So, you’ve identified your time and place where you’ll write. If you’re really lucky, that place has a door that others respect when it’s closed. Or maybe you write better with people around you, like at a coffee house or your kitchen table.

Wherever you are, it’s just you and your story. You have these next 30 minutes/2 hours/whatever set aside for writing. You’re being faithful to your butt-in-chair, fingers-on-keyboard time, and now there’s nothing left to do except actually write.

So, naturally, you remember that your best friend texted you an hour ago about weekend plans and you haven’t responded yet. You’ll just do that real quick before you get immersed in your story and forget. Oh, and it’s your aunt’s birthday. You should send her a text too.

Does this sound familiar? Surely I’m not the only one who struggles with focus when it comes to writing time. I’ll complain about not getting time to write, and then when I do get time, I wander off to Instagram in the name of “building my author platform.” (Which does need to happen … just not during sacred butt-in-chair time.)

Sometimes—this is embarrassing—I spend actual available writing time sending chats to my best friend (who’s also a novelist) about how little writing time I have.

WHAT IS THIS MADNESS? WHY DO I DO THIS?

The reality is, we default to easier tasks. It’s in our design. Sending texts or interacting on social media are both easier than writing a novel. As Jon Acuff points out in his book, Finish, nobody accidentally exercises.

“You will never accidentally end up doing a difficult project . . . You’ll never accidentally work out. ‘I meant to watch TV, but the next thing I knew, I was doing burpees!’”

We find ourselves accidentally scrolling social media because it’s easy and fun. The reward is immediate. We won’t accidentally get our novels finished because that reward isn’t immediate.

But I have learned some strategies for dealing with my self-sabotaging self:

Plan a transition activity

I find it very difficult to go from running errands, feeding my children lunch, getting them all settled for some form of quiet time, and then popping open my laptop and diving into creative work.

I’ve learned I need a few minutes of transition, something to help me turn away from task-oriented work to creative work. Sometimes this means I spend a few minutes cleaning up lunch dishes while purposefully thinking about the scene I’ll be working on.

Or as I’m waiting for my computer to boot up, I’ll read a passage from Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert or A Million Little Ways by Emily P. Freeman. Both of these are books that talk about creativity in a way that resonates with me, and I like to read small passages of them before I write, almost like a devotional.

The last part of my transition, and the most critical, is reading over the part of the story I worked on the day before.

Then I usually feel ready to write, but if my brain is being stubborn, I combine my transition with some of these other methods.

Turn-off notifications (or maybe your phone)

Most writing teachers advise turning off your phone entirely while you’re writing. This is wise, and I find a lot of value in it whenever I actually do it.

But there are a lot of reasons a person might not feel comfortable being completely unavailable, and that was always my struggle. When my kids are at school, school needs to be able to reach me. Aside from potential phone calls about getting sick at school or injured on the playground, one of my kids used to have epilepsy and another has a carry-the-EpiPen-everywhere level allergy. Being unreachable makes me anxious.

Even so, the odds of receiving an emergency call when I’m writing are really, really low. I’ve received only two “please come right away” phone calls in the ten years I’ve had kids in school, and only a few other “just a head’s up” phone calls that weren’t exactly emergencies, but still weren’t the kind of calls you want to miss.

The compromise I’ve struck with myself is to set my DND on my phone (plus turn off computer and watch notifications) and then to set a timer for fifteen or twenty minutes. (More on my love of timers in a minute.) When my timer goes off, I’ll peek to check for missed phone calls, and then go back to what I’m doing. This provides me with focused time and the knowledge that if school does call, I’ll notice it within fifteen minutes.

But if you don’t have someone dependent on you or expecting to be able to reach you, then definitely turn your phone off. When I’m writing and my husband has the kids, I turn my phone off completely for extended periods of time, and the level of focus is glorious.

Embrace the beauty of timers.

I’ll admit, I’m obsessed with timers. I have a really nice running watch from when I trained for my half-marathon, and these days I mostly use it for setting timers. (It’s a fantastic toddler parenting tool, but as this isn’t a post about parenting toddlers, I’ll skip those details.)

When I set my timer to check my phone for missed emergency calls, I’m simultaneously committing to write with absolute focus until the timer goes off. No email checks. No social media. No responding to texts. Just me and the story.

Sometimes it’s helpful to start a writing session with a shorter time chunk, and then gradually increase your timer once you’re more engaged with your story. (E.g. starting with a 10-minute session, then 15, then 20.)

Of course, there are also blissful days when the words themselves motivate me, and I forego the timer altogether, or I can abandon it partway through my writing session.

Be smart with your breaks.

Whether or not you use a timer, it’s good to plan for a break or two if you’ll be writing for very long. I usually take up to five minutes for mine, and I physically leave my chair. I move laundry, I use the bathroom, or I refill my water. Other than checking for a call from school, I try to give my eyes a break from screens and keep my head in my story, so I stay off my phone.

Sometimes, on the blissful days that I’m really into the book, all I do is stand, stretch, and dive back in.

End your writing session thoughtfully.

I’ve talked a lot about how to start and keep your focus, but it’s also important to have a routine for how you end.

My personal favorite way to end is to stop in the middle of a scene, make note of my word count in a dorky spreadsheet that I keep, and leave a couple thoughts there in the document for myself. Simple stuff like, “He tells her that he’s moving and she acts like she’s unaffected.” This way when I come back to the story, I’ll remember where I was headed.

While ending mid-scene like this drives some writers crazy—and while I’m sometimes too excited to follow this advice—I love how it can jump start my writing session the next day.

The reason I’ve developed the habit of noting my ending word count (or other progress if I’m not in a first draft) is because that feels like a happy celebration to me, similar to crossing something off a to-do list. Despite books that promise you otherwise, finishing novels takes a long time, so whatever I can do to make it clear to myself that I’m making progress is helpful!

What would you add to this list? What helps you focus on writing during writing time? Do you have a way that you like to end your writing sessions?

Read the next post in this series: Get Ready To Celebrate