autumn and I, we love outlining, so that makes things pretty easy for us. But even if you don't like outlining, just let it sort of percolate in your mind overnight. At least. Make sure that you know what needs to happen in the next writing session so that you can get straight into it and don't have to sit there staring out the window wondering what to write.

Jesper (8m 53s):
I still think my advice was better to leave it to

Old McGrumpy (8m 56s):
an AI to write the book. Yes. Then you worthless. Humans can watch more Netflix while we silently take over the world.

Jesper (9m 6s):
As a cohost, you should really try to put the audience needs ahead of your own.

Old McGrumpy (9m 10s):
What was that? I can't hear you. All of a sudden there is static on the line. I can't hear you are pointless interruptions.

Jesper (9m 20s):
Interruptions, yeah. You should speak of interruptions. It seems all my grumpy has a left us alone for the time being. So let's continue before he uh, returned. He has really a distraction, isn't he? But a matter of fact, speaking of distractions, I promise to come back to that. So don't do any research while you're writing your writing time is for Willa writing. Sometimes your loved ones will distract you too. But now that you have a fixed writing time and if you're writing time isn't when everyone else is at sleep, it'll be easier for them to understand when not to disturb you when it's on a fixed time slot.

Jesper (10m 4s):
So you can tell them every day between five and 6:00 PM. For example, I will close this store and then I write. So unless the house is on fire or something, please don't disturb me for that one hour. Once you made writing a priority in your life and you are writing every day, it wouldn't be uncommon that you still feel as if it's not enough. You know, you want to write more. And although the previously mentioned 300 words a day, we'll produce a novel in wealth eight years' time.

Jesper (10m 37s):
What if you want to write a novel in six months? Well, this is more of a productivity question really. But, uh, if you only have an hour a day, two, right? How can you produce as many words as possible in that hour? And here dictation does help a lot. It goes much, much faster than writing. And if you want me to share my process on dictation, you know, let me know when to come. And section below on that. Maybe I'll just record another video on that another day.

Jesper (11m 7s):
But dictation is a pro productivity enhancement and even better productivity tip is to get some writing done while you're doing something else anyway. So that's like a, you know, uh, stealing some of some more writing time out of a busy life. So, uh, if we take a dictation again, perhaps you could dictate while you're out walking the dog. Um, that's maybe 15 minutes of additional writing right there. Or you can use a notebook, a note taking apps, or write an email to yourself containing the next chapter while you are on your daily commute or your waiting in lines at the grocery store and and so forth.

Jesper (11m 50s):
Stay focused and still writing time wherever you can. And if you need even more help than that, then the autumn and I have actually a free on demand in true cost to writing and in it you will get access to the top five steps to start writing your novel strong. And also how to avoid the 10 reasons new writers fail. It's a short cost that will jumpstart your writing. And did I mention that is free?

Jesper (12m 20s):
I think I did, but I placed the link to where you can get access in the description field just below. Stay safe out there and see you next Monday.