The most common excuse I hear for someone not writing is they don’t have the time. We all know time is in short supply. Our days are full of work, family, and all the commitments we’ve made to other people. How do we find time for ourselves?

First you have to decide if it’s important. Would you rather be getting those 6 or 8 hours of sleep a night? Watch 3 or 4  hours of TV? Or lock yourself in your office and struggle to put words on paper?

For most of my life I’ve been a writer. I’ve poured tens of thousands of word on paper or into my computer. I’ve read dozens of books about writing and gleaned what I could from them. I learned to write anywhere. My habit was to always have pens and paper in my bag, along with a book and pull it out when I sat down someplace. A lunch table, a bar, the passenger seat of a car — I ever learned how to scribble ideas down while I was behind the wheel, writing without looking at the page. I was probably the only one would could have read those scratches.

A writer needs to figure out what can be juggled on their already full schedule. The best way to become a writer is to allot X number of hours a day to put toward writing. Now, this doesn’t mean every one of those moments has to be used to the act of physical writing. Most books or stories I write take nearly as much time thinking about the book, doing the research I need, and most of my books are either police procedurals where I have to get the police details right, to my current work on an historical novel set in the 1920s. Hours of my time have been spent researching the minutiae of the late roaring twenties. The actual writing of the novel I’m calling Color of Shadows and Smoke only started a month or more of digging through all the data I unearthed on that period.

I started writing the actual novel at the very beginning of March. By March’s end I had just over 40,000 words. The majority of those words came in the last 2 weeks. Before that I was struggling. I knew the story, I knew what I wanted to do with it, but the words wouldn’t come.

How did I fix that? I changed my priorities around. I’m a TV hound. I will put it on in the morning and let it run all day, sometimes not even changing channels or watching what was on very much. But it was on, and even if I only glanced at it for a few minutes every hour, that adds up. One day I did’t turn the TV on. I left it on and wrote. Suddenly I’m writing reams. I do 3,000, 5,000 even 9,000 at one point over a 24 hour period.

So to answer my own question, I will now say I will give up TV while I’m writing. Sometimes the only way to make this job choice possible is to get up an hour early, go to bed an hour later. Block some time out and let the family and friends know no to disturb you. It can mean turning off your cellphone. Staying off the Internet. I’m guilty of the latter. I continually go in and check my email. Playing around on Facebook or Twitter might be useful to new writers, but if they interfere with the writing time you need then they are distractions you don’t need.

Being a professional writer (even if you don’t quit your day job) requires first and foremost discipline. The discipline to sit in front of your computer and pound out words. Talking about writing will get you nowhere. Neither will dreaming about it. You have to get down and do it. It will mean sacrifices. There is no two ways about it. We have 24 hours. You have to carve some of that time out to write and then doing it. No excuses. The dishes can wait, the kids can find something to amuse themselves, the books you want to read must stay on your TBR pile. The phone must go unanswered.

Everybody gets the same amount of time. And the funny thing about time, is we always fill it. There’s always going to be something that has to be done, obligations such as work and family — although I have been known to jot ideas down during work hours. And of course, there are always lunch breaks and other daily breaks. But everybody has some flexible time. How we allot that time is at our discretion. If you have to wait for your kids at soccer practice or in the dentists office, those times can be put to use if you are prepared with paper and pen, or a recorder. If we want some of that time to write, then we have to carve it out and give it to ourselves.

Decide if writing is worth finding the time. Decide how badly you want it. Then make the time to do it. The choices are yours. what will you give up to be a writer?