How to Make Time to Write - What We Do

we're sisters best friends and authors on a mission to help you stoke your creative fire and live the life of your dreams we believe that purpose fuels passion and that creativity is your secret weapon for mass construction there's never been a better time to bless the world with your dream realized you're listening to the kate and abby show what's up guys welcome back to another episode of the kate and abby show today we're talking about how to make time for writing note i don't say find time because you'll probably never find time for writing so if you feel like there's never any time to write you have a packed busy schedule you have a lot of other things going on you feel like you're constantly spinning a thousand different plates and you never have time to sit down with your beloved work in progress and actually write and do the thing that you love the most if that sounds like you if you can relate this podcast is for you today we're talking about how to carve out that time to write to be creative to give yourself the space to create something amazing and some practical ways that you can actually do that make that a reality in your life okay so we're gonna dive into that today our best tips on making time to write so if that is something that you need to do keep listening before we get started we have to thank our sponsors who are you that's right you guys are the ones who support this show and keep it going and we so appreciate your support so if you get value out of this podcast go to patreon.com the kate and abby show and help us keep this show alive and free of interruptions so what is the first thing to do when you need to make time for writing and you feel like you have no time go i think examine what the heck you're doing with your schedule and i feel like you probably have better advice on this because you're so good at time management and i'm still a noob in that area but like actually examine what do you have going on in your day-to-day life and what is actually important because some of the things on that list might not be important sometimes we end up doing things perpetually that we don't need to be doing yeah or you know squandering time that we didn't even realize was being squandered because we could do oh well we could move that and that's more efficient and boom now i have this time to do that but we can't even figure out what the layouts of our schedules are until we actually figure out what the layouts of our schedules are right you know what i mean yeah and a lot of people don't know like if you're like you said if you're not like super into time management then you probably don't know how you're spending every minute of every day you know and once you pull back and you're like okay i'm gonna observe this for a little while even just tracking it like you don't have to try to be like the ideal have all the ideal habits and try to be the perfect version of yourself you can just like observe what what is it i currently do because that's like the most useful thing observe what is it i currently do and track that and see how much time all of those things actually take you and some of those things you might need to continue to do so most of them you're gonna probably have to continue to do because you have responsibilities that you need to fulfill but a lot of time we don't realize is slipping away from us because it's like the in between time where we have like a few minutes here and there oh i have an hour or whatever you don't realize that those are the moments that kind of get stolen from you in a way because you haven't given them to something that where you know maybe you're browsing the internet or on youtube and that turns into like 25 minutes okay well 25 minutes is significant yeah and add that up to another 25 minutes probably later on that you do the same thing now you have like an hour of writing time that was was lost you know so the first thing to do i think is be honest with yourself about where you're spending your time and that begins with tracking it you know and being aware of and it doesn't have to be like written down an actual tracker i mean you could do that if that's your thing but just paying attention to okay how long have i been doing this you know whether it's youtube videos or whatever or scrolling instagram or doing anything else that's not necessary how much time do you really spend on that and what how what value do you place on those things you know because you are hopefully placing more value on your writing and if not you should because if that's valuable to you if that's important to you then you should be placing high value on writing time on writing in general and those other things if you put them side by side on a table and had to choose one okay you can watch three vlogs about you know people's lives that don't affect you or you can watch or you can write for an hour which one do you choose i think objectively looking at your schedule as a writer you're like well i want the writing time of course i want writing time and those are decisions that you make every day and a lot of these decisions we make without even knowing that we're making a decision you know indecision is a decision and i feel like that that those moments of indecision are the most precious moments that slip away and they slip away from me as well a lot of times um i will find myself like kind of in a limbo state of like in between things and i'm like i can't decide what to do because there's like a bunch of things i could do and those are like the most crucial moments that i feel like i i should have like thought about this ahead of time and like chosen something because i always feel so much better when i've like chosen something even if it's choosing just to relax and read or whatever like being able to choose that ahead of time and then like commit to that decision feels so much better than being in this state of like indecision when you have free time or whatever but yeah i'm getting off on a