Hey everyone!

First, a big shout-out to all of you who are out there enjoying the Wattpad Block Party this month! I'd love it if you'd say hi and let me know where you're joining the party from, and I'd love for you to enter my giveaway! (See the end of my post for giveaway details.)

Let's also take a moment to give a second shout-out, huge thank you, and round of applause to our host , who puts her heart and soul into making the Wattpad Block Party happen. Thank you so much for putting this together and for giving me the opportunity to take part!

A bit about me: I'm here on Wattpad. I write teen romance and light celebrity romance, which includes my Wattpad books Seven Weeks to Forever, Hiding Out in Hollywood, Billion Dollar Boyfriend, and Rock Star's Girl.

Like many of you, my weekdays are filled with commitments that have nothing to do with writing or reading books. A lot of people have school, homework, a family, a full-time job (or multiple jobs), or are juggling a number of things that fill up the day. For me, it's a full-time job, Los Angeles commute, a dog, and my home life.

Through the course of writing my first three books, I was usually good about creating dedicated writing time in my day, focusing when it was time to write, and slipping into the writing groove. Then my fourth book and October 2017 through April 2018 happened.

It felt like every time I wanted to write, a zillion other things were either taking up my time or focus. My day job involves managing a global team and a functional area for a large company. The company I work for was sold to another big company last summer, and was merged with a company that our parent company had previously acquired. Nothing much changed for me until October, when my area of responsibility almost doubled. I found myself swept up in learning about an entire other company's worth of products, processes, teams, tools, and platforms full time while still doing my old full-time job and managing an expanded team. My work inbox exploded, averaging 70-100 emails each day with many needing follow up. This was along with Slack messages and channels needing my attention throughout the day, and I was attending an average of 25 to 30 meetings per week. Because of time zone differences between new teams I was working with, some of these meetings were at hours I used to set aside for writing, like at 5:30 or 6 a.m., and my writing fell to the wayside. I was tired, and my brain often felt scrambled by the time I got home each night.

Just as I was getting a handle on the work thing, my home life got... well, interesting. The property management company that oversees where I live decided to do a mandatory in-home construction and plumbing project that resulted in construction workers and plumbers being all over my home every weekday for over 3 weeks. There was actual demolition and construction going on in my bedroom and bathroom (yes, while I was living there!), I was allergic as could be to the drywall dust, and I was beyond annoyed. I was letting my focus be consumed by all of this instead of trying to shrug it off and write.

What began as a temporary writing break turned into a writing hiatus, and then into a rut. When I look back, writing should have been the one thing I tried to create time and focus for, no matter what. I could blame it on all the external factors I just mentioned, but in truth, I let myself stop doing the thing I love to do most.

Writing motivates me, inspires me, and makes me come alive. Being an author has been my dream for as long as I can remember, and it's part of who I am. It took a while, but I realized how unhappy NOT writing was making me, and how that was spilling over into other parts of my life. I needed to find a reset button, and fast.

What I ended up doing was going back to basics. I knew I might not be able to create the same amount of writing time I once had, but I also knew I owed it to myself to make time throughout the week and to have go-to tricks to eliminate mind clutter and distractions so I could get into the writing mindset. Not long after I rediscovered my focus-setting and time-creating tricks, I wrote multiple new chapters of one of my works in progress, and I created a new extended version of one of my previous works by writing six new chapters over a couple of weeks.

Here are the brain hacks and time hacks I used for getting my writing groove back. If you're reading this and have been lacking focus or time to work on something you love, I hope these tips also help you.

This is a big one for me. My mind is all over the place the further into my day I get, since I'm either meeting about, answering emails or Slack messages about, or actually working on a number of different topics and projects each day. By the time I'm at the end of a work week... what's a coherent thought, again? My go-tos for settling my mind and quieting the endless torrent of thoughts about all the things I have to do are Kundalini yoga, meditation, or going for a walk. What I choose to do often depends on the amount of time I have and where I am. Once my mind has calmed the heck down and I'm in a space where I'm focusing on the present and one thing at a time, I'm much better able to write, and the words flow much more easily.

There's something about music that helps to refocus my attention and switches my mind over to the writing zone. This is a brain hack I've been using since my journalism school days when I needed to turn around a news story on a deadline. I remember the topic of listening to music to help with writing came up in one of my reporting classes, and that it was suggested by my professor, who'd spent years in the news industry writing to deadline.

This is another brain hack that goes back to journalism school for me. I don't know why, but words and scenes just seem to come to me while I'm in the shower. I've seen other writers mention this works for them as well, so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Your guess is as good as mine, but I swear by it!

A question authors get asked a lot is how they deal with writer's block. I've found that even if I'm stumped by a scene or project I'm working on, it's the act of sitting down, putting fingers to keyboard or pen to paper, and writing ANYTHING that can get the words to flow. There are also times when I'm simply burned out on a particular scene or story, and writing something else for a little while offers a nice break and can help motivate me to return to what I intended to work on.

Reading is SO important for authors to do. It isn't just about keeping up with the genres I write in or the writing industry for me. When I lose myself in a fantastic story I can't get enough of, I'm often inspired to return to a work in progress or to start writing something new. There's nothing like reading a great story or book to give my own writing flow a nudge.

I'm a sucker for the snooze button. There have been weeks and months we've been total BFFs. If I really think about all those times I've hit snooze, though, I haven't actually gained any sleep. In truth, the snooze button is a procrastination tool I use because my bed is comfortable, but I could be using those 10-minute blocks of time to write.

I've learned over the last few months that getting enough sleep is important, but also that sleep times can be shifted a little bit. As an example, I can fall asleep half an hour earlier if writing at night isn't working for me, and then wake up half an hour earlier to write before getting ready for work. When I'm full-out on a novel or in editing mode, I often wake up at 4:30 a.m. on weekdays to get an hour or two of writing in. There's something about the early morning hours when my mind is refreshed from sleep and no one is expecting me to be answering email that makes for quality writing time.

Let's face it: long blocks of time dedicated to writing can be hard to come by. They definitely are for me unless it's the weekend and I don't have plans I'm committed to and errands to run, or unless it's a weekday when I've gotten up at 4:30 a.m. to write. So how to tackle this? I've found it's completely possible to get a few sentences or paragraphs down during lunch breaks and other breaks at work. Writing sprints are also effective, since the focus is on writing as much as I can in 20 minutes or half an hour, without worrying about how polished what I'm writing is.

I disabled Facebook at the end of March and kept it disabled for several months. I realized I was in the habit of scrolling my news feed several times a day and I wasn't gaining much from it. By disabling Facebook, I freed up more time in my day. It became my new habit to write a couple of sentences or paragraphs instead of spending that time reading status updates and posts. The amount of writing I accomplished began to add up!

While I'm back on Facebook temporarily for a writing-related reason, I currently go straight to the one group I want to keep up with, then exit again. And I'm committed to disabling Facebook again in September to continue enjoying the extra writing time.

I've composed hundreds and even thousands of words within a few minutes by speaking scenes out loud instead of writing them down. I use the voice memos app on my phone to record myself when a scene pops into my mind and I want to get it all recorded somewhere before I forget it. Writing certain scenes has taken much less time for me this way, and I've found this is a great tool for writing dialogue.

If you have a brain hack for finding focus or a time hack for creating more time in your day, please share it in a comment. I'd love to hear it!

The giveaway link is at the bottom of this post. Good luck!

To everyone out there reading: thank you a zillion times over, and I hope you're having fun at the Wattpad Block Party!

- Jenn ♥♥♥