Since coming back from finishing some recent work projects, I’ve been staring down the conundrum that every writer wrestles with: how do I make time for writing?

Historically, I’ve managed to block out hours throughout the week, sit down at my desk, and throw a lot of words together. It wasn’t easy then, but it’s much harder now. It’s a good problem to have. It means I have a lot of good people and good things in my life. But as I keep looking for free hours, I keep coming up blank. And because I’m not finding any hours, I’m not writing any words.

So rather than cut anything out of my life, I’ve decided to get more flexible. Instead of looking for hours, I’m looking for minutes. These are some ways I’m doing it.

Write for 15 Minutes or 3 Pages Every Day

A friend of mine recently suggested that instead of trying to block out an hour of time that I’ll never find, try to write every day for either fifteen minutes or three pages (whichever comes first). 

Fifteen minutes is easier to fit into my schedule than an hour. And even if I do actually have that amount of time to plant myself in a chair, fifteen minutes is also a lot less intimidating than a full hour. If I tell myself that I’m only going to write for a few minutes, it’s easier to get to work. And if I do wind up having more spare time, I’ve found that even writing just a little is enough to get the creative juices flowing so that I’m happy to sit and keep writing for longer. 

Writing for just a few minutes or just a few pages every day is a lot better than writing nothing at all, and those little bits tend to stack up quickly.

Handwriting My Writing

I’ve always been a really big proponent of handwriting. Nothing at all against typing—in fact, these days, you can’t get to a final product without sitting down and typing up your work (or getting someone else, or a really good AI to do it for you). But for me, the idea of handwriting something, at least to kick off a project, is less of a mental roadblock than sitting down to a blank page in Google Docs and hammering out a manuscript. And an even smaller mental roadblock is sitting down to type up something I’ve already written. It breaks the process into smaller steps.

Another great thing about handwriting my work is that I can do it anywhere. All I have to do is throw my notebook into my bag, remember to bring a couple of pens, and I’m set. If I have a few minutes on the train, or while I’m waiting for a friend to meet up for lunch, or when I get to a store before it opens, then I can pull out my notebook and squeeze in a few minutes of writing that I wouldn’t have otherwise had.

I also really love that handwriting can be messy. Scratching out something that doesn’t work, writing in the margins, drawing arrows to where something I’ve written should go instead—it makes the process feel like exactly that: a process. Typing tends to give me the feeling that I have to come up with a final product as I write it down.

(As a side note, I’ll mention that some projects feel more like typing-projects for me than handwriting projects. It’s hard to explain, but sometimes, I throw all of my handwriting theories out the window and open up a document. This tends to be when I’m editing something rather than drafting it, but there isn’t always rhyme or reason to it.)

Routines or Goals? Actually, Both

I’ve read a lot of books and articles that debate whether goals or routines are better at helping a person achieve productivity. For me, there’s no question. They go together.

Routines are helpful. I like to carve out at least a part of my daily schedule that I can dedicate to doing a little writing. This can be challenging, but I’ve found that it’s easier to do when I pair it with something else that I try to do every day, like eat breakfast. (In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear calls this “habit stacking.” Atomic Habits gave me a lot of good ideas for how to fit good habits into my life.) 

But in addition to setting up a routine, I also like to set some basic goals. The reason folks sometimes criticize goaI-setting is that it can be easy to fall out of a good habit once the goal has been met. But I think an easy way to avoid that is to have recurring goals or a schedule. I like to try to write a certain number of hours a week, or hit a certain word count, or finish a certain project (a scene, a chapter, a book, a blog post) by certain dates. Whenever I meet one goal, I’m excited to reach another. Setting small goals and having a routine that helps me reach them keeps me motivated to keep writing, even when I just have small pockets to work from. 

Remembering the Why

Although I’m sure I could be more disciplined, and I’m sure there are some time-wasting activities in my day-to-day life that I could nix, I’m actually pretty happy with how I spend most of my time. So these are just a few of the ways I’m trying to get better at adjusting my day so that I can fit in more writing. For me, the most important thing to remember is why I’m doing it. I try to fit writing into my day because writing is something that brings me joy and adds flavor to my life. It helps me avoid getting caught up in just being busy. So if writing or art is something that you’re also trying to fit into your life, then I hope these ideas are useful to you too. Stay tuned for more updates.