Welp, school’s starting back up soon, which means that I’m going to have a wave of busy coming my way. One thing that makes me nervous is the fact that one of my classes is a “writing intensive” course, which sounds to me like more writing papers and less writing the other stuff. Not this time, though! I refuse to put my writing on the back end this semester. I thought of some tricks I could try to make sure I’m fitting in writing time. And since I’m sure you guys are busy too, with school, work, life itself, I figured you could use these tricks as well!
Do not write every day
Yeah, okay, this seems like the opposite of what we’re going for, but my first post still stands. I don’t think you should have to write every day if you don’t need to. If you’re having a super busy and stressful day, don’t add “Oh, man, I need to write too!!” to that. It’s just going to burn you out. If you can write every day, great! But if you feel like you need a break, don’t be afraid to take it.
Squeeze in writing time during your downtime
You know those times when you’re not really doing anything? Like maybe you’re in line, getting some food. Or maybe it’s five minutes before class starts. Instead of standing/sitting there waiting, use that time to write! You can easily pull out your phone and jot something down while waiting for a friend to arrive. Sure, it might only be one to two minutes of writing time (or, if someone’s taking their sweet time, a good ten minutes), but that’s more than enough. Two minutes are better than zero minutes.
Go for the “Just write one word” approach
This is an approach that I used when I challenged myself to write every day and it really worked. I’d open up whatever I was working on and just write a word. Just one word. Or maybe just a sentence. Then, I could decide if I had the time and energy to write more. This is great for days when you’re super busy or you feel like you have no energy, but you still don’t want to go a day without writing. You can just…write a word. It’s easy. Pull a Spongebob and just write “The”. Yeah, it’s an extremely slow way to work on your writing. But, as I similarly said before, one word is better than zero words.
Write while goofing off
I guess this depends on what you do when goofing off. Me, I spend a lot of time playing simulation games like Sims, Rimworld, or Dwarf Fortress. I end up waiting for quite some time for a sim to wake up or a colonist to finish building their house. If I leave the speed off of triple fast forward, I’d have plenty of time to get some writing done. This may or may not also be how I finished a lot of school readings and papers.
Basically, it’s making use of your downtime again, but while goofing off (which isn’t always easy to see). Think about what you like to do. Do you play basketball? Maybe you can get some writing done while on the bench. Or see if you can get some writing done while your friends argue over what movie to watch. That should be a good two hours.
But if you spend your free time doing something like knitting…yeah, not a lot of writing is going to happen then.
Schedule your writing time
It’s extremely easy to schedule in too much work and too many appointments, leaving barely any room for writing time. How to avoid this? Schedule time for writing as well. If you know you’re supposed to write at eight PM on Wednesday, then you know not to schedule any appointments, events, dates, etc. during that time.
How do you fit in writing when you have a busy schedule? Do you do the suggestions above? Or do you have more tips to keep writing in your life? Tell me in the comments!