Why Waiting For Quiet Fails

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You've probably told yourself you'll write a book when things settle down, when the baby sleeps through the night, when the kids get a little bit older, or when you finally have the kind of uninterrupted time that quote unquote real writers seem to have. But if finishing your novel depends on life becoming quieter first, then let's just be real, you could be waiting for years. So in today's episode, I'm sharing five ways to keep moving forward in the small, imperfect windows that your life gives you, all so that you can make real progress on your novel even when your schedule never looks the way you hoped it would. Welcome to the Fiction Writing Made Easy Podcast. My name is Savannah Gilbo, and I'm here to help you write a story that works. I want to prove to you that writing a novel doesn't have to be overwhelming. So each week I'll bring you a brand new episode with simple, actionable, and step-by-step strategies that you can implement in your writing right away. So whether you're brand new to writing or more of a seasoned author looking to improve your craft, this podcast is for you. So pick up a pen and let's get started. In today's episode, we're talking about how to finish a novel when you're raising your kids and your writing time is limited, it's unpredictable, and it's frequently interrupted. Because one of the hardest parts isn't simply finding the time to write. It's that the time you do find might look nothing like you imagined and nothing like you see other people experiencing on Instagram. For example, maybe you get 20 minutes while your child is at soccer practice and then you get nothing for the next three weeks. Maybe nap time ends much earlier than expected one day, or maybe you finally establish some kind of routine that works only to have a kid get sick, a school break that you need to worry about, or just a new season of family life that makes that routine impossible. Now, when this keeps happening, it's very easy to conclude that your life is simply too unpredictable to support something as big and as demanding as writing a novel, or that maybe you'll have to wait until this season passes before you can give it a real serious try. But after more than a decade of coaching fiction writers, I've watched people finish novels in the middle of full, busy, and unpredictable lives. Not because their schedules suddenly became perfect or had a little more wiggle room, mainly because they learned how to use the windows of time that they do have, they learned how to return to the story after interruptions, and they learned to let small imperfect progress count. And that's what the five tips in today's episode are designed to help you do. None of them require you to turn every spare minute into writing time or pretend that raising kids isn't exhausting. They're more about creating a flexible way of writing that can exist alongside the rest of your life. And they're about helping you continue to move forward toward the end, even when that movement is slower or messier than you've imagined. So let's dive right in, starting with

Tip One Use A Roadmap

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the first tip. And the first tip is to know what you're working on before you sit down to write. Because here's what tends to happen. Any small pocket of time you have gets a whole lot smaller when you spend most of it just trying to remember where you left off or where your story is even heading. You know how this goes. You open your document, you reread the last few pages, you dig through your notes, you try to recall what was even supposed to happen next. And then by the time the story finally comes back to you or your place in the story comes back to you, somebody needs you and the window is gone. So if you're like most people, you close your laptop thinking, I just don't have enough time. Maybe I should save writing my book until sometime in the future when I have more time to focus on it. But what I've noticed is that a lot of the time, the problem isn't the length of time that writing window is. It's more that you spent most of it getting reacquainted with your story or trying to decide what should happen next. And the less writing time you have, the less of it you can afford to spend rebuilding your sense of direction every single time you sit down, or going over pages that you wrote the previous week or the previous day and editing them before you move forward. So this is why I always recommend having some kind of roadmap before you start drafting. This could be anything from a full scene by scene outline, which is what I'm always going to recommend. It could also just be a list of the major turning points that you're headed toward, or it could be something as simple as an act-by-act summary of what's going to happen in each of the major sections of your story. So the specific format matters less than having something outside of your draft that can hold the direction of your story for you. All right, so the specific format of whatever kind of roadmap you choose to use, it matters less than having something outside of your actual pages that can hold your story for you. Now there's a second piece to this tip, and that is to leave yourself breadcrumb notes at the end of each session. So for example, say that you wrote a scene and maybe life got in the way, right? You have to run for a kid's doctor appointment or somebody needs you, whatever it is. You could just jot yourself a little note that says something like, continue writing the argument between Jack and his mother. He's just about to admit that he knew about the letter she sent. Something like that. Or you could leave a note that says she's about to enter the office intending to resign, but she finds the missing photograph on his desk or something. Right. So just kind of write down where your thoughts are when you're about to leave your desk for the day. And then think about how these kind of two sides of the equation work together. So you have a roadmap that reminds you where your story's going so that you can sit down and just kind of pick up the pen or start typing and start writing. And then also breadcrumb notes to remind you exactly where you left off and where to pick back up. And if you use both of these little micro tips together, then they'll allow you or help you to spend more of your limited writing time actually bringing the story to life on the page instead of reconstructing where you were and what you're meant to do next. All right, so the key takeaway for tip number one is that if you have some kind of roadmap that always holds the big picture shape of your story or where your story's headed, then you can spend more of the limited writing time that you have actually moving your story forward when you sit down to write. And this leads us straight into tip number two because once you know what you're working on, the next shift or the next tip gets a whole lot easier to believe.

