Congratulations on making the choice to be a writer! You will no doubt come to regret that decision since writing is hard work, a lonely pursuit and and under-appreciated art, but, as any writer will tell you, it's worth the effort. It's not like we can really stop ourselves anyway, is it? Writers can't stop writing, even when they want to - and I bet that's one of the reasons why you realized that you were born to be a writer. 

 

Finding time to write is the most common problem writers face and you're wise to try to tackle it early on. Coming up with plots and characters and other things non-writers think are impossible are actually quite easy for us writers. Finding the time to write them, however, is very hard, and every writer has to find his or her own solution. My solution works (sortta) for me, and maybe there's something in it you can use to help you find your own solution.

 

Like you, I have commitments during the day (such as a full-time job), relationships to maintain (such as the one with my wife, relationships with my family and friends), other obligations (volunteer work, exercise, sleep) and other passions (I play tenor sax in a ska band and I love to read) - each one of these takes time and that's time I can't spend writing. In the end, I have a little window of time where I can write, usually 1 1/2 hours every night (Monday through Friday) from 6 to 7:30. Some nights I stretch it out to 2 hours, but seldom more since that's about the maximum time I can write and still be any good. I also get about 2 hours on Sundays as well. And I'm a slow writer, averaging maybe 300 words a night, sometimes much less. It's not a lot of time and it's not a lot of words, but in the past 10 years I have written 7 novels (5 which were published, 2 of which no one will read since they didn't turn out all that well). Slow and steady really does win the race.

 

My ability to reach my writing goals is based on 1 simple-to-state, hard-to-maintain mantra: Dedicated Time On Task. When I'm writing, there's no checking email, no updating facebook, no listening to music, no sitting at Starbucks acting like a writer - I sit and I write. It takes a lot of discipline and, I'll admit, I'm occasionally distracted and I skip days now and then, but overall, I do what it takes to stick to this plan. And when you think about it, what am I giving up? Watching more re-runs on TV? Crashing an angry bird into buildings? Reading about other people's lives/lies on facebook and Twitter? I seriously doubt that when I'm on my deathbed, I'll regret not spending enough of my time watching old episodes of Two And A Half Men, and I don't think my last words will be, "If only I had posted more pictures of kittens on the Internet." I do know, however, that no matter how much time I spend writing, I will wish I had spent even more.

 

So here's my advice: Set a daily writing schedule and stick to it. It can be at 4 in the morning or on the ride to school, and it's not how many hours you give the task but rather how focused you are in the time you have. 20 minutes of intensely focused time is far, far better than 3 hours of semi-effort. Every word you put down on paper is one word closer to your goal, every minute spent focused on your writing is time well spent. And guard that time because it's the most valuable thing you have. Without it, you will never succeed as a writer. Oh, you'll still be a writer - a frustrated, unpublished, head-full-of-great-ideas writer - but without time to write, you won't be a happy one. 

 

Now get to work.

 

Cheers,