Ten Tips for Balancing Writing with Dayjob, Family, and Other Commitments
Ten Tips for Balancing Writing with Dayjob, Family, and Other Commitments
I think the question I get asked the most, besides, “Are your books going to be movies?”, is “How do you get it all done?” I have a dayjob. I work for a professional association and manage volunteers as well as an online community. (Most days I feel like I just work at an email factory, tbqh.)
Why writers might enjoy dayjobs, and the ways in which it might benefit your creativity, is a different post (and honestly, covered really well by Erin Bowman in this post).
Today I want to talk about a few ways to think about your time and your energy and your creativity, and how to balance it. This works if you have a dayjob, or you’re a fulltime parent, or you’re a fulltime caregiver, or if you are disabled and your energy/brain bandwidth/physical ability tends to fluctuate.
“You do so much!”
I do do a lot. I have a dayjob. I have a very time consuming hobby (shockingly this is about the horse and not embroidery) and I do a lot of freelance work because that’s what helps pay the bills (see again: the horse).
I also go through periods of high creativity and low creativity, which is normal for me, and also really frustrating at points. I’m writing about that in my newsletter this month, so you can sign up for that here if you haven’t yet. It’s going out on June 30th.
Here are some tips that help me get the writing done.
Make it a routine. I think people hear “make it routine” and they think that means “daily” routine. Routine just means routine. It has no set time. If you only have an hour to write every single week, then make that hour routine. If you have fifteen minutes to write every day, make that quarter of an hour routine. Whatever time you can, make it happen. Routine has massive benefits for writers. First, we know that brains love routine. You literally build neural pathways from routine. That is to say: while writing might not actually get easier from routine, starting writing will. Secondly, we also know that routine helps get through that mental block and past the self-doubt and negative inner talk. It crushes imposter syndrome.
When I was writing This Rebel Heart, I sat down and wrote for 2 hours every day. That’s the amount of time I had to give to writing, so I gave that time. I know I gave that time because it took about an hour for me to get home from work, and I’d park at the Starbucks near my house, and then I’d write until they closed. 6-8pm, every day. I think a lot in time blocks because time is a better measurement of work than word count. But that might not work for you.
I talked earlier this year in my newsletter and online about how my goal was to write 300 words a day, every day. I haven’t been consistent in this. But if you can, 300 words a day is over 100,000 words a year. 300 words isn’t a lot of words. You can get that even when you’re tired. You can get that in 100 word bites before work, at your lunch break, and between the kids coming home from school and dinner, or right after bedtime.
How you measure is up to you. The key is routine. (And the other key is separating out metrics from routine, I realized, while writing this. I’ll work on that post later.)
2. Whatever percentage you have to give, give. If you only have 30% of yourself to give to writing, but you give 30%, then you’re giving 100%. That’s the truth. What percentage of yourself you have to give to writing might fluctuate. It probably will fluctuate. That’s okay. What’s important is to learn how to objectively assess your own energy/bandwidth and what else you’ve got going on, and then to hold yourself accountable without going hard on yourself. I know. Easier said than done.
But by thinking of this way, I hope it helps you honestly say, “I really don’t have much in me. I have like 10% left in the tank, and I need to do dishes which will take 5% because I’m not as gas efficient at this hour after the day I’ve had. That means I have 5% left for book work. That probably means I won’t get fresh writing done but I can use that 5% and read yesterday’s chapter and write out my plan for tomorrow’s chapter.”
If you do that, if that’s what you do with your 5% left in your body, then you gave 100%. That’s still writing. That’s still forward progress.
3. Know what kind of writer you are, and find ways to make that space for you. One of my friends (the great Dahlia Adler, whose paperback release of HOME FIELD ADVANTAGE, a sapphic cheerleader/football star YA, came out last week) used to have a long commute in and out of the city every day. She wrote almost all her books on her phone in the notes app on those commutes. That sounds like hell to me, but she wrote multiple novels this way. For me, I need consistency above all else, and while I will work at home (I didn’t use to at all! The pandemic was life changing lol), I prefer to work in cafes or libraries. So I make that space.