Tip Two Embrace Short Sessions

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So tip number two is to stop waiting for long writing sessions. And what I mean by that is that there's this sneaky belief that almost every writer absorbs without even noticing. And that belief is that unless you have a few interrupted hours, then maybe it's not really worth opening your draft. And I totally understand where this comes from. Who doesn't want a few uninterrupted hours to write their book? Sometimes it's also a little hard to imagine what you can really get done in 15 minutes, right? You think about a 15-minute pocket of time and you're like, what can I really get done? Probably not a whole chapter, maybe not even a full scene, right? So it tends to feel easier to just wait until you have a long interrupted chunk of time to settle in, find your rhythm, and then make the session quote unquote count. But what I want you to remember, especially now if you're following tip number one, where you have a roadmap and you're kind of leaving yourself notes at the end of each session, what I want you to remember is that walking in, knowing your next move or what you're gonna work on in that session, instead of burning your entire writing window trying to remember where you're at, that already is gonna help you way more than you think. But I also want you to keep in mind that a novel is written one scene, one paragraph, and sometimes even one single sentence at a time. And this is why short writing sessions can still be really worthwhile. I'm gonna link to an episode of this podcast with one of my notes to novel students. Her name is JJ Henley, and this is exactly how she finished and ultimately published her book. She wrote it one sentence, one paragraph, one scene at a time in the little pockets of time that she had. And you can do the same. So in 15 minutes, let's say you might untangle a plot problem that's been bothering you, right? That is a very worthwhile 15 minutes. You could also sketch out the next scene that you're gonna work on in the future. You could add 200 words to an existing scene that wasn't there before, or maybe all you manage to write is just three sentences, right? Either way, it counts, and I know that those efforts can almost feel insignificant when you compare them to what you imagine being this long, glorious, uninterrupted, you know, three-hour session of writing. But they all add up and they all count. And that sentence or two that you get to write during your kids' soccer practice, well, that is going to connect to the paragraph that you got to write during their nap time. And eventually those little pieces will become a draft. Now, again, this is a lot easier if you put into practice what we talked about in tip one, right? So having some kind of roadmap to guide you when you sit down to write, leaving yourself little notes so that you can kind of just pick back up right where you were. But the main thing I want you to take away from this tip is that instead of holding out for the long stretch of time that, let's be real, almost never comes, right? I want you to start looking at your little pockets of time a little bit differently and figuring out how you can make the most use of them to move your story forward. Now, the other little caveat I want to add here is this doesn't mean that I'm suggesting that you should use every second of free time and downtime that you have to work on your story. You are definitely allowed to rest, you are allowed to let quiet pockets of time be quiet pockets of time. That is totally fine. So the goal is not to turn every spare minute into one more demand on your attention, but when those small pockets of time show up and when they're ones that you would normally dismiss because they don't seem long enough to do anything significant or anything that matters, then I just want you to consider opening your draft anyway. All right, so the key takeaway for tip number two is that novels aren't finished in one impressive writing session after another. In most cases, they are finished through many smaller efforts that gradually add up. And the same can be true for you and your story.

