It is so very easy to become lost in the daily chaos that your writing slowly gets lost and buried deep under the debris of trying to earn a living.

How can you stop this avalanche? Ahh now there is a worthy question.

I have heard it preached time and again by publishers, authors and the like to take at least twenty minutes a day and write. Just write. It doesn’t matter what comes out, as long as you are keeping your finger to the pen. But to my way of thinking, and mind you, this is just my own opinion, this is actually impractical and detrimental to your writing.

Now bear with me while I present my case.

First we will cover the twenty minutes a day. How many of you actually have twenty minutes every day to commit to writing? Sure you can get up early or stay up late to write, or perhaps tell the family that you need your time. But is this practical every day? Most of you who write also have families and jobs to care for. This is very demanding work, and writing isn’t any less demanding. Asking your family for some time set just for yourself for writing is more practical than getting up early or staying up late, after all, if you did those two, you would be so tired, you could be writing in an alien language for as far as you would be aware of at that time. But then again, if you ask your family for specific time, when is a parent or spouse ever not fully on duty? I can guarantee that you would be bugged at least once during that time!

So what can we do? Well, as I have tried to point out in the previous paragraph, nothing is perfect. So you could try a mixture of things, or you can set aside a specific day, maybe send your spouse out with the kids for a weekly jaunt just for themselves, leaving you plenty of time to write, or perhaps you could write a sentence here, a paragraph there. Nothing is perfect, I wish we had hours and days that we can work with our writing and not ever have to worry about work, the spouse, the kids, dinner on the table, etc. We work with what we are given. Some writers are more successful at organizing their time for their writing, while the rest of us struggle to find the right times where we can sneak in what we wish to put to paper.

Whatever you do though, don’t get discouraged and put off the writing until you think you will have time. From personal experience, if you do this, then you might find yourself going months without putting words to the paper, and believe me, those months can wear on a writer’s soul. Even a sentence or two is better than nothing at all.

Now for the "it doesn’t matter what comes out" portion of the twenty minutes. Now this is even more impractical than trying to find the "right" time to write, don’t you think? Whatever could I mean, you might ask. Think about it. If you can spend twenty minutes writing to the best of your ability, then wonderful! But if you write for those twenty minutes and it is not your best work when you reread it, then isn’t that also detrimental to your writing? After all, it is possible to un train your mind from the proper writing habits. Isn’t that in itself detrimental? It is easy to get into habits of not writing your best, just because you think you should be writing, even if you aren’t in the mood for it. Don’t fall into the habit.

If you have developed a successful time coordination for your writing, then kudos to you! If you have, then I would love to hear your time management, or any of your writing adventures with trying to work with this demanding craft. For those who still struggle with finding time, such as me, then I have this to say: don’t give up, don’t fall into traps where you write less than you are capable of.