bunny no that's totally true even if you don't get a lot of writing done and you just are like you know what this is my dedicated writing time i'm taking the next 25 minutes i'm not doing anything except writing even if you only write a few paragraphs yeah eventually it will turn into more it might take you a while to get used to okay i get in the writing zone now but if you do it repetitively over and over again it's the same with like meditation the first few times i meditated it felt like i'm sitting here trying not to think and this is really annoying the first 10 times 20 times whatever and then eventually you're like you know what i feel really relaxed right now you know what this is really nourishing right now it takes time to sink into a routine like that but that shouldn't deter you the first several times the first 10 12 15 20 times let yourself settle into the regime most likely won't even take that long they say it takes 30 days to form a habit so during that 30 days of habit forming there might be times when you don't really feel like doing it i mean or when it's like you don't seem to accomplish a lot but like you said having that designated time when you're actually sitting down and writing doing the act of writing participating is better than oh i don't know what i'm doing maybe i shouldn't do that maybe i'm not meant to do that you know what oh this just isn't working out right you'd be better off just write three paragraphs and then at least you know that you showed up and you honored yourself you honored your craft and the time you had to do it the time you set aside you honored your decision and that tells yourself internally hey the decisions we make are important and we go out of our way to make sure that we are keeping the promise we made to ourselves yeah exactly so it does good psychological and spiritual things it's a good affirmation to yourself yeah and it also builds new habits with your impulses and that's something that i've been thinking about a lot lately is how what what is the thing that you go to when you have free time or you're bored or you want to be entertained like we were talking about a couple of episodes ago um about making writing something you love falling in love with your character i think that was the one we were doing we were talking about this um is i said something about when did writing become something that's not entertaining to you and i think part of building that relationship with your writing is by making that like the trigger like impulse decision that you go to open your document and you just write something or you experiment with writing maybe a new project when you're bored and have building that as like this is my impulse thing that i go to for like entertainment for some kind of like satisfaction like i'm bored i have nothing to do i'm in this limo in decision state or i have free time like i'm not gonna open youtube i'm not gonna scroll instagram i'm gonna open a word document and write something and the more you like build that pattern of this is what i do when i have free time or this is what i do when i have a moment where nothing's going on or um even when i'm bored right um the more you build that pattern the more your brain will produce ideas and creativity like i find that the more i use my creativity the more there is it's not like it it's used up um the more distractions i introduce into my life the less creative i feel and i i feel like a lot of writers feel that way and a lot of us don't even know that's why we feel uncreative is because there's a lot of other things taking up mental space actually was it was the digital minimalism one that we were talking about which was a couple of episodes ago but yeah in that episode we talked about how other things are taking up your time and taking up your creativity and so being honest with yourself about where am i spending this time where all these minutes adding up and what do they add up to at the end of the day what do i have to show for it do i feel better at the end of the day because i i spent my time on these things or do i feel maybe more creatively dull and less energized and less creative and less inspired if that's the case then i think it's time to make a list of those things that you spend your time on and choose what you let go of let go of the things that are no longer serving you what are those things can you let go of some of those things or greatly reduce those things the time you spend on those things and once you let go of them or greatly reduce the time you spend on them you will be amazed by how much time and space and energy you have left over to spend on your art you know yeah absolutely you have to decide whether how bad you want it how bad do you want to write this how bad do you want to finish this book to be participating in this writing project whatever it is what does it mean to you what is it worth to you how does it add value to your life even write these things down or just reason them out in your mind get that straight and then stick to it figure out what it means to you don't let that be ambiguous in your mind figure out what it means to you and if it means a lot to you if you want it badly enough you'll make time for it yeah like it's really as simple as that the things that we want more than anything will make time for yeah and so be honest with yourself about that figure that out and let go of the things that are getting in the way let go of the things that you're like you know what okay writing really means something to me all right what about this other thing not as much okay the youtube videos don't mean as much okay the time we're wasting on social media doesn't mean as much okay the time that we're wasting doing something else doesn't mean as much then let go of that thing all it takes is discipline all it takes is discipline of yourself to make the decision to let go of the things that are not serving you are not bringing you closer to your goals are not honoring that thing that you really do truly love you