Tip Three Redefine Consistency

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All right, now tip number three is to stop measuring consistency by a daily word count or a daily writing streak. And if there's one word that writers hear over and over, it's the word consistency. It usually comes with a very specific picture attached, so something like a daily word count you're trying to hit, a streak that you're never supposed to break, and that same kind of butt-in-the-chair hour every single morning, no matter what. And of course, that advice can be useful when your life is reasonably predictable, right? But with kids, life is anything but predictable. One sick kid can wipe out your entire week that you had planned, a school break can change the whole shape of your day or week, a new baby can make yesterday's routine completely impossible, right? And even a system that worked beautifully for you for six months can suddenly just stop working. And when that happens, it's so easy to look at the three sessions that you missed or the word count goal that you didn't hit last Thursday, right? Whatever it is. And it's easy to look at that stuff and decide that you've failed or that there's no point going back to your desk. But the thing is, is that missing the plan is not the same thing as failing at your book, okay? And it doesn't mean that you lack discipline because you missed last Thursday's writing session or because you didn't wake up at 5 30 yesterday or whatever it is. It doesn't mean that you lack discipline. It doesn't mean that you don't want it badly enough. It just means that your life is busy and that your life has seasons, okay? So writing through the busyness and through those seasons might look like three mornings one week and then just one morning the next. It might mean writing more during the school year than you do over the summer, and it might even mean stepping away during a genuinely hard month and then picking the story back up when you have more capacity. All right, so I would like to offer you a new way to think about consistency, and that isn't always some version of I always follow the plan exactly as I've laid out the plan because you know for most of us that isn't going to happen. And I'd like to suggest thinking about consistency more like I keep coming back to my writing, I keep coming back to my desk despite how busy things are, despite everything else that's going on. Okay, so just a little mindset shift there that can sometimes help take the pressure off. And I also think it's worth mentioning that coming back is the hard part sometimes, right? A lot of writers will have a temporary interruption and it will turn into some kind of permanent verdict. So they miss a week and then they've decided that they've ruined their whole routine and it gets even harder to return because we feel guilty or you feel like a failure or however that manifests for you. And then the longer you stay away, the bigger that return starts to feel and the more pressure we put on ourselves, right? So when this happens to me, I like to say, don't make coming back a big event. I tell this to my clients and students too. Don't make coming back to your writing a big event. You don't owe your book some giant marathon session to make up for lost time. You don't need to reread your entire manuscript before you're allowed to keep going. Just sit down, open your document, read the breadcrumb note that I hope you're now leaving yourself, and add the next few sentences, okay? So don't make coming back a big event and give yourself a little compassion because it's not easy to write when life is so full and there are kids at home and you're busy and things like that. But the key takeaway here for tip number three is that missing a session, missing a week, whatever it is, it's not gonna cost you your book. But what might cost you your book is treating that missed week as the end. All right. So don't make coming back to your desk or to your story a big event. Just come back and keep going. In my opinion, that's the kind of consistency that matters.

