Today’s guest blog post comes from my Florida writing friend, Christine Mills. Christine and I met when she interviewed me on her podcast, The Veranda Entrepreneur. Today she is sharing some tips that hit me right in the heart… how to write when life is busy. It’s the perfect advice to get you ready for NaNoWriMo (just a few days away… eeeek!). After you read it, pop in your earbuds and listen in on our conversation about book promotion.

When people see the books I have written and realize that two of the three books were written while I was raising young children, I often get asked the question, “when did I find time to write?” That has become a loaded question, because even after years of writing I still don’t think I have fully mastered consistently getting in the practice of writing. I have set reminders in my phone, put a journal beside my bed and have even made it a New Years Resolution but I find what has helped me is to write often and everywhere and to set hard deadlines, even if they are with yourself.

I find that if you walk around with your writing journal just like how us readers love to walk around with a book, you will find little bits of time to write. There were seasons in my life that the only time I had was 10 minutes at a doctor’s office or riding on the train to work. I used to feel guilty when I would hear writers talk about chunks of time that they have to write and I used to look for the chunks and couldn’t find any. I stopped feeling guilty and embraced the season I was in. I relished in the short spurts of time and made it work for me and made it as productive as any chunk of time experts recommended.

As a working mother with a passion for writing my best was 15 minutes here and ten minutes there. And gradually little fragments of time were pieced together into three published books and two unpublished books. My advice to anyone who wants to be a writer and feels that they will never have the right time is to start with where you are and what you have. If you only have 10 minutes before your kids come home from school honor that time. If you only have fifteen minutes on the train on your way to work…use it consistently. Show up for your dreams and talents in the least likely places and before long your patchwork of notes will grow into a chapter and chapters will become your book.

Christine Mills is the author of Young, Gifted and Black: Quarter-life Crisis; Young, Gifted and Black: Midlife and Dream Chasers. You can find her at www.christinemills.net .

If you liked this post, you might also enjoy…

Scheduling Your Best Life Invented Deadlines 10,000 Hours of Writing Time

This post was made beautiful by Canva.

If you liked what you read on my blog today (or are in search of weekly word nerd goodness) and would like to have it delivered to your inbox every Wednesday morning, you can sign up HERE. If you are interested in any of my email lists (with free goodies/downloads!) click the audience that best describes you: Writer. Teacher. Reader. As always, feel free to share this post with others you think might be interested via email, Facebook or Pinterest.

Finally, affiliate marketing is promoting a product or service in return for a commission. When you purchase a product or service through one of my links, I earn a small part of the sale. There is NEVER any extra cost to you. If you looked up the same product on the same site through another source besides my website, the price will still be exactly the same. 100% of the time.

I also NEVER link to products or services that I don't 100% believe in. I will never tout a company or their goods if they are disreputable or if I don't believe them to be worthy of your hard-earned money. In no way are my affiliate links a scam. (Language borrowed with permission from Kristen Kieffer on Well-Storied.com)