 Hello, my name is Jackie and welcome back to my channel. And in this video, I want to talk about how to write when you work full-time, like I do. Now, before we get into any of the tips and advice, I want to make it very clear that I am by no means an expert in this area. However, I do work full-time and I have been writing fairly consistently since the beginning of July, so that's almost six months now. I have a draft that I'm a little bit scared of looking at that's 111,000 words that's in a draw. I am also at about 60,000 words in my current work in progress. So even though I haven't been doing this that long, I have learned a few things that will hopefully help you if you're also working full-time and would like to get into writing but are struggling to find the time or to figure out how to make it work. So one of the big challenges I had when getting back into writing was that I thought that it was impossible when I had a full-time job. I really thought that I would need to take six months or a year off and just travel and write and get my inspiration back and find a state of flow. And while that would be lovely and I still have plans to do that at some point in the future, I also recognize that most of the people who are out there writing books are not doing it full-time. Many of them are doing it on the side of a full-time job. So learning how to write while I have a full-time job is going to be valuable even as I grow as a writer and hopefully get published because I will probably still need to continue using that skill in the future. So the first thing I recommend doing is looking at your calendar and figuring out exactly what is taking up your time at the moment. So for me, for example, I know that I work from 8.30 to about 5.30 and I know that the trip to and from work is between 20 minutes and half an hour depending on whether I walk or get the bus. So that means from 8 a.m. until 5.36 p.m. every day of the week is not writing time. I know that I go to the gym five times a week so that's three lunch times during the week and on Saturday and Sunday mornings. So Saturday and Sunday mornings are out, that's gym time. Three lunch times during the week are also out because it's gym time. After work, earlier in the year I was doing Estonian classes because I live in Estonia. That was two and a half hours every Tuesday and Thursday so that's another five hours of the week that I don't have for writing. Then of course there's time that you spend sleeping, there's time you spend eating, showering and so on. So all these non-negotiable things that need to happen in order for you to function, well, survive as well as function in society. By mapping this out you can see what your current commitments are and how much time you do actually have for writing. So for me for instance, I know I generally wake up at about 6 a.m. I don't actually leave for work until 8 so there's a two hour window, let's say one hour and a half when we take out my getting ready time when I could potentially be writing. Then from 8 until 6 is blocked out for work and travel. After 6 most days that is also time that I could be writing. If I'm being aware of that is helpful because it means you know you don't actually need to be writing full-time in order to get quite a few hours in. One of the things I will say is that when you are mapping out your time I'd use the worst case scenario rather than the best case scenario for your commitments. So for me I mentioned that can be 20 to 30 minutes for me to get to work. When I'm mapping out what I spend my time on, I will assume it's going to take me 30 minutes, I'll assume it's a day that I'm working. When it comes to work I generally finish around 5 or 5.30 I'm going to assume that I'm finishing at 5.30, that way if I happen to get the bus and I have an extra 10 minutes in my day or if it's a fairly easy day at work and I'm able to leave at 5 on the dot then that's just bonus time but it's not something that I'm working into my writing schedule. Once you know how much time you have the next thing I'd consider is what are you going to say no to. So I'm one of these people who doesn't like to let anyone down, I try to say yes to everything, I have a lot of different interests and I want to try a lot of different things. The problem is is that no one person is capable of doing everything, at least not at once. So when I made a commitment to getting back into writing earlier this year I realized there were some things that I wasn't going to be able to do anymore because if I was doing them I wouldn't have any time or space left for writing. So one of these things was actually my business until September of this year I had been running a business for over six years called Grammar Factory that turned entrepreneurs into authors and even though it was at the stage where I didn't need to manage it full-time, I mean I moved from doing it full-time to having a job again so it had a very minimal impact on my time. However it was still taking up a lot of mental and creative space, I was often thinking about different things, campaigns I could do, products I could launch to help grow the business more and that was space that could have been spent on writing. So one of the things I said no to was my business and I ended up selling it earlier this year to a wonderful new owner who's taking it to greater and greater heights. The other thing I said no to was learning Estonian. Even though my husband and I have chosen to live in Estonia and the common languages spoken here are Estonian and Russian I've chosen not to learn either of them and the reason for that is because as I mentioned it was five hours a week and that's five hours plus the travel time so let's make that six hours a week and that was six hours a week I couldn't spend writing and the distinction I want to make here is that I'm not just talking about saying no to things that are obligations things you'd probably rather not be doing that you're just like you know you're doing it because you feel like you have to. Those are fairly easy to cut out once you make the decision to do it and once you have the difficult conversations. I'm talking about saying no to things that you actually want to do and that you enjoy so I wanted to continue running a successful business I wanted to learn Estonian I didn't want to do them as much as I wanted to write though and I knew that with my attention being taken in so many different places there was no way I could get back into writing while I had all of these balls in the air. This leads me on to my next point which is to consider not just the time impact of the different things you're focusing on but the energetic impact so how much of your mental and creative energy are these things taking? Like I said my business wasn't taking that much time it was taking a lot of mental and creative energy though and even though I had tried to get into writing a couple of times while I was running the business I never I never had the energy like I just felt physically and mentally drained most of the time which meant it was really hard to start doing something new The same thing with Estonian even though in fact Estonian was one of those things where I would go to class and it would really fill me up it was invigorating I think I really thrive on being in a classroom and having the teachers say very good Jackie and the fact that we like I'm a complete beginner so it was basically like going to kindergarten with a bunch of other people from 18 to 50 that was hilarious so this was an activity I really enjoyed and it did feed into my