Tip Four Let Rough Drafts Count

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Now, tip number four is to let imperfect progress count. And what I mean by this one is that when you only have a short window of time to write and you don't know when the next good window of time will come, it's really easy to feel as though that time needs to produce something really good. And that pressure can pull your attention away from moving forward. So you open your document and start revising the pages you wrote yesterday, or you write a few new sentences, then stop to search for the perfect word, maybe rewrite a paragraph until it flows, or maybe you decide to research the exact kind of lock used in a 19th century door, whatever it is, right? And then by the time that your writing window closes, you may have improved a few sentences, but you probably haven't moved your draft much closer to the end. If you can relate, you are so not alone. I see this happen all the time. Now, don't get me wrong, wanting your writing to be good is completely understandable. I'm sure the books that have inspired you to write were polished, vivid, emotionally powerful, and all the things, right? So it's natural to want your own words to sound that way too. And because the finished books you love are full of those beautiful polished sentences, it's really easy to feel as though your own words should sound as good as they are as soon as you write them. But the books you're comparing your draft to have already been revised multiple times and are now published. They've gone through a completely different process than your first draft has, right? So at this stage, your first draft pages are not supposed to sound finished. And your goal right now should be to keep moving things forward to get the next part of your story onto the page, even when the wording is awkward, even when the details are incomplete, and even when a scene isn't working exactly the way you want it to yet. So I have a couple micro tips here to help you get through your first draft because I know it's so hard to write forward and not edit as you go. But one of the biggest micro tips I have for you is that when you don't know a specific detail, or let's say that you want to find a better word for something eventually, just leave yourself a little note, maybe in brackets, parentheses, different colored font, whatever it is, and just leave a note that says something like research the specific type of lock or find a better word, right? You'll have plenty of time to come back and do those things later. And let's say that you have a sentence that just sounds weird or awkward or cliche, but in general it communicates what it needs to. I want you to let those sentences stay in your draft for now. Because again, your goal is to get to the end. And once you get to the end, you're gonna have so much more of an informed opinion about what your story needs when it comes time to edit. So getting to the end is really, really important. All right, and then last little micro tip when you suspect that a scene is going to need a really substantial revision later, I don't want you to give up writing it mid-sene. I want you to keep drafting it and then just leave yourself a note about what you want to change while your ideas are still fresh. So if you're writing it and you realize, oh my gosh, this whole scene so far has just kind of been dialogue and setting detail. I don't really know what's supposed to happen. Either just finish it and leave yourself a note, or you don't even have to finish it. You can just stop writing when you kind of get that ick feeling and leave yourself a note at that point. So say something like, This scene is incomplete, need to figure out how this one works into the bigger plot, and then just move on, right? Not everything has to be perfectly complete and perfectly written in your first draft. And this does not mean that you're lowering your standards or that you're pretending problems don't exist. You're simply deciding that a first draft is just not the moment when every scene, every sentence, every detail needs to reach its final form. All right, so that is tip number four. Let imperfect progress count. Let 150 rough words count. And if your writing window closes halfway through a scene, let that half scene count, right? Let the paragraph you already know that you're gonna rewrite, let that count. Because those imperfect pages are still moving you closer to a finished draft. And that's what's most important. All right, now last up is tip number five.

Tip Five Treat Writing As Legit

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And tip number five is to treat your writing time as legitimate. And this one's important because it's one of the biggest, I guess, misbeliefs that I see hold parents especially back from writing. And it's this belief that taking time for their writing is selfish because there's always another load of laundry, another errand, another thing you could do for somebody else, right? And writing can feel optional beside all of that, especially before there's a finished book, a publishing contract, or any kind of income to quote unquote justify the hours. But your creative life doesn't have to survive entirely on whatever time and energy remains after everyone else is satisfied. You are allowed to take your writing seriously before you have anything to show for it. So before it sells, before it's finished, and before anyone else validates the dream. Now, again, that doesn't mean every free minute has to go to writing your novel. It doesn't mean ignoring what your family needs or forcing yourself to write when you desperately need to rest. All it means is that writing is no longer the commitment you automatically cancel because there's always going to be something more practical you could do. Now, what does this look like practically? Well, treating your writing time as legitimate just means letting it hold its place among all those other priorities sometimes. So maybe the laundry stays unfinished for an extra hour, or maybe you step away from your to-do list without guilt on Thursdays. Or maybe you ask someone for help. So a partner who trades off with you doing a certain chore or a certain responsibility, maybe there's a family member who can come take the kids for the afternoon, or maybe there's even another parent who can swap childcare with you, right? You'll have to brainstorm what this could look like for you. But really the key thing here, or the key takeaway, is that taking your writing seriously isn't selfish. It's part of what finishing a book actually takes. And if you are someone with kids at home, I always like to think about, you know, how cool is it for your kid or kids to see their parent going after one of their big dreams, right? I think that's really special. And you can even include them a little bit in what your dream is, what kind of book you're writing, why you're doing it, and things like that. Because I've seen some of the writers in my notes to novel course do this. They'll kind of involve their family and share their progress and things like that. And once the dream is shared and the progress is shared, it almost becomes easier or more natural for everyone to kind of band together and help you protect that time as well. So just an idea, but key point taking time for your writing isn't selfish. And if you need someone to give you permission to do so, then here I am giving you that permission.

