How I Write While Working Full Time

The short answer is… I don’t. Well… not currently. See, I used to have a lot of spare time to write when I was at other jobs. I could take time on my lunch break or during duties as a teacher when all caught up on grading to sit down and plug away for forty minutes a day, and that got me pretty far with the series. I think in that time I was able to get out about nine books over the course of five years. 

During that time it wasn’t as though I shirked my duties, I did my work, but I set aside time to get the writing done as well, worked it into my schedule. I built the model off of the NaNoWriMo system (National Novel Writing Month, which I know has had some controversy in recent years, and so I haven’t been participating, but the system still works for me), where I had a certain goal to hit each day, and if I didn’t hit that day’s goal, I worked it into tomorrow's. When I tracked my progress in the NaNoWriMo system, I would often be behind in the word count for a day or two, then I would blow past it and give myself a comfortable cushion. This was normally boosted by the fact that the goal of NaNoWriMo was 50k words, which is what it takes for a written work to be considered a novel, and most of mine are over 100k words. 

The Month of Darkness prompts worked in a similar way, where I had a daily goal to hit: write a chapter based on this particular prompt. Unlike something like “Draw Or Die” where if you don’t finish the prompt that day you’re considered “dead” or out of the game, this was just a personal challenge, so sometimes I’d not finish a chapter the day of, go back the next day, polish it up, and move on from there. More often, however, I’d get inspired by the chapter I was currently writing and move on to the next and be a day ahead. I don’t write everyday, though I know I’d probably do better if I did, but sometimes life just gets in the way. Rather, I try to carve out the time to write when I am available to. 

Currently, it is Monday morning, just past 8, and I made sure that the Monday blog was ready to go once I woke up at around 6:30a, got that in before it needed to be posted, finished Friday’s because I like to write the reflection when it’s fresh in my mind, and then once that was scheduled to post, I sat down to decide which prompt I was inspired by today for Wednesday’s. Normally, I follow that same process, but I try to do it on Sundays, but it just so happens that I was cleaning my apartment and going to work yesterday, and didn’t have time. As I said, life happens. 

I suppose the best writing advice I can give in regards to this is carve out the time to do your writing, but don’t get mad at yourself for not writing during those times if life gets in the way, just adjust your schedule to fit your needs better. Writing while uninspired is difficult, but necessary. Waiting for inspiration means you’ll never write, but forcing yourself to write when you physically and mentally cannot doesn’t do you any favors either. So long as you hit the goals you’re trying to reach within a reasonable timeframe, normally you’ll be okay. Every year I’d finish NaNoWriMo a few days early, then blow past the necessary 50k, and sometimes go into the next month to finish out the back end of another 50k, giving myself a completed, if unedited, novel within two months. I finished the Month of Darkness challenge on time, though I went back to polish up the ending over the first few days of November, and will need to go back and polish more by the time you all read it in a few months. A writer’s work is never done, but eventually you need the final piece of advice. 

Stop writing. 

No, not permanently, but you’re working full time, I’m working full time, if we keep working on the same piece, the same chapter, the same book, forever and ever…. It will never get done. It will never be done. And in our eyes, maybe it will never be perfect, but that’s the Tremere in us. That constant need to perfect what can never truly be perfected. You are as good of a writer as you currently are, and that piece you put your heart and soul into is as good of a piece as you can currently do. As you grow and get better, yes, you can do more to that piece and make it even better and more polished… but if you constantly get better, and thus need to constantly improve what you wrote, who is ever going to get to read it? 

I write because I want to share stories. I’m sure if I go back and reread some of my earlier work I would be cringing right now. I think back to the book I wrote when I was in high school and the beginnings of college and shudder to think what I created, but it was the best I could do with the skills and time I had at the time. One of the things we need to accept as writers is that our free time is constantly at odds with our responsibilities. I can no longer take forty minutes of my day job time to write because I don’t ever have a free forty minutes, nor am I at a computer all day (and you can’t write a book on a power drill). 

If you have time to binge something on Netflix, you have time to write, right? 

Well, kinda sorta. 

Time, yes. 

Energy, not so much. 

Take the time, when you have the time, burn the energy, when you have the energy. Is writing something every day the best way to do it? Yes. Is that always a feasible way to do things? No, not always. So my advice, carve out the time, but give yourself grace if you don’t use it for what you intended. Just don’t give yourself too much grace so that you never do anything. 

It’s a tightrope that we writers walk, and though it’s a struggle, it's doable.