If you can write in 15 minute spurts in the pickup line at school, or while your kiddo fell asleep in the car seat just as you pulled into the grocery store parking lot and you’re waiting them out, or you can write at your dayjob’s breaks, then bring writing tools with you on the go. Be prepared for a 15 minute block anywhere.
Learn your preferences, and then seek out those preferences and be prepared for them. I went on a trip last week to NY and wrote 1k (as well as walking 11 miles!) because I dragged my computer along and wrote in the library and then again in B&N cafe. Neither were long writing sprints, but they WERE public spaces and I needed some air conditioning breaks.
4. Communicate to your friends and family. People ask me sometimes when my family started to treat my writing as a “real job” and not just a hobby and the answer is: when I started treating it as a real job. When I started to say, “I have a deadline so I’m going to be working with my phone off for these hours” and actually sticking to it, they started to respect that time too.
If you have a partner, communicate your goals. If you want to hit a certain deadline or you need to get a chapter done tonight, or the last week’s been hard to carve out writing time and you need help getting that schedule done, sit down and talk with the people in your life who can help.
Maybe it involves shifting some of the household chores around, trading dinner nights or dishes, or finding extra money in the budget to order out once a week so there’s no dishes/dinner to worry about and you BOTH get two hours of time back in that day a week. Maybe it involves some childcare juggling, or someone else walks the dog in the morning so you can write.
Whatever it is, communicate it and see if you can work through that. I’m also communicative about my deadlines, because it does mean I’m flaky on plans or have to skip some family dinners because I need to eat and work at the same time. My family gets it because I don’t do it all the time, I just need to do it at crunch times. They get it because I communicate it.
5. Experiment with different systems, but embrace your own. I do great with pomodoro sprints. I also do great with body doubling. (LOKI was probably only finished because I bodydoubled with my friend Ash for literally hours every single day for three months straight). I love reading other people’s systems and I do like experimenting, but ultimately what I’ve come to realize is: if something’s working, embrace it.
If you write better on your couch, great. If you need to write at 4am and then go back to sleep at 6am, fine! You can certainly try the 5-7 approach instead, but if it works for you, great. You don’t need to change your whole system just because someone was like I HAVE A BETTER WAY. People love to say they have better ways. And they might. They might have better ways for them. But that doesn’t mean it will work for you.
I encourage experimentation but be a magpie: pluck the things that work for you, and discard the rest, and don’t feel bad that you can’t follow it completely.
6. Try out different technology. Maybe an alphasmart or Freewrite work for you (full disclosure: they didn’t work for me!). Maybe you handwrite best and you end up with a pile of notebooks, or you can get a Remarkable Tablet, or an iPad. Or maybe you can type on your phone (pro tip: a bluetooth keyboard can connect to your phone! I’ve type out on a full size keyboard but to a phone, and it works great!).
Maybe it’s more like apps. I’m a Scrivener girlie (girlie’s gender-neutral in Gen Z) even though I only use like 5% of the app’s genius. I have friends who love Plottr. Other friends who adore Evernote. (Please read all the T&C regarding generative AI and Large Language Models for apps these days.) Think about how you can streamline your own efforts so that the way you choose to write isn’t also contributing to your energy drain.
7. Make a plan. I know that I can’t always write new words every day over my lunch break, but I do a lot of author work over my lunch break, especially on my work from home days. So I preplan it. Like today, I knew I’d have writing time tonight so I was able to plan writing this blog post instead. But if I’m going to write over a lunch break, I know I’m not going to finish a whole chapter. So I set reasonable goals. I’ll decide to rework one scene or work on one particular aspect. For instance, I might know that I need to kick the tension in the first chapter up a notch, so I’ll work on that for an hour instead. I try to write out my goals for the next writing session so I know what I’m working on, and it saves me some panic spiraling about what’s coming next. Tonight’s writing goal is “Introduce [Character] and set up the subplot between her, her husband and [Protagonist].”
