4 Tips for Finding Time to Write When Life is Busy

I often talk about how the key to being successful as a writer is finding a routine that works for you and then sticking to it. (If you haven’t already established a good writing routine, check out by blog post 5 Easy Steps to Start Your Writing Routine for some ideas to get started). But what about when life is in a busy season and maintaining our usual routine isn’t possible?

We all have periods in life that are just far busier than others, and whether these periods are expected or come as a surprise, it can be easy to get discouraged in these moments and set aside our writing goals altogether. We get caught up in the day-to-day of life and it seems easier to just wait until the craziness calms down before we pick up our manuscripts again. I’ve been there. I’ve done this. And what I learned is that setting aside my writing completely actually makes the problem worse. I might have more time for the other things that need my attention, but I don’t have the energy. For me, and maybe for you too, my energy comes from having that creative outlet and knowing that, however slowly, I’m making progress towards whatever goals I’ve set for myself.

While I wouldn’t recommend abandoning all other obligations in your life to focus on your writing goals exclusively, I’m a strong advocate that finding any snippet of time to work on your writing will make you happier and, therefore, better able to deal with the stress of a busier-than-usual period of life.

So, how do you find time for writing when life is busy?

1. Adjust Your Expectations

Now is not the time to decide you’re going to self-publish your first book tomorrow and probably not the time to set a goal of completing the remaining 50,000 words of your work in progress by the end of the month. 

While it might not feel great having to readjust your goals and extend timelines, when faced with a busy time of life, it’s the only way you can reasonably expect to get any writing done. If you try to maintain the same level of productivity as you normally would when you have a lot more going on in other areas of your life, you’re only going to set yourself up for disappointment.

Instead, think about all your other obligations and consider what’s actually reasonable for you to accomplish writing-wise in this timeframe. If that means cutting down your productivity from drafting four chapters per week to only one, that’s okay. If that means instead of querying agents, you’re going to dabble in a new project for the time being, that’s okay as well. Whatever you think is manageable, set your new expectations there for now. Setting lower goals you can actually meet will be more motivating and encouraging than sticking with goals that aren’t feasible – if you know you can’t meet the goals anyways, you’re less likely to show up and put any effort in at all.

2. Use a Planner

However you prefer to plan and organize your tasks and time, now is the time to make sure you’re using that tool. Whether it’s a paper planner or something digital, taking a little time weekly and daily to write down your obligations, appointments, goals, and tasks to be completed and then considering when you’ll fit all of that in is worth the time investment. Having a clear idea of what needs to be accomplished and when will help you feel less chaotic and allow you to spend the rest of your time actually completing tasks rather than trying to figure out what to do next.

Considering your weekly and daily schedule will also help you find some snippets of time where you might be able to fit in writing time. When you feel overwhelmed with too much to do, it’s easy to say you don’t have any time to write. But when you sit down and actually write out your schedule, you may be surprised to find that you do have some space to squeeze in writing. Maybe it’s not the three-hour Sunday marathon you’d prefer, but 30 minutes (or less!) here and there do add up. I’ve been known to set up my laptop on the kitchen counter and work on my writing while making dinner – not ideal, but it works! Make use of the time you do have, and schedule that time for writing! Putting it in black and white on your planner will help you stick to the commitment and also reinforce the idea that your writing is an important task on your to do list. Depending what else is going on in your life, it may not be the most important thing, but it is important and should still be treated as such. 

3. Protect Your Writing Time

Once you’ve come up with a realistic schedule and penciled in some writing time for yourself, now it’s time to stick to that commitment and protect your writing time with everything you’ve got. If something else comes up that would interfere with that time, consider whether or not you really want to give up your writing time for it. Maybe you have to, depending on what it is. But if you can say no to the new thing, then do so.

It's easy for writers to lose all their writing time to other things simply because they don’t value their writing enough to treat it like a serious commitment. But the truth is, no one else will value your writing time if you don’t. It’s okay to tell a friend you can’t meet for coffee because you’re writing. It’s okay to tell your husband he needs to handle the kids for an hour so you can shut the door to your office and write. Protect that writing time just as you would any other task on your schedule.

4. Be Gentle With Yourself

And lastly, my most important tip for writing during a busy time of life is to be gentle with yourself. You’re going to have to skip some scheduled writing time because something else came up, and that’s okay. Or you might just get to 8pm on a Thursday when you’d scheduled a writing session and decide you need to sit and watch Netflix instead. And that is also perfectly okay. The most important thing is that you keep yourself as mentally well as you can during a busy phase of life and that writing does not end up feeling like just another chore you have to check off your list each day.

This isn’t the time to compare yourself to others or even past versions of yourself. There will always be other writers who are more productive in the moment than you. That’s okay. They’re in a different phase of life right now. They’ll have periods where their productivity drops too, I promise. We all do.

Life gets crazy at times, and there’s just nothing we can do about that unfortunately. But we can control how we respond to the situation. By making writing a priority in your life but also extending yourself grace when you just can’t fit it in or don’t have the energy to, you’ll ensure that writing is still an enjoyable part of your life that you’ll be excited to jump back into full force when life returns to normal again.