How Published Writers Make Time To Write

Published January 20, 2014 by Mary McShane

Finding time to write in our busy world is becoming harder and harder.

If you have a job, writing time comes in second.

If you have a family, it gets pushed back behind them in line.

If you have other obligations, writing seriously takes a back seat.

How do you make time to do the one thing you love to do when you have so many other obligations?

Here's what published writers have to say about how they allocate time out of their day to write and some advice for aspiring writers.

John Grisham was a busy lawyer by day and vowed to write one page a day to get his first novel written. A Time To Kill was not a success. His second book, The Firm, was.

In this interview, he gives aspiring writers practical advice.

Stephen King shares his all time favorite opening lines, how he writes them so the reader wants to open the book and read the story.

And this is what happened ...

Peter Heller says he has been writing since he was six years old. But in this interview, he says he finds it hard to sit at a desk and put in hours to write.

Phillipa Gregory wrote her first book while waiting to get hired as an academic lecturer. When it was a bestseller, she decided she would try writing for awhile instead. That was 30 years ago. Here's more of her interview talking about how she writes.

Ian McEwan is considered one of Britain's greatest living writers. He wrote an essay "When I Stop Believing In Fiction" and was interviewed about it and more here.

Bill O'Reilly often finds himself in hot water when he speaks his mind on national television. With the publication of his new book, what he says in interviews has made news again. In this interview, he says his book "Killing Jesus: A History" wasn't written solely by him.

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:

1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

--- George Orwell (1903 - 1950), "Politics and the English Language", 1946

I hope you enjoyed this article on writing.

© Mary McShane