8. Use bits of downtime to build out your creative brainspace. This gets dangerously close to “BE THE MOST PRODUCTIVE YOU CAN EVER BE!!!!” but I don’t mean it that way. I mean that the writing life extends far beyond what you’re typing or writing. Writing life is much more than the words on the page. It includes daydreaming. It includes talking to other writers. It includes thinking about writing. And your time for doing that kind of writing work might be just as limited.
I like to listen to audiobooks on my commutes, but I also will listen to writing life/creativity podcasts if I need a break or my audiobook is too stressful, or my drive is short. Listening to Writing Excuses helps my brain tune into that creative space, and stay in that creative space.
I regret to inform you that mindlessly swiping and scrolling does absolutely nothing for the creative well.
9. Be kind to yourself. It’s really easy to beat yourself up for not following a plan, or for things falling apart. But to be honest, beating yourself up for things falling apart doesn’t usually prevent them from falling apart. It just perpetuates this doom and gloom shame and guilt spiral that can REALLY overtake you if you’re not careful. Take it from me, a doom and gloom shame spiral expert.
It’s absolutely possible to be kind to yourself and hold yourself accountable. “My writing time was from 7-8am and I didn’t sit down today, what the hell am I doing why am I so bad at this I’m never going to write this book I can’t believe I suck so much at a simple routine” doesn’t get the book written.
But saying, “My writing time was 7-8am but the cat was vomiting everywhere, and I needed extra time to clean that up and call the vet, so I didn’t get to write today, so I’m going to plan on sitting down for 15 minutes after work before I do dinner prep, so I can get some writing today” does get the book written.
Saying, “My writing time was 7-8am but I overslept, which happens. I’m going to write for 30 minutes over my lunch break and try to get to bed 30 minutes earlier tonight so I can write tomorrow” does get the book written.
Know that it’s not going to go perfectly every day. You’re human. You’re imperfect and fallible even if your brain thinks you shouldn’t be. The world conspires against us sometimes.
10. Reject the all-or-nothing mentality. Talk about easier said than done. After being the chairperson of the Doom and Gloom Shame and Guilt Spiral Department, I’m also the Dean of All-or-Nothing School. But I’ve been working really hard on “yes, I do like to start my work at the top of an hour and I like a full complete hour, BUT beggars can’t be choosers: I know I have about 37 minutes to write, so I’m going to sit down and set a timer and write for that time anyway.” In the past I’d be like “Well, I don’t have enough time to write like I like, so I won’t write at all.” You know what doesn’t get books done? THAT.
And if you don’t get everything on that to-do list done, that’s okay! Move the unfinished items to the next to do list, and if it becomes a pattern, know that you have to amend how you make to-do lists for your writing sessions, NOT give up on writing sessions or to-do lists all together. Adjust and build in flexibility and compromise.
I get it. I have ADHD and trust me, I know this is easier said than done. But it’s also something you can work on. Everything on this list is a skillset and it can be strengthened. Whether it’s accountability with a friend, or a writing buddy, or a book coach, or your sibling, or your roommate, or your partner, OR if you like me work on these skillsets with a therapist, it is possible to learn to work with and around your brain and habits.
I find it easier to acknowledge my all-or-nothing mentality like I did in the quoted self-talk above on this tip. Yes, I DO prefer to get everything done the way I like it or not at all. BUT I can do it this way. Acknowledging it helps my little hamster brain feel recognized and validated, instead of feeling like that mentality is the enemy. It’s not the enemy. It’s part of me, and also, I want to write a book.
What are some other tips for juggling busy lives and creative lives?
(This is not a complete list. Some of these tips might work for you. Some might not. Some might completely backfire on you. The thing about advice is that it’s personal and imperfect. All advice comes with a YMMV. I’d love to hear about other tips and suggestions you have in the comments, but if you come here to argue or take these tips in bad faith, this comment section is not for you.)