When Do I Have Time To Write?

Writing a book is quite an undertaking.  It takes dedication.  It takes self-starting motivation.  It takes the ability to finely balance it with life and responsibility.  

Write.  Write the novel.  Don’t neglect your blog -your fans want to hear from you.  Don’t neglect your marketing, otherwise sales will dwindle.  You’ve got to be a master of time management.  For myself, I balance writing time with my day job.  I also blog (I contribute to three of them), I have a family life(I have three kids and a wife), book marketing, maintaining the family web site, being present on social media (marketing, yes, but a different kind of marketing), and so much more.  Often, it is a challenge deciding what part of my life on which to focus.

I have fallen into a quasi-routine.  The hierarchy goes like this:

1.  Day Job.  It pays the bills, allows me the opportunity to support my family and gives us the means to simply exist.

2.  Spend time with the wife and kids.  If they are home from school and work the same time I am home, I am not writing.  Occasionally, if it is late and we are all sitting on the couch and just watching a movie or something, I might fit in a blog…

3.  Social media.  I am on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Ello, Tumbler, Stumbleupon, Reddit, and Goodreads.  Admittedly, I spend more time on some than others, and this clocks in at number three, because it’s a quick activity.  It doesn’t take more than a few minutes to post something and stay relatively present.

4.  Writing blogs.  I contribute to this one, obviously.  It’s about writing, philosophy, and a little flash fiction from time to time.  I am the administrator of Fargus Larbis.  It’s basically a diary of sorts…and I contribute to castengerablog.  Writing blogs is more time consuming and it helps me hone the craft.

5.  Book marketing.  Above and beyond the social media piece, this is reserved for email blasts, test groups, getting beta reads, review requests, giving away promo copies, posting onto Goodreads forums, etc.

6.  Finally, writing the novel.  Why do I save this as a last priority?  I don’t really see it as a last priority, but it is.  It is the most time-consuming thing I do.  I can’t have interruptions.  I need to be totally immersed in the story.  Over time, I have found that if I don’t do these prior things first, I think about them while I’m working on the novel.  It is a way for me to cut down on the mental distractions.

I’m not saying that any of this is right, I’m just saying that this is what I do.  The great thing about writing is that there is no SOP.  You figure it out as you go.  Happy writing!