are the referee here you have to call yourself out on hey you know what i'm wasting time here and you have to really be brutally honest with yourself or else you're not going to get anything done yeah so i say that from brutal experience yeah same same that's so so true and discipline is not magic it's not like some there's no secret recipe for it it's literally as simple as it looks which is that you have to do the thing whatever the thing is just do it like don't don't talk about it don't think about it don't overthink it every day then write every day read every day and i don't even care how long you write for just make a habit of okay i'm gonna do this every single day right because that's when at that point you're prioritizing your writing and that's the most important thing that you can do in order to get something done like you were saying you don't want it badly enough if you're not actually spending time doing it and you see that with with with anybody who does something because they're passionate about it they're making time for it and they become a master at that thing because they're passionate about it they love doing it i know that there are some things i've put on my lists to do or to learn and i'm just not super passionate about them and i could push myself to do them but i don't because it never comes as an impulsive feeling of like i really desire this i desire to do this it's never been those things have never been that great of a desire for me and that's why i've never prioritized them you know so i think reconnecting with what are my desires and also looking at how do i want to feel in the future and at the end of the year or the end of the month whatever is your your like time to sit down and reassess for most people it's the end of the year at the end of the year when i look back at what i did this year am i going to feel regret that i didn't spend time working on this project or that i didn't finish the book or do whatever accomplish whatever the goal was with the writing project and chances are you are going to feel regret if you don't spend the time now and every moment matters like they all add up it's not just some big grand action it's all the little drops on the rock that drill the hole through the rock over time it's not just the one big action so at the end of the year all of those hours that you spent you know scrolling instagram or watching vlogs that is going to add up to a lot of time and if you spend if you decide right now i'm not going to spend time doing those mind-numbing activities that steal my creative energy instead i'm going to spend my creative energy and grow it and cultivate it and produce more of it by pouring it into my own thing and then at the end of the year i can have something to show for it and i can say i'm really proud of this thing that i made and all of those moments added up to be something really incredible yeah and i mean think of it this way even if you write one novel page worth of writing that once a day is 365 pages and that's a book boom mic drop you know yeah it's so true okay how much time does it take you to write that page probably not that long no probably not as long as it takes us to like scroll through the internet looking at things we don't need to look at you know it's wasting time on social media or something so you can really it doesn't have to be this giant amount of time this huge massive dedication it's taking you know hey i'm going to take this 25 minutes and i'm going to do something with it yeah i'm going to do something that's actually going to benefit me that's going to propel me forward into my dream that i hold dear that i want to manifest in my life yeah and that's the thing that i think is so cool about writing about any art really but with writing how i've experienced anyway is that there are so many ways to make time for it like it doesn't have to be like a one-size-fits-all you have to write for you know two hours a day or whatever the case may be an hour a page it could be anything you know it could like you just said it could be a novel sized page formatted like in a book that's almost like a half of a page in a normal word document so it can be literally that small that simple or it could be something a bigger action a more um a more like daunting goal but something more challenging but it doesn't have to be every day it doesn't have to be like this big action of like every single day it could be just a season is what i'm trying to say like if you're going if you're moving towards a ambitious goal like i want to write an entire book okay and i want to either make time to write it every day for a year or make time to write it every day for a month like you can do so many there are so many different ways that you can make time for writing is what i'm trying to say and that's one of the things that i love so much about it is that we can set these goals but we can go about executing them in so many different ways you could write just a little bit every single day or you could write a lot every single day for a couple weeks or a couple days it doesn't have to be right ever not ever you don't have to copy someone else's process as you're talking i'm reminded of like we've had a lot of comments before and i know we have a lot a lot of listeners who are parents who have asked like oh you know i'm busy because i'm raising kids and so how do i make this happen these are great tips for that because you doesn't have to necessarily be like every day always right you can figure out a schedule that is tailored to you and your kids and your life you can you can solve that problem it doesn't have to be well okay every day see i can't do that well it doesn't have to be necessarily for you right you know what i mean yeah maybe it's like oh okay i know that i'll have free time at this particular hour for this season or for the summer or you know the autumn whatever or figuring out a time of day yeah you know okay i have someone who helps me with this or my spouse is watching the kids or