How I stopped hiding behind 'busy' and discovered when, where, and how I actually write best.
In my last post, Maybe Writing Your Novel Can Wait, I talked about my experience coaching aspiring authors who, for one reason or another, genuinely don’t have time to write a novel.
I wasn’t being a Debbie Downer, I was fronting up to something ugly in our hustle culture – the myth that we can have it all, immediately, if not sooner, so long as we work hard enough.
As a recovering workaholic, I know that ‘just work harder’ is the stinkiest kind of bullshit around. We’re all human. We all need to eat, sleep, shower, and take out the bins, so telling tired, stressed-out people just to hustle harder in the pursuit of their dream isn’t just putting them on the path to burn-out and ill-health, it’s bloody cruel.
So, in today’s post, I’m talking about the other group of people. The people who, like me once upon a time, used a lack of time as an excuse not to write. If I had been honest with myself, I had the time, I was just hiding behind my big, busy, corporate job because I was afraid to fail. My author dream felt so fragile and, on times, so ridiculous, (who the hell was I to write a book?) that not trying became the logical approach to not falling flat on my face.
As I’ve written about many times before, it wasn’t until my mum died and my life, along with my mental health, imploded in 2018 that I thought, ‘F*** it. What have I got left to lose?’
But I’d been spinning the lack of time line for so long that I think part of me had come to believe it.
The breakthrough
My first book took over ten years to write. When the pandemic eliminated my freelance work overnight, I wrote my second book in nine months. It felt like progress, but as the world returned to some semblance of normal, I questioned whether I could do it again while actually running my businesses and paying the bills.
In 2022, the answer was a resounding no. Between rushing back to work, major surgery, and losing both a dear friend and our beloved Bear, I decided the next book would just have to wait.
By spring 2023, I had a new work-in-progress, but after a speedy start, I stalled halfway through and was starting to believe it might take another global pandemic, lottery win, or retirement before I could get another book over the line.
It wasn’t until New Year’s Day 2024 that I hit on a new idea – work on the book each morning before starting my freelance work day. By that point, I was feeling pretty despondent, so anything was worth a try.
And TFFT, it worked.
Fast forward to May and my fourth draft was winging its way to my editor.
Why did it work? Well, after close to fourteen years of trial and error (mainly error) I’d stumbled upon two important truths about myself:
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I’m at my most creative in the morning
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My people pleasing means always putting clients first (and me last)
By working with my energy and mindful of my tendency to throw my own projects under a bus if a client needed something, writing before the working day began gave me guilt-free time to focus.
In hindsight, it now reads like a ‘well, dah!’ realisation, but there you go. I got there in the end and I suppose that’s all that matters.
Finding your own way
What worked for me and my circumstances likely won’t work for the next person, but there is no one way to do this writing lark, which means you get to play around and see what works for you.
The lovely thing about creative people is just that – our creativity – so most people will figure out what works best for them. My goal here is share some ideas to see if I can shortcut the process for you.
Here are the questions that helped me crack my own code:
When is my most creative time of day?
As humans, we’re cyclical beings influenced by the time of day and the season. Discovering that you’re most creative in the evenings or morning is a useful piece of insight. Even if it happens to coincide with another commitment, like getting the kids off to school, it’s a piece of the jigsaw you can use. Maybe that means only writing on weekend mornings, or during school holidays.
I write before my working day starts because I know myself well enough to know that once I open my emails, client work will always win. That’s just how I’m wired. So I had to protect that morning time before the rest of the world woke up and started pulling my strings.
When is my most creative time of year?
There is so much rubbish advice out there for writers that feels like it’s designed to shame people. Top of the list is ‘writers write every day.’ Some might, good for them, but for many of us, writing 365 days a year, even if circumstances allow, might not be right.
You might be a hunker down on cold, dark afternoons kind of writer who loves the promise of a brand-new year in January, or find that your creativity unfurls in the spring along with the rest of nature. Maybe you need the high energy boost of mid-summer to get cracking – whichever it is, just noticing how you feel in each season will likely pay dividends.