energy but the act of getting so the act of having a full day of work and then getting to class and then having my two and a half hours of class and then getting home and then having to do my homework that was draining and that meant those two days of the week there was no way I was ever going to get writing done rather than just considering the time impact of the things you're doing the things you're committing to also think about the mental and energetic impact they're having on you and having that understanding might help you figure out what you're going to say yes to and what you're going to say no to so something I've said yes to is working out at the gym and doing that regularly and the reason I'm doing that is one because I want to get fit I want to be healthier I know I'm getting older and the longer I leave it the harder it's going to be to get in shape but the other thing is that this is something an activity where I can just use my body and my mind gets to have a break and when I'm at work during the day I go to the gym at 12, 12, 30 and I come back and it's almost like I'm starting my day again and I have that same boost of energy I had in the morning so the activities you're doing are they contributing to your energy are they giving you more energy both physical and mental that you can use to put towards your writing or are they draining it and if they're draining it are they something you should cut out if you can the next thing I think about is your writing routine so I don't know how you work as a writer but when it comes to me I'm very good at doing these concentrated pushes of work so when I was running my business and I wrote a non-fiction book called Book Blueprint I did the first draft in three days now admittedly I did have a very detailed plan I had a 10,000 word outline before I sat down to start writing and the finished book was only 40,000 words so 25% of it was already done before I started to write but those three days were still very intense and I remember I had set aside a week just because through a scheduling mistake of mine I ended up with a free week so I'd set aside a week and I got it done in three days but the rest of the week I was useless I was completely spent because I'd spent all of that energy on that book one of the things I'm trying to do now is find a more consistent way to get my writing done and that means I'm developing a bit more of a routine so during the week I have my work day I get home and usually the first thing I do is start writing and it's only for maybe an hour an hour and a half on a weekday and that's it and I'm done for the day on the weekends I generally have a bit more time so I go to the gym on Saturday and Sunday morning and then I get back in the afternoon and I might have three or four hours if I want to spend that much time but if I can only spend an hour an hour and a half and then I'm feeling worn out then I'll stop because having a consistent routine and keeping up with that consistent routine over the long term is going to get me a lot further than having a big spurt of writing that then means I'm useless for the next couple of weeks time in with the routine point is figuring out which writing activities you'll do on different days so generally because I have less time during the week I will use that time just for writing if I can whereas on the weekends because I have a bit more time that's when I'll spend time outlining the scenes I'm going to work on or doing some brainstorming and I find if I do that work on the weekend that means my weekdays can be spent far more efficiently because I already know what I'm going to write now if you're a panther and you hate the idea of outlining that's okay I'm not saying you need to outline or plot your entire book but you probably do have an idea of the next scene you want to write so even if you just do like a page of bullet points so this happens and this happens and this person says this once you sit down to write it'll actually be really helpful and you'll probably find yourself going into much more depth and even getting inspired because because you've already gotten those bare bones down there's actually more room for your mind to play my final tip comes back to managing your energy so you need to know how much time you have you need to figure out what you're saying no to and you need to consider the time and energetic impact of the activities you're doing in order to figure out what to say yes to and what to say no to you need to have a routine so you can build a consistent habit and you need to be sensible with that routine this is an extension of that so I have had issues with fatigue for years and I'm in a pretty good place now in fact earlier this year in fact I think it was making the decision to let go of my business that turned things around for me because I've been in I've been basically exhausted since early 2015 until early 2019 and one of the things I know because of that is that I need to manage my energy very carefully and if I do do those huge writing days then not only am I too exhausted to write over the coming days but I'll be useless at work as well like I'll have those days where I'm sitting at my screen and I cannot actually someone will send me a message and I cannot formulate a response to it because my brain has nothing left now you might not be in the exact same position however the truth is that we do all have finite supplies of energy and time so we should use them wisely so when it comes to committing to your routine make sure it's something that can realistically work with your existing commitments because when it comes to what you're saying yes and no to you probably can't say no to your job or no to eating or no to showering or any of those things or no to sleeping and any of those things that do take up time yet it's unrealistic to expect that every hour that isn't taken up by those activities will be a writing hour so yes I do write six days a week however I'm not writing for every available hour during those days I'm also usually having a bath on the week days because that's something that really revives me I'm usually also reading a book or watching other channels on YouTube because these again are things that restock that energy I've just spent so when it comes to the routine just make sure it's something that's realistic for you and that's going to manage your energy well all in all slow and steady wins the race so at the time of filming this video I'm 33 years old and one of the things I wish is that I hadn't stopped writing when I left university and that I hadn't gotten so sucked up in trying to succeed in work and business that I just let this part of me go because even if I'd just been writing for half an hour a day 45 minutes a day five or six days a week I would be so much further along than where I am now and if I'd understood that having a consistent routine is far better than trying to push out a book in a week then maybe that would have been an option for me having said that there is that old Chinese proverb that says the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago and the second best time is today so I am planting my tree today and working towards becoming a successful fiction author now I'd like to hand it over to you are you writing on the side of a full-time job and if so please let me know in the comments below what helps you get your writing done and how do you take care of yourself while taking care of your writing if you like this video please remember to like and subscribe because it really helps me out and I will see you next time bye