Editor's Note: This is a guest post by Danielle Bullen. Read more about Danielle in the footer bio.
As a freelance writer, finding the time to write can be challenging. With responsibilities to your home, family, and health, it’s easy to let the entire day slip by without any progress. Luckily, there are ways to sneak in some precious free writing time into a hectic schedule.
Get up an hour earlier or go to bed an hour later.
This is one of the most common pieces of advice for writers. Famous authors talk about walking up before the rest of their family to work on their first novel. If you’re a morning person, great! Do it. I’d like to propose the flip side, go to bed an hour later. Some writers are nocturnal; their creative juices get flowing after dark. So figure out what time of day is your creative peak and adjust your schedule.
Propose flextime and use your lunch hour.
The next two suggestions are especially for freelancers who also work a traditional job. Does your company offer flex time, i.e. longer hours 4 days a week in exchange for a day off? Take advantage of this. Even summer hours, when offices close early on Fridays, are a golden opportunity to write. If this is not policy, why not suggest it? Many of your co-workers, whether they are freelancers or not, might also want a flexible schedule. Come up with a plan that details how your time would be spent, showing that all the work would still get done. The worst that upper management can say is no.
And don’t forget lunch. That time is yours. Honestly, no one takes an entire hour to eat. Instead of checking email or gossiping, use the time to pound out a blog post or two. Think how much writing you’d accomplish if you devoted 2 lunch hours a week to your freelance pursuits. Bonus points if you bring your home laptop and go outside. Stepping away from the office environment will mentally help you separate your two working worlds.
Hire a baby-sitter or send kids to day camp.
In the summer, full-time freelancers with young children face their own unique hurdles in finding time to write. One option is to hire a baby-sitter even if you do not leaving the house. Having a responsible person looking after your kids while you spend a few hours in your home office can be a boon to your out put. A similar option is camp. With specialty camps ranging from science to soccer, summer is the perfect time for your kids to engage their interests. Even a local day camp would provide several hours of supervised fun outside the house for your children, leaving you with quiet, and time to write.
Finding time to write can be one of the most challenging parts of freelancing. Hopefully, you have the support of your co-workers and family to carve out some writing time. Adjusting your schedule to meet your needs as a writer may take a little getting used to, but the extra productivity will be worth it.
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Making use of the lunch time sound good to me. Writers are expected to come up with interesting articles and for this to happen, the writers themselves has to be motivated and inspired to pen down their thoughts and ideas. The tips you mentioned are very good tips and I’m sure those looking for inspiration will surely benefit from this post.