@piwnymisiek - when my kids were little I wrote during nap times or after they went to bed (I had not Netflix or TV because $$$ and my spouse worked until 11pm most nights - I had nothing else to do but fold laundry). It was maybe 15-20 minutes of writing at a time, maybe 500 words on a good day.
500 words single spaced is 2-3 pages in print.
15 minutes adds up to a few hours a week.
I wrote short stories and novellas. My first novella came out a few months before my 3rd kid was born.
When the kids got older, I hit a better stride. Take the older ones to school, hit the gym, lunch, and then when the baby had a 2 hour nap I had 2 hours to write. That was it for the day. Emails, editing, Twitter, blogging, writing… it all happened in two hours.
My first novel came out when that kid went to kindy and my youngest started pre-pre-k (2 days a week, 2 hours a time, playing with other kids). That was my two writing hours a day. I shifted editing, social media, and everything else so those two hours were just writing.
I wrote a trilogy of novels. Some more novellas. A new series with books that 110k+ each…
Now all my kids are in school I write 3-4 hours a day, max. That includes editing a lot of the time.
I have a full time career as a writer and freelance editor.
… the answer is… you start with those five minutes you have. You keep taking the two or three minutes of focus. Five minutes every day doesn’t seem like much, but it’s over 30 hours over the course of the year.
In 5 minutes you can write 100 words.
In a year, at 100 words a day, you can write 36,500 words, the same length as a long novella or a full middle grade chapter book (MG novel).
Now you’ve written 73,000, the same length as the average YA novel or a short adult novel.
Add another 5 minutes and you can write epic SF/F in a year.
Fifteen fragmented, broken, distracted minutes with a kid biting your ankle or pulling your hair or watching Cars 3 for the millionth time.
