I had coffee with a friend this week who is also the mom of two young children, and she asked how my book was coming and then asked me how on earth I have time to write it. This is something I get asked a lot, and I explained that I have to be very flexible. I’ve always told myself I write best in the first morning hours (after a cup of coffee) until late morning. At one point a few years back, I was between jobs and decided I would write during these hours every day. I had no kids yet, no other urgent stuff pressing on me. And you know what? It didn’t happen. Part of that was the novel itself; I just couldn’t get passionate about the story I’d decided to tell, but part was also that it seemed like I had all the time in the world, no one to answer to but myself, and so I choked.Fast-forward to the completed first draft of my first novel. I wrote this one while caring nearly full-time for my daughter and pregnant with my son. I wrote during morning sickness. I wrote during bouts of insomnia. I was doing my first major revision while having contractions. I was back at it three months after the baby was born, sometimes with a laptop balanced on my knee while he slept on my chest.
If you tell yourself you can only work in certain conditions (e.g. between 9 and 11 on partly cloudy days with 2.5 chocolate chunk cookies on a green napkin to the left of your computer keyboard), you will not get anything done! What I learned, very quickly, about working whenever the spare moment presents itself is that magical things can happen when you least expect it. You can be dog-tired and in no mood to write and yet, in a half-hour of messing around, you suddenly find your way through a tricky scene.
Snatch whatever minutes you can; be open to inspiration whenever, and wherever, it may occur. Sentence by sentence, the novel will get done.