a babysitter is helping me out and so i'm going to take advantage of that time or they're taking a nap or something like that and even if it's like okay i spend 15 minutes while my kids are taking a nap and i write you know so those are things you can do you can tailor it even if you're a busy parent and i and i call this out specifically just because we've had a lot of comments from parents who are like hey i want to figure out how to how to be able to write my book but i have kids and it's figure editable everything is figure out yes yes exactly it is i thought it was just making me think of um the book wonder and the author uh i read like the i think it was the forward or the afterward i don't know some little like extra bonus material in that book the author of the book wonder was talking about how when she wrote that book she had young kids and she was like working all day and then taking care of the kids and her writing time was after her kids went to bed she would start writing at 12 a.m to 3 a.m wow every day and that was her writing time and that means i don't even know how she slept or functioned but like that is amazing but like you can find those things that work for you like if it works for you okay that's like sometimes it's difficult to like squeeze in that writing time but it's all about examining your life your schedule how it is and seeing how can i let go of what no longer serves me and embrace my art and my creativity in a new way that i can produce something really incredible that i can be proud of and that can go out in the world and make a difference and inspire somebody else so all of those things are are so important i think to hold up in your mind and remember um and like for me personally um one of the things that that i've been thinking about a lot lately is i want to take time to just write every day no pressure no stress just focus on writing projects and not focus so much on work and because i'm self-employed i have my own business and i can move things around i've been able to carve out the month of june to do that and i'm actually doing a virtual writing retreat on my youtube channel so that kind of ties into my writing retreat as well it's a writing retreat that i decided to go on and i'm like i might as well do this for my youtube community as well like so fun that'd be fun to involve everybody in it and so it's going to be like a virtual writing retreat on my youtube channel so definitely check that out if you haven't seen that already um my channel is youtube.com abbyemens and basically i'm going to be doing write with me live streams every wednesday so they're gonna be like group writing sessions and then updates every day on my youtube community but i chose to do that and part of me was like a little bit hesitant because i'm i'm very like productivity-minded i'm like oh this is gonna be like it's so difficult for me to not like to force myself to not just keep producing videos the same way i always do every week and i just realized that no i need this like as a writer as an artist i need this month i need this retreat i need this time to devote to my writing and to reconnect with my creativity and honoring those obligations really to yourself honoring those promises to yourself as an artist i think are so important and i admire that so much in other authors that i want to emulate that myself you know and make sure that i'm always cultivating my own creativity and keeping that connection strong and not ever letting the pressure to produce and be productive never letting that steal the joy of creativity yeah you know right we can often stack too many things on top of it and now our attention gets divided or maybe you know you've become successful in publishing a book and now there's other obligations with that you know whatever it is you have to go back to what is really important to me what's what excites me and like we were saying prioritize prioritize your art prioritize and execute that's the way to get something done yep 100 true so yeah i think we covered a lot in this episode about making time for writing to recap be honest with yourself about where you're spending your time let go of what no longer serves you or greatly reduce the time you spend on those things make time for writing by prioritizing your writing it is important to you remind yourself why it's important to you and think about visualize the feeling of accomplishing your goals in your writing what would that feel like where do you want to be at the end of the year hold that in your mind and let that drive you forward and even if it's just for a season just for a month devote yourself to your writing and your art because it is so important to you and there are so many different ways to do that it's really personal and it really is dependent upon your own lifestyle and your own experience so take the time to learn and figure out how can i make this time how can i create this space to create in my life and that will be different for everybody so definitely take the time to do that and hopefully this podcast has given you some ideas of how to move forward in that direction of growth and creativity i hope it has inspired you if so smash that like button to let us know or give us a good rating if you're listening on the other podcast platforms if you haven't seen the youtube video version of this podcast go to kate's channel which is youtube.com ka ammons you can check out all the podcasts in video version video format over there and see our faces while we talk at you and give you inspiration so definitely check that out and thank you again to our amazing patrons you guys make this show possible so if you get value out of this podcast go to patreon.com the kate and abby show and help us keep this show alive and free of interruptions until next week stay stoked and rock on

Channel: K.A. Emmons

Views: 8,169

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Id: zqKQuqGfqRI

Length: 26min 39sec (1599 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 14 2021