Warning: Hacks for Hacks tips may have harmful side effects on your writing career, and should not be used by minors, adults, writers, poets, scribes, scriveners, journalists, or anybody.
Nobody has time to write. I myself didn’t have time to write this column, yet here you are reading it. How’d I do it? What’s my secret? Well, my creative writing professor in college always used to say, “If something is important, you figure out a way to make it happen.” And since getting praise and validation from countless online strangers is important to me, I made the sacrifices necessary to write an article where you can say nice things about me in the comments section.
But I’m an online advice columnist who’s been doing this for a while. Not everybody starts out knowing the incantations and precise measurements of blood required stop the flow of time for long enough to scratch out a monthly article. I started with a few tips and tricks for finding time to write, which I’ll share with you here.
Carry a notebook everywhere
Something that can fit in your pocket, like a Moleskine or one of those little pads that TV detectives use. The blank page of a new notebook is a vacuum that will suck the words out of you, which is a natural and not-gross way to think about writing. The great thing about carrying a notebook is that it’s a constant reminder to focus on your craft. You used to only feel Writer’s Guilt while you were squandering your free time after the kids went to bed. Now you can feel it all the time!
Use your spare moments
Those few minutes you normally use to check Twitter or drive to work? Those are ideal times to jot down ideas. Every time you check Twitter, exercise your prose muscles by writing at least one tweet first. During your morning commute, open up your phone’s voice-recorder app and craft a tragic narrative as you rehearse all the arguments you’d like to have with your ex if only the moment was right.