Proof From Real Parent Writers

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All right, now we just talked through five tips about how to finish your novel while you have kids at home and limited writing time. But let's be real, there will still be interruptions, there will still be days when you're too tired to write, and there will still be seasons when progress moves more slowly than you would like it to. But remember that slow isn't the same as impossible. And just to give you a little bit of inspiration before I let you go today, I want to tell you about Maddie, a mom of four, who wrote her novel mostly during early morning sessions before the house woke up. I'm gonna link to Maddie's story in the show notes, but hers is one of my favorites because she had a new baby arrive right in the middle of working on her first draft. So she had to step away for, I think it was over a year, maybe a year and a half while she was raising her newborn and her other children. And so she was legitimately pulled away from her manuscript for quite a while. But she had a full scene-by-sene roadmap, like we talked about earlier in tip number one. And once she was able to get back into her writing, everything was right there waiting for her. So she finished that draft in about six months of actual writing time. Some of that was before the baby, some of it was after the baby. And then shortly after that, she got multiple offers of representation and ended up signing with her dream agent. And her novel is now out on submission. There's also Jackie, who wrote a lot of her novel in the smallest slivers of time that her life would allow, at her kids' swim lessons, in the drive-thru, and sometimes literally just a sentence or two at a time. And those tiny efforts all added up and created her debut novel, The Halo Sinner's Daughter, that she finished in about eight months and has since published. I will link to that episode in the show notes too. And then lastly, I want to tell you about Stephanie, who had a baby while working on her second novel. And while she was caring for her newborn, there were writing sessions where the exhaustion and the interruptions left room for only a hundred or so words at a time. But instead of deciding that those words weren't enough, she used things like placeholders and little breadcrumb notes and some of the things we talked about today to keep herself moving through her draft. Now, what I want you to notice about all three of the stories I just shared with you is that none of their schedules were perfect. And their kids didn't just stop needing them. They didn't have a ton of time to just sit down and write for hours, but what they did have was a plan, a roadmap of how their novel was going to unfold, and the courage to keep coming back to their desk even though life kept getting in the way. And for most people, that is what finishing a novel with kids at home actually looks like. So I hope this episode helped give you some tips and tricks and some different ways to show up on the page because you don't need to wait for a whole different life to write your novel. What you just need is a way of writing that fits into the life you have

Notes To Novel Invitation

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now. And if that's the piece you've been missing, I would love to invite you to check out my notes to novel course. This is my step-by-step program that helps you turn a scattered pile of ideas into a story that works. It'll walk you through developing your characters, building out your story's central conflict, outlining your story scene by scene, and so much more. So whether you have 20 minutes, an hour, or a quiet morning to yourself, you'll always know what to work on and can keep moving forward towards the end of your draft. Enrollment is opening very soon, so if you'd like to be the first to know when doors open, head over to the link in the show notes and join the wait list. And then stay tuned because next week I'm gonna show you what this process can look like in practice. One of my notes to novel students will be joining me on the podcast, and we're gonna talk about her experience in the course, how it helped her build out her story's foundation, outline her story scene by scene, and what it was like to go through that process, finish her draft, edit her draft, and eventually publish her debut novel. So if you love seeing a behind the scenes glimpse into someone else's writing life, then you won't want to miss that episode. Alright, so that's all I have for you today. As always, thank you so much for tuning in. I hope your writing is going well, and I will talk to you next week.