So you want to start writing a novel, blogging, or working part-time as a freelance writer. But you feel like you don’t have any extra minutes in the day. What do you do?

How can you start writing with a busy schedule or fulltime job? Not having time isn’t an excuse. Lots of busy people manage to write blogs or books, and you can too! You just have to make it a priority. That might mean a bit less time watching TV or Netflix, or browsing Facebook.

In this article, I’ll explain how you can start writing even if you have a busy schedule.

Don’t Feel Like Reading? Check Out My Video On This Topic!

Not Having Time Isn’t An Excuse!

I believe that everyone has time to write if they really want to.

When people say “I don’t have time,” what they really should be saying is “it’s not a priority for me right now.”

If a pipe suddenly burst in your house right now, or your car broke down, you wouldn’t say that you didn’t have time to fix it. You’d make time!

Our schedules are a lot more flexible and filled with downtime than we think.

So if you want to write, then make the time and write! It doesn’t matter if you want to start a blog, work on that book you’ve always wanted to write, or start freelancing. Just make the time for yourself.

There are lots of really busy people who manage to find the time to write regular blog posts or books. Stay-at-home moms, millionaire entrepreneurs, and lots of other people who are likely even busier than you are right now! What they all have in common is that they make it a priority, so it gets done.

Don’t get burned out though! Check out my article Avoiding Burnout As A Freelance Writer for tips!

Finding More Time To Write

If you feel like you’re too busy to write, I’d recommend really taking an audit of your life to see what you’re doing.

Literally write out a schedule with every hour of the day for a week, and track what you’re doing during those times. You can try to do this as a mental exercise, but it’s even better if you can really track your schedule hour by hour.

Either way, you may end up being shocked how much time you spend just sitting around and not really doing anything productive! If you can recapture just a portion of that time for writing, you’ll be way ahead.

How much time each day do you waste scrolling through Facebook, Instagram, and other social media? Or taking your own photos and editing them, uploading them, and organizing them? What benefit do you really get out of it?

How much time are you watching television or Netflix each day? Especially with on-demand streaming services, those shows aren’t going anywhere. So why not try giving them up for a month and using all of that time to get some writing done instead?

If you’re watching television, how much time are you wasting sitting through commercials? About 12 minutes on average. Imagine if you even took every commercial break to mute the TV and have a quick writing break where you wrote a couple of paragraphs.

How much time do you spend complaining and gossiping with your friends?

You get the idea. You may be one of the few people out there who are actually super busy and don’t have a minute of downtime in the day. But chances are that you do.

Ready to call it quits at your job? Read my article When Should You Quit Your Job To Become A Full-Time Freelancer or Entrepreneur? first

Set Dedicated Time Aside For Writing

You need to block out a chunk of time for your writing, and protect it with your life.

Let your friends and family know that you won’t be available during these specific times, and don’t let anything interrupt you from your writing. Put your phone into airplane mode, turn off the wifi, and remove all other possible distractions.

You can start by just setting aside a little bit of time at a specific time each day. It might be just thirty minutes or an hour to start with.

You’ll be surprised at how much progress you can make on your writing project with just a consistent hour of work each day! If you can write just one blog post or one page of your novel each day, that’s more than 250 pages of writing per year. Even if you take weekends off!

Some people find it easier than others to pick up their writing and put it back down. It takes a bit of practice, so I’d try it out for a few weeks. But if you just can’t get into the groove of things, you may choose to schedule out a bigger chunk of time each week.

Instead of writing for one hour per weeknight, you might block out an entire afternoon each week for writing. Then you can sit down and focus on your work for a solid 5 hours in one go.

Plan In Advance

If you have a limited amount of time available to write, then planning becomes even more critical.

Whenever you have some downtime at work or when lounging around the house, keep a notepad or app on your phone handy for taking notes.

Keep a list of blog or article ideas ready, so that when you sit down to write you’ll know exactly what topics you want to write about. You may even make some bullet points about main ideas that you want to cover.

If you’re writing a novel, you can plot out your book in your spare time. Figure out the overall idea of the story and what you want to happen in each chapter. Fill out some backstory and details about each character to work with. Then when you sit down to write, you can focus on creating dialogue instead of thinking about what needs to happen next.

Focus On Content

It can be easy to focus on make-busy tasks instead of actually writing once you do finally set time aside and sit down.

Most of your results will come from time that you spend actually writing, no matter what kind of writing you’re doing.

So if you’re writing a blog, actually write blog posts. Don’t get distracted by other tasks like customizing your website to make it look pretty, or updating your WordPress themes.

If you’re writing a novel, don’t start designing what you want your cover to look like, or brainstorming titles.

Do the actual writing first, and you can focus on those little details some other time!

Conclusion

I don’t feel that saying you don’t have time to write is a valid excuse.

For most people it’s not that you don’t have time. It’s just that you aren’t making it a priority.

When an emergency in your life comes up, you somehow magically find the time to resolve it anyway. So why can’t you prioritize something you’re really interested in and passionate about?

Identify time that you’re wasting throughout the week on stuff like watching TV or mindlessly scrolling through websites, and repurpose it to work on your writing instead.

Depending on your writing style, you may be okay writing for 30 minutes or an hour in the evening. Or you may do better setting aside one afternoon on the weekend to do all of your writing for the week.

Whatever kind of writing you’re working on, make time for it in your life! If it’s something you really want to complete, don’t let yourself keep putting it off forever.