Hello, all! As some of you may know, I’m a full-time college student. I usually take at least 16 hours of courses each semester, and it’s been a learning experience to juggle writing among all of my courses. I often get the question about how I make time to write during college, so I decided to share what I’ve learned here!
1. Give yourself grace. Even though I challenged myself to write every day, I had to be sure to give myself grace. There were so many times when I beat myself up about not writing for longer than 5 minutes or not getting up at 5am like some of my friends to write. I felt like I wasn’t dedicated enough to even be a writer if I couldn’t carve a chunk of time out of my day to write. However, I began to think about what I was accomplishing every day. I was going to school for 7+ hours every day, working on homework assignments, studying for tests, as well as managing a social life and other personal habits! Once I did that, I was able to give myself grace and believe every word I was writing counted.
2. Figure out when you need to write. For me, this really varied. In my last blog post, (link), I talked some about finding what time you like to write best and set aside time to write then. In college, many don’t have that luxury (including me!). Most of the time, I have to write whenever I can squeeze in a few minutes. When I’m actually *at* school, I often wrote on my lunch breaks or in the library when I needed to step away from studying. Sometimes I wrote in the hall before class, or in my classroom right before class started. Now that I’m doing school from home, I typically write at night, before bed, because my school is so busy. So, finding what time works best in your schedule is a daily thing. If you’re a college student, there’s often a lot of variability in your schedule, and you have to be flexible with your writing times, too. You have to treat that writing time like you would a lunch date with someone or study time (which is hard for me, but I’m working on it!).
3. Get involved with writing groups at your school. I say this as a total hypocrite. In the end of last semester, during NaNoWriMo, I got involved with the writing groups on campus. I went to a couple of meetings, met a few people, and actually had a good time—I just didn’t go back. I think I could have really benefited from sticking with that writing group at my college. If your school or college has writing groups or get-togethers, go to them! Don’t let your introverted-ness (at least in my case) get in the way of making new friends and doing something new. When I was involved with the writing group, I had so much fun and I wrote a lot more than I normally did on my own. If your college doesn’t have one, maybe create your own!
4. Experiment with new styles/genres. I learned this this semester. I’d never written poetry or a short story or nonfiction before—but because of my creative writing class, I had to. And, I actually liked them. On days when I was struggling with my WIP, I could turn to the homework assignment we had due and write something for fun and get homework done! I love multitasking, so this was a win-win for me. Writing poetry helped me feel free in a way; it allowed me to express myself in a way I never had before. In a short story, I was able to channel my inner Hemingway and write something with a lot of intrigue and mystery with little dialogue (something new to me). Although I didn’t enjoy writing nonfiction because it was focused more on myself, I still thought it was a good experience. If you’re in college and don’t have a lot of time to write, try new styles of writing. They’re generally shorter than novels (unless you decide to take them somewhere) and can be quick, simple things to write.
5. Write for something or someone else. One way that I found motivation was through submitting things for contests or having specific people in mind when I wrote things. When I wrote the poem I’m getting published in a magazine, I had no intention of publishing it, but when I wrote a short story, I did have a particular contest I wanted to submit it to (I didn’t because of finals being too busy). I found it a lot easier to focus on making my work good instead of doing it halfway, which was awesome for me! When it comes to writing for someone else, if you’re writing a book that you needed when you were younger—think of things you would have wanted to know at a younger age and write them. It’ll make the piece a lot more personal, and you’ll be more interested in writing it when you know it’ll be beneficial to someone else!
Anyways, those are all of my tips for writing as a college student! I hope they’re helpful to you. If you have any tips you can think of, be sure to comment below!
Much love,
Katie