Are You Too Busy To Write?

How to write anywhere and anytime.

It’s easy to make plans to write.

Maybe you have dreams of writing a novel, or you want to share your story with the world by penning a memoir. Perhaps you want to add to your blog posts or finally write that children’s story that has been passed down from generation to generation.

The plans are the easy part. Follow-through is a different story. I tend to fail at follow-through. No matter how detailed my goals, and no matter how good my intentions, I rarely complete what I set out to do. Heck, I rarely even start.

I have friends and family who set out to do something, and they do it. Not me. It takes me ages to finally get started, if I start at all.

I finally reached the point where I had enough; I was sick and tired of not doing what I set out to do. If I was ever going to write, I had to do it when the mood struck me. My moods rule me. If I don’t feel like writing, it’s probably not going to get done.

I knew that I wasn’t going to suddenly have a personality overhaul and become a different type of person, so I learned to accommodate the kind of person I am.

The problem most people have that prevents them from following through with their plans these days is being too busy. Jobs, kids, family, pets, cleaning the house, mowing the lawn all consume time.

And if you can find a spare minute, you don’t have a big enough piece of time to get focused and accomplish anything significant. So, what’s the point of even starting?

Besides, you need your desk, computer, notes, caffeinated beverage, eye drops, and your lucky troll doll before you can even think about writing anything of decent quality.

The odds that you will have access to all of those things when you have a free minute are slim. It’s as if the entire universe needs to be in perfect alignment for you to make any progress on your writing.

There is a solution. If I can find a way to focus on writing despite my bizarre mood issues, anything is possible.

The answer is as simple as completing everything in little pieces and stitching it together into one great finished product, like sewing together pieces of fabric to make a quilt.

Your writing goals can all be accomplished at various locations, at different times, and using multiple tools.

If you want to reach your writing goals, you will be willing to adapt to your circumstances. If you are not ready to be resourceful, your dreams will likely be delayed. Why not start living your dream of being a writer today with this simple method?

You need to be able to write anywhere. You can use an app to take notes on your phone, tablet, or laptop. You can also text or email reminders to yourself. You can even record your voice.

If you’re old-school, have a pen and paper in every room of your home, including the bathroom, garage, laundry room, basement, and attic. You can even purchase a notepad for the shower; someone invented such a thing. Whiteboards will work, too; anything that you can write on when you have a flash of an idea.

Make sure you have a way to record your thoughts in your purse, backpack, briefcase, suitcase, car, jacket pocket. I’m sure you get my point.

You cannot afford to miss out on making a note of a story idea or title. Whenever I thought that I would remember an idea and that I didn’t need to write it down, I have always forgotten it.

If you have a pen and no paper, write on your arm. If you can only reach your kid’s crayon, use that. Do whatever is necessary to preserve your ideas.

Develop a method of note-taking that makes sense to you. You are the only person that your notes need to make sense to. Use keywords, shorthand, power phrases, anything that triggers you when you read it. You want to be able to read it and recall the great idea that caused you to write the note in the first place.

If you have enough time, you can even write an article or several pages of your book if that’s what is floating around in your head at the moment. You make your own rules. The objective is to preserve your thoughts, long or short.

Your notes don’t need to be neat or organized, so long as you can understand them. Don’t get sucked into rewriting everything to make it look neat and pretty; that is merely busywork that you are doing to avoid doing the serious work that will bring you closer to achieving your writing goals.

I used to do stuff like that all the time. I would print out everything from my notes app; then I would punch three holes in each sheet of paper, put everything in a binder; next, I needed to put some divider tabs in the binder needed to color code the various topics.

It was all work that I was creating to avoid doing the work that I needed to be doing. Where is that three-ring binder now? I have no idea. It turned into nothing because my focus was on the binder, instead of on the ideas that were in the binder.

Because you will have a way to make notes and write everywhere, you can make notes and write everywhere. You can write anytime and anywhere.

When you wake up in the middle of the night to eat a piece of key lime pie, you can write down whatever pops in your head. Ideas come at the strangest times. Don’t miss a single opportunity.

When you finally have time to go through your notes, review them. You will likely be surprised at how good some of your notes are.

Of course, if you are anything like me, some of what you wrote could be incoherent ramblings of a lunatic, but the majority is usually pretty decent stuff. See what you can come up with from what you wrote.

Look for common themes and topics. Frequently, you will see themes repeating themselves, indicating an interest in a topic that you didn’t even realize that you had.

That is when you have hit the jackpot. Articles and books can sometimes practically write themselves when that happens.

Save everything. Don’t throw away anything, no matter how nonsensical or bizarre it may be. The odds are that you will sit up in the middle of the night a week later, and it will make perfect sense to you, and you will know exactly what you want to use it for.

I don’t like to have a set time and place to write. It’s not my thing. I want to do my writing when the mood strikes.

I like to write wherever and whenever. That’s what works for me.

I have found that writing wherever and whenever can also be an excellent solution for writers who have issues with sticking to rigid schedules due to other obligations. It doesn’t matter where or when you write, as long as you write.

Writers write; that’s what they do. Don’t stress yourself with unnecessary constraints. Do what you can, when you can.

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Linda Kowalchek is a work in progress and a member of the typewriter generation. She spends her time with her husband and her rescue cats waiting for golf balls to crash through their windows. PSA: Don’t live next to a golf course.