Writing, for many is a pastime or at most, a side job. Hence, most people do their regular 9-5 jobs before they get a chance to scribble a few hundreds of words. The rest, who cannot do anything productive after a long day, prefer to write in the wee hours of the morning before they hit the road. These two arrangements are not very easy ones and it requires a lot of discipline to follow through with it consistently. Since writing is an art and a skill that requires consistency to be honed, should writers wait until week-long holidays and leaves before they write? Or better still, should they start writing at retirement?

The questions above must have popped up once or twice in the minds of writers who have so much to do but are faced with the reality of having so little time left to pursue their passion. “If passion cannot foot your bills, should you not freeze it until you have made enough money to return to it?” This is the rhetorical question some of my close friends who became passive poets or completely quit writing asked me when I nudged them to get back to putting pen to paper. 

Here at EBOquills, we have been thinking about the best way writers can effectively combine writing and their other jobs. After careful consideration, we thought it’d be wise to borrow a leaf from scholarly writers, who have recorded some great success stories since the adoption of what is known as snack writing. Snack writing is simply setting out a good fraction of your daily snack breaks for writing.  

Whether it is simply your “break time”, “lunch break”, “recess”, “tea break” or whatever name it is given in the establishment where you work, you can make out time to scribble something in your journal daily. You could even use a speech-to-text application on your cellphone while you recline in a comfy cushion catching your breath and preparing to return to the other half of the day’s job. Then, save your works appropriately and return to it at the same time, the next day.

However, snack-writing would lose its efficacy if we spend time editing and reading over first drafts, rather than writing new stuff. According to Maria Gardiner & Hugh Keams, activities such as editing and refining of thoughts already penned must be slated to another time so as to ensure that writers maximize their snack-writing time.

If you want to deal a deadly blow on procrastination and the urge to get the whole story in your head before scribbling, adopting snack-writing is the best way to go. Remember that our submissions window is always open to the stories, poems and the other pieces you would birth during your snack-writing time!

We wish you the best!

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