On making time to write in your business: pockets, edges & corners
“Time is how you spend your love.”
- Zadie Smith
Hello friends,
And hi to the new subscribers. You are so welcome here.
I’m writing this to you from Costa Coffee in a wet and slippery Paddington Station before a client workshop.
It feels fitting with today’s piece: how to make time to write in and for and around our businesses.
It’s something I’ve been thinking about since mine and Daisy’ Buchanan’s Creative Writing Workshop at Henley Literary Festival last month (sidebar: I will stop talking about it soon).
Time – having time, making time – was the big internal and external block for so many people in the room.
The copywriter with the half-finished the novel.
The mum who can’t get to the writing between work and family.
The retired woman working on a memoir in row 4.
On finding pockets
When I talk about writing I want to be clear I don’t mean a huge literary project.
I have clients desperate to be category leaders who can’t find time to write on LinkedIn. Colleagues yet to launch their customer newsletter. Friends who want to update their website About Me page.
Also I’m parking privilege (aware of it and also care sandwich anyone?) and AI time savings for this piece. I’m writing this alongside you as someone who knows the act of writing is essential to my business’ growth and my creative purpose. As someone who’s squeezing things into the corners of the day. Scrabbling (scribbling?) towards some kind of writing practice.
Making time around the edges of our day
Time is not found it’s created; you have to make space for it. Still we tell ourselves we’ll get to it One Day.
After this new work project.
When the kids leave home.
When your cat becomes less needy.
Toni Morrison woke up at 4 a.m. to for writing time before going into her 9-to-5 job. My friend Suzy Reading wrote while her kids were in the bath.
You don’t have to be a Pulitzer Prize novelist to find a 15-30 minute slot to make a start. And see where it goes from there.
Some things that have helped me make a little more space to write among All The Things:
1.Audit your time
Can you take an honest look at your calendar across the week. Where are the leaks? Where’s the dead time inevitably filled with doom scrolling? The 30 minutes between your work day ending and the evening shift setting in. Claim that time for your writing. Put it in your calendar. Make it yours.
2.Prioritise
Getting totally honest about what your priorities are will radically change how you experience time.
Yes, we have our preloaded priorities – work, family, apparently some of us sleep.
So why do I know what Taylor Swift wore on her last date with Travis Kelce but have a folder of untended poems whispering “hi, remember us?”
Make it non-negotiable.
3. Prepare to adjust
Joining London Writer’s Salon 3 years ago, I wasn’t sure how to make the daily 8am writing slot work.
Trying to get the kids out to school, start my workday, exercise.
Even without an MBA I managed to shift things. Frontload lunchboxes, move my exercise to 5.30pm. Got over the fact the kids barely noticed and actually now say “Enjoy your writing” before they leave for school.
Since being on Substack, I’ve noticed Sunday is super- busy here. Which means lots of us are working Saturdays to get our work into the world (see Point 2).
4. Start small
It’s a myth you need vast chunks of time to write or commit to your creative projects. I know people who have come back from week-long writing retreats with a word count of zero.
Try 15 minutes a day. That’s an hour and a quarter across a working week. You could make something great in that time. Then build it from there.
5. Make it a ritual
We’re in such a rush to take the joy out of our creativity. And I’m so aware I’m telling you to Audit!” and “Prioritise!”
How can you bring ritual and maybe a little magic into it?
Light a candle when you sit down to work. Make yourself the best cup of coffee of the day. Infuse it with something sustaining and magic if you can.
6. Consistency
So unsexy. Like how much better you feel when you drink enough water. Or don’t look at your phone after 9pm. Hard but easy. And totally down to you. Then you put your bum in the chair. And you write.
Let me know where you are with making time for writing in your business. Comments below! And as always, if this resonated with you, please do share!
With love,
Antonia xo
I do Writers’ Hour most mornings at 8 (or at 1 if I sleep through like I did this morning). I used to be prolific, scribbling notes on post-its and in copious notebooks, plus Evernote. I seem to have lost that habit, although I have a mountain of stuff that never found a home.
I think we use time as an excuse because we fear what will happen if we allow ourselves to write so these beautiful suggestions for finding pockets to play and begin are so helpful. I also find once you get in the habit it's addictive. I love writers' hour!!