The Busy Person's Simple Guide To Finishing Your Novel
4 simple and easy to implement steps to getting your novel finished!
A person on Reddit asked this question:
I just wondered how much time you guys invest in writing. Is it a hobby, or are you a full-time author?
I kind of have the issue that I love to write, but if have too much stuff going on with my 9 to 5 job, family and friends and sports I can’t concentrate on writing. That leaves me with a small time frame each week. Which leads to not writing a lot and that feels like I never finish my novel and I kind of always have to start newish.
Just wondered how you guys do it :)
As a co-founder and CFO in my fast-growing and stressful start-up, working 50-60+ hours a week was the norm. As such, I needed more time to write my novel. How was I going to do that? I needed an easy-to-follow, easy-to-implement, step-by-step plan.
This is what I did:
Step 1. Make an Appointment with Yourself
I set one night a week to write. For me, it was every Tuesday from 6 pm to 8 pm. My phone was shut off, and my email was closed. Headphones were on if I needed them, and everyone knew not to bother me for two hours; I was writing. If I had more work to do or an obligation, I did it after the writing was done. And if there was crappy weather on the weekend, I woke up early or used that time for writing too. But only for two hours max. Being strict about the time limit created consistency and commitment. Although shifting from a CFO-analytical brain to a creative storytelling brain was hard after a tough day of accounting, financial modeling, debits, and credits, I got better at it. And I started transforming from CFO to Artist on the car ride home, thinking of my story, characters, and plotlines. You can do this, too, with practice.
Step 2. Writing A Novel in Bite-Sized Chunks
So, let's do some math (because it makes my inner CFO happy 😉). Say you have 2 hours 2x a week, that is 4 hours a week. And say within those two hours, you get 1 page done every 30 minutes, or 2 pages an hour, or 4 pages a session. With two sessions a week, that is 8 pages per week. Eight pages a week is 32 pages a month and 384 pages a year. That is a very full novel. You might get intimidated by the prospect of writing a 350-page book all at once. But if you break it down into bite-size chunks of just 1 page every thirty minutes, four pages in a session, and you chip away at it, a page here and there, but working consistently, that's how you finish that book.
Step 3. Enlist Your Family In The Process
Notice I did not say "include;" I said enlist, which gives them less choice. Here is how to enlist family: If your story is somewhat family-friendly, you now have bedtime stories for your kids, or instead of watching the crap on TV, you get to stand before your studio family audience and read to them, which is good practice for the future! Then, they will have questions and thoughts about the characters and plot, which will be helpful to you; if you integrate their ideas and take their feedback seriously, they will feel invested in your writing process. They might even push you to say, "Hey, Dad, when will you read us the next chapter? I want to know what happened to..." Then you know you have a good story on your hands. If your story is not family-friendly, it's being read to your best friend or significant other similarly.
I usually read to my SO at night in bed, and I put her to sleep so many times I lost count. And I write action-packed psychological thrillers! But it means my voice is soothing, and she has relaxed enough into the story that she can fall asleep at the end of a long day; that’s a good thing. The more people you enlist in your writing experience, the more disciplined you will be because they will ask for the next chapter.
Step 4. Be Intentional of What You Are Going To Sacrifice
To carve out 4 hours in a week seems daunting, but if you look at your life intentionally and see where you are wasting time, you can find 4 more hours to do something you love out of the 168 hours in a week. One caveat: You must maintain sleep time. You need rest. Sleep is essential for good brain function and for imagination and storytelling. If you must cut something out, cut out TV and doom scrolling. If you keep your manuscript on something like Google Docs, you can access your document on your phone during the ride home (AI Voices can read to you!) or while waiting for your kid's soccer practice to be finished. You have to be creative and vigilant over where you are leaking time. And writing has to be more fun than watching TV.
Conclusion
With a busy schedule and many obligations, finding time to write is hard, not impossible. Of course, anything worthwhile takes a lot of work. But you can do it by being better with your time and making your art a family affair. I know it seems daunting, but think of how amazing and accomplished you will feel when you write the two greatest words of any novel: The End.
