From GITS reader Sharat:

I’ve reader question for GITS, that I would like to see your answer. This question has become so important to me recently and I am trying to find how people have worked around.

How do you keep writing and still stay married fulfill the family time?

You must be a full time writer now but most of your students and readers are still working a 9-5 and trying to write in the nights and weekends negotiating those 30 mins, 60 mins chunks from their spouses. This questions is more for those.

A few pieces of advice:

* First off, I would take a good look at yourself and determine when is the best time of day for you creatively. I’m surprised at how many aspiring writers do not consider this when working out a schedule. Some people are morning writers. Others night-time. Some during the day. Figure out when you’re at your best as a writer and coordinate everything else you do around that to maximize your productivity.

* Set a definite time period in which to write. I can’t emphasize this enough. Even if you only have 30 minutes each day, say from 6:30-7:00AM, then make that your writing time. Everyone in the family knows it. You close the door. Crank up your computer. And write.

* Write every day. This is especially important if you can only spare 30-60 minutes per day to write. It’s hard to build up momentum in such short time-spans, so if you take off a day or two, the creative energy can dissipate. Write. Every. Day.

Another way to approach it is not by the amount of time you spend, but the number of pages you crank out. I have a Dumb Little Writing Tricks That Work post on this:

Write one page per day. Think about it — at one page per day, in 4 months you’ve generated a 120 pages. So if you take this approach:

* 1 month: Research, brainstorming, character development, plotting
* 4 months: Writing (1 page per day)
* 1 month: Rewrite and final edit

Which means you can crank out 2 full-length screenplays per year — by writing just one page per day.

Yet another approach is to prep your story to the point where you’ve put together a complete outline, scene by scene. Then after arranging to take a Friday off from work, at noon you kiss your spouse and kids good-bye, drive 1-2 hours to a cabin, hotel, motel, some place for a weekend writer’s retreat. It’s 48 hours of pounding out pages. This works best for your first draft where you don’t edit, just vomit out the pages. I’ve written over 60 pages in a weekend several times on retreat. And frankly some writers prefer that the daily grind of 1-2 pages.

The main thing is this: You should treat your writing as a business. You clock in. You clock out. You set deadlines. You meet them. You create a schedule. You use it. You’re going to do this when you’re a professional TV or screenwriter, why not start acquiring good work habits now?

One last item: You need to explain as nicely but as firmly as you can to your family that when you are writing, that is your time. No interruptions. No phone calls. No questions. “Mommy is a writer, okay. That’s one of my jobs. So when the door to the study is closed, unless there’s an emergency, your job is to let me do my job.”

Now the other thing is to make sure you set up time to spend with the family. And when that time arrives, do not slough it off in order to revise your script or edit pages. There is writing time. There is family time. You have to commit yourself to both.

Create a schedule and a mindset where everyone in the family knows their respective responsibilities so you can be free and clear to focus on your writing.

How about it, GITS readers. How do you balance writing and family time?

UPDATE: Through some sort of weird computer gremlin thingee, when I tweaked this post, it lost all the comments. Apologies to all concerned. If you feel like re-posting your thoughts, please do.