Find Time to Write: Time Management Techniques for Writers: Small Steps Guides, #2

By Louise Tondeur

Ready to fit writing into your life? Discover some of the best time management and productivity writers out there and kickstart your writing habit today.

Think of Find Time to Write as a habit formation system. You don't need to start with an idea. You need time and space to write, and you need to show up regularly. Find Time to Write will help you do exactly that. If your life is so overcrowded you're wondering how you're ever going to find time to write, then this book is for you. If you simply want a set of powerful time management resources, this book is also for you.

All the small steps writing guides are based on two principles. One, you can take any big project, goal or task and break it down into smaller and smaller steps until it becomes doable. Two, if you take small but specific actions regularly enough, they'll have a snowball effect. That means, using the time management techniques and writing prompts in Find Time to Write, you can start taking small steps towards your writing goals.

• Language: English
• Publisher: A Small Steps Guide
• Release date: Jun 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386181576

Louise Tondeur

Louise Tondeur published two novels with Headline Review: The Water’s Edge and The Haven Home for Delinquent Girls. Then she travelled for a while, wrote a PhD, started a family, published short stories, poems and articles, and worked full-time as a university lecturer, all the time trying to find time to write amongst the hectic-ness of everyday life. She developed the Small Steps method to help her undergraduate students with time management skills, and to help herself carve out some writing time. Now she shares her productivity tips on the Small Steps blog.

Book preview

Find Time to Write

FIND TIME TO WRITE

Time Management Techniques for Writers

LOUISE TONDEUR

Copyright © Louise Tondeur

First published 2017

Revised edition 2022

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author.

Contents

Welcome to Find Time to Write

Introduction

I. How do I write if I also have a life?

Asking the right questions

Work on your Mental Load

The Kettle Test

Optimal Writing Time (and Space)

Time Management for Writers

Should I join the 5am club?

II. A Beginner’s Guide to the Writing Habit

Introduction to Beginnings

Week one: Beginnings

Week two: Beginnings

Week three: Beginnings

III. Your Thirty Day Writing Challenge

Introduction to Your 30 Day Writing Challenge

Week One: Your 30 Day Writing Challenge

Week Two: Your 30 Day Writing Challenge

Week Three: Your 30 Day Writing Challenge

Week Four: Your 30 Day Writing Challenge

Week Five: Your 30 Day Writing Challenge

Train prompts

IV. Project and Task Management

Planning a longer writing project

Creative Signposting

V. Resources

Books and websites

Bibliography

About the Author

Also by Louise Tondeur

Welcome to Find Time to Write

Why you should read this book

Hi. I'm Lou. I'm a writer and a writing tutor. I live on the sometimes sunny south coast of England. With this book you’ll learn a powerful set of time management strategies that you can apply to your writing life straightaway, and get your writing routine established in a way that works for you. If you’re struggling to fit writing into your life, Find Time to Write will enable you to:

take a fresh look at what you do every day,

use your immediate environment to kickstart your writing habit,

plan for and schedule a longer project.

You’ll also get a list of resources that will point you to some of the best time management and productivity writers out there, so you can adapt their advice to suit your own needs.

A free course and practical advice

Sign up to my mailing list over on my website to get a free video course on Writing and Mindset. You can find out more about my books and courses by following the links from here. You can also get advice and guidance on the writing life from my blog.

Why I wrote this book

I’ve been teaching Creative Writing for years and after trying to fit writing into my own life, around a child, a full-time job, and running a household, I realised that most writing books don’t address actually finding time to do it! And most time management systems don’t deal with mental load, or simply having a life.

After a lot of research, in 2012, I wrote the first small steps guide, which is about goal-setting and time management; I wrote it mainly for my students, who needed a comprehensive guide, including some of the tricks and tips that I didn’t have time to teach them around the existing curriculum. By the way, I wrote it while on maternity leave, for a couple of hours on Friday afternoons while my other half took our son swimming – an example of small steps in action!

But I still hadn’t really solved the problem summed up by the question How do I write if I also have a life? which is also the title of the first section of this book. So I started looking into how I could apply the same techniques to the way I was trying to shoehorn writing into my packed schedule. This book, newly updated for 2022, is the result. If your life is so overcrowded you’re wondering how you’re ever going to find time to write, then this book is for you. If you’re simply curious about the time management resources, you’re