10 ways to write more when you have small children
How to lower your expectations, get more done, and save some of your sanity
Wait a minute, I hear someone crying. OK, I’m back. My daughter and son have agreed — under duress — to share the iPad. My husband is monitoring the peace accord. Now, where was I? Oh, yes, getting more writing done when you’re responsible for small children.
Kids are wonderful and eminently lovable, but they also consume a huge amount of time and emotional energy. Starting — or finishing — a writing project when you have one or more children clamoring for your attention can feel like climbing Mount Everest. Since my second child was born last year, I’ve been experimenting with different approaches to getting more writing done. Some worked, and some didn’t.
Over the past several months, I’ve come within striking distance of completing a full-length novel. I pulled together this post to share my experiences with different productivity tactics that have helped me write more consistently and get more out of each session. I’ve also added a smattering of links to resources created by writers who are much further along the path than I am.
So, without further ado, here’s the list:
#1. Lower your expectations. When you have small children, time and energy are scarce commodities. If you’re finding yourself striving for high daily word counts and then abandoning projects, you may want to think about adjusting your goals. Instead of shooting for thousands of words a day, try setting a target you can meet with minimal effort. If you write just 200 or 300 words per day, you can finish a full-length novel in less than a year.
#2. Have a detailed outline. Trying to decide what to write in a given session can absorb an unholy amount of time. The same holds true for working out plot difficulties on the fly. By creating an outline that spells out exactly what’s happening in every scene, you can get straight to writing without thinking about the mechanics of your plot. Admittedly, this can take some time up front, but it will save you a ton of time once you get down to writing. This kind of scene-by-scene outline is often called a “beat sheet.” Here’s a helpful post on how to create one.
#3. Get up early. Yes, there’s nothing as precious as sleep when you have small children, but I still suggest getting up early. As the day wears on, your kids and/or your day job will tend to absorb all your mental energy. They’ll also throw out all kinds of interesting obstacles to mix up your schedule and vaporize that 20-minute break you were planning after lunch. On the other hand, if you get your writing done early, you’ll feel super-together and accomplished for the whole day. (And, if you adopt #1, you won’t have to get up that much earlier than usual; 15 minutes or so should do it.)
If you have an iPhone or an Android phone, you may want to try the Sleep Cycle app, which wakes you when you’re most lightly asleep within a given window of time. Another option that literally forces you out of bed is a diabolical app called StepOut, which will only deactivate after you’ve taken 30 steps, preferably away from your bed.
#4. Write in small bursts. Of course, on some days, it may be impossible to get up early, or maybe your morning gets derailed by a work disaster, a sick child, or an entirely novel crisis. When this happens, you can still accumulate a few hundred words by writing in micro-bursts. When you string together a few sessions of five or ten minutes at a time, you can get a surprising amount accomplished.
Chris Fox, an author who writes fiction as well as advice for newbie writers, calls these sessions “sprints,” and he’s developed a neat iPhone app for tracking your progress. The basic version is free. The pretty charts and graphs cost extra.
Monica Leonelle, another amazing author who likes to share productivity tips, recommends writing in 8-minute timed sessions if you’re trying to develop a consistent writing habit under adverse, “time impoverished” circumstances.
#5. Go mobile. When you have small children, you’re always on the move. You may be following the new crawler from room to room or stringing together errands into a stressful, exhausting daisy chain. And yet, every once in a while, your whirl of chaos will be punctuated by peace. Maybe the baby falls asleep while you’re waiting at the doctor’s office, or one or more kids takes a nap. When that happens, have your device, whether it’s a mobile phone, a tablet with an external keyboard or a laptop, ready to go.
#6. Get better sleep. High quality sleep can make the difference between a highly productive day of writing and a day of staring at your computer screen like a zombie. If something is interrupting your sleep, see if there’s anything you can do about it. Snoring significant other? Barking dogs? Bright headlights from passing cars? These sleep busters can all be mitigated. If what’s keeping you awake is something that can’t be “solved” over the short term — like a hungry baby or a restless, teething toddler — see if you can trade off the “night shift” with your partner.
Other options for improving the quality of the sleep that you do get include getting more exercise, not eating right before bed, and cutting back on the usual vices (e.g., alcohol, caffeine, etc.) If you’re interested in tracking your sleep quality over time, versus what else is happening in your life, SleepCycle, the app mentioned in #3, can help with that.
#7. Learn to type faster. The faster you can type, the more words you can produce in any given block of time, right? Using good form when you type can also help save your wrists and hands from overuse injuries. This article by Neil Patel, a wildly successful blogger-slash-entrepreneur, includes a lot of good advice on how to type faster as well as how to write faster in general.
#8. Target the nap and night-night time zones. Any time your kids are asleep is a good time to get some writing in. Even if you’re wiped out, consider doing an 8- or 10-minute burst before you flop onto the couch or open that nice, cold beverage.
#9. Try dictation software. This seems like such a sensible suggestion that I’m including it here, even though I’ve yet to make it work for me. Why not? I get weirdly self-conscious talking into a mic and that seems to make it hard for me to think. However, in theory, the ability to “write” anywhere without stressing my wrists or requiring a keyboard would be awesome. This book, also by Monica Leonelle, is a great resource if you want to see if dictation can work for you.
#10. Use your social media powers for good. For many of us, social media is an endless black hole that sucks in our time and energy without giving anything back. However, if you’re brave enough to share your writing with your circle on Facebook or Twitter, you can harness that social support by vowing publicly to write every day. Your friends will be excited to see you succeed, and you’ll be more likely to stick to your routine if you know your tribe is checking up on you.
Now, how about you? Have you tried any of these tactics, and how have they worked out for you? And are there other ideas you’d like to share, while I’m off to the next family crisis.
Thank you so much for reading.