Lots of writers are seasonal. Some freelancers I know take the summer off to write and enjoy the holidays with their kids. One author friend has a work contract that gives her two full months off a year for her writing.
Another friend, a busy mum, wrote her trilogy during long weekend solo retreats in an Airbnb, funded by her family in lieu of Christmas and birthday presents.
And if your creative season coincides with another commitment, then that’s information too. Maybe it means you need childcare, or maybe it means this isn’t your year for novel-writing, but something else. Both are valid.
What kind of writer am I? Do I need big chunks of time or will little bits do?
You know how some people like grazing throughout the day while others like a three-course meal, complete with sides at dinner? I think writers are like that too.
When it comes to writing, I’m a three-course meal girl. If we’re talking animals, I’m a blue whale. I need a chunk of uninterrupted time laid out before me so that I can get into my story and stay there for at least an hour but preferably more.
But writers come in the nibbler ‘mouse’ varieties too. I’ve met authors who write for a few minutes at a time on their phones while waiting at the school gates, or on the bus going into work.
Neither approach is better than the other. It’s just about knowing which one you are so you can stop trying to force yourself into somebody else’s idea of how to write.
What tool or tools am I most comfortable with?
When it comes to tools, we have more choices now than ever. I write on my Mac using Scrivener, a program designed for long-form writing that lets you organize scenes, chapters, and research all in one place. I used to write in Word but as I’m a discovery writer (i.e. I don’t plan my books) I find Scrivener easier for moving whole chapters around which, as you can imagine, I do quite a lot.
Some authors use distraction-free writing tools (think modern-day word processors) and they’re handy if you can’t resist the lure of social media or a quick Google mid-session. Others write with good old pen and ink, and I’ve even heard some extol the virtues of the typewriter.
Barbara Cartland, who became the queen of romance publishing 723 books in her lifetime, famously dictated them all to her secretary while reclining on a sofa in her library, surrounded by her dogs. Thankfully, dictation is now much easier than employing a personal secretary to hang on your every word. If you write in Word, there’s a dictation function already built in.
The bottom line is whatever works for you. Maybe it’s a mix of everything or a rotating carousel of all of the above that you can switch out when the mood takes you. One note of caution – whichever method you choose, remember to back things up and make copies.
Where’s my favourite place to write?
If you search ‘writing aesthetic’ on Instagram, TikTok or Pinterest, you’ll very quickly spot a picture of a hip twenty-something, typing on a laptop in an achingly chic café. Bonus points for a fancy fountain pen and seriously neat and ordered notebook in the shot too.
It’s a compelling image and every now and then, I’m daft enough to wonder about giving it another go. The fact that many cafés allow dogs and we’re dog-free at the moment is usually part of the pull, but then I remember the one thing I hate about writing in coffee shops – people.
People who, nothing personal, talk loudly, shout at their kids, and might accidentally trip and throw their matcha latte over my life (aka, my MacBook). Add in the fact that I’ve never seen an ergonomically appropriate café table, and I can already feel my back aching just thinking about it. So, aesthetic be damned, cafés are just not the place for me to get any actual writing done.
I write at home, in my shoebox home office, at my ergonomically appropriate desk, in silence. Try Instagramming that! 😆
That said, I know authors who have written entire books in coffee shops or libraries. Others who write while sitting on the sofa or at the kitchen table, or as I mentioned, tapping away on their phones wherever they happen to be.
The point isn’t where you should write. It’s where you can write, where you wantto write, and where you’ll actually get the bloody thing done.
If only I’d known…
Here’s what I wish someone had told me fourteen years ago: there’s no one right way to write a book, which means you get to experiment until you find what works for you. Not what works for the writing guru selling courses on Instagram. Not what works for your favourite author who makes TikToks about their 4am writing routine. What works for you, in your life, with your energy and your constraints.
For me, it’s mornings, in my shoebox office, in the couple of hours I have before I let the rest of the world in.
For you, it might be something completely different.
And that’s exactly as it should be. 🧡
This article was originally published on Emma's Writing Scared Substack.