How I Find Time to Write

Whenever I tell people I write books the first question I get approximately 99.9% of the time is: How do you find time to write a book with five kids at home?

I guess it sounds crazy when you look at it as a whole. Writing a book is daunting. And to be honest, the writing is probably the easy part. The hard part is the editing (so much editing!), the cover design, the formatting, the marketing, etc etc. But that’s all for another day and another blog post. Back to writing. When and how do I write?

I started out with a goal of writing 1,000 words a day. I found I could write 1,000 words in about 20-30 minutes. I fit this in either during my nap time hour or at night when my kids were asleep. It really wasn’t hard find 20 or 30 minutes when I was really determined to.

Once I made that 1,000 words a day commitment, I stuck to it. Rain or shine, sick or healthy, I promised myself I’d write 1000 words a today. And you know what happened? In about two months I had a book. A real life, legit book.

And that’s when the ball started rolling and it hasn’t stopped. I’ve currently written two full length novels (one comes out in January!), two novelettes, and I’m halfway through the first of a three book series I’m co-writing.

Do you want to know the kicker?

I started writing less than 9 months ago. All this simply because of a 1,000 words a day goal I set for myself. I’ve recently bumped my goal up to 2,000 words a day which is a little trickier, but it’s the same principle: rain or shine I get my word count in.

So that’s it! That’s the way I’ve done it. Nothing big and crazy, just slow and steady. That tortoise knew what he was doing when he agreed to race the hare 😉