Time Management Tip 4: Don’t Ask for Time

Book in a Month: The Fool-Proof System for Writing a Novel in 30 Daysby Victoria Lynn Schmidt, Ph.D.

Just find the time any way you can and take it. Of course, I don’t condone lying or cheating to get the time you need, though some writers have stretched the truth a bit. The point Dr. Kirshenbaum is making in the above quote is that, while writing may be important to you, few people in your life will see it as important. Many will just see it as an unnecessary indulgence. Asking them to help you find time for writing just won’t work. If you had a major circumstance or emergency, these
same people would give you all the time you needed, so the time is there. They just might not see writing as worthy of it.

You have to decide writing is worthy of that time, and then just take it.

One writer had more than three months of sick and personal leave saved up at his day job. His boss wanted him to use some of it before he lost it. He was afraid to take off, but he did, and now he has a small but steady writing career in the works.