You’ve got a full life — a demanding job, the role of full-time soccer mom/dinner cook/babysitter/homework helper, and you’re constantly sleep-deprived. But you’ve got ideas, poems, stories to tell. When do you find the time to write?

The answer may well lie partly in creative time management, squeezing in opportunities between other scheduled tasks. It may also lie partly in examining your life and determining if your writing needs are being met, and if they’re important enough to you to ensure they are.

To be a writer, you have to write, not just aspire to it, so you have to make the time. Some early birds enjoy the peacefulness of the pre-dawn period, the one or two hours before the alarm clock would go off.

Many night owls opt for the stroke of midnight, when everyone’s asleep in their beds, and the house is quiet enough for their thoughts to jump to the page (or screen).

The important thing is, you have to know what works for you and make it happen.

Start by taking out your calendar and looking where everything’s scheduled — you, kids, husband, dog. Then question it. Is everything efficiently organized so each task is completed in its allotted time-slot? Can you pick up the kids and make dinner and get to a writers’ group all in the same evening? If not, see what you can move.

And if something scheduled isn’t really that important, you can use that time to fit your writing in.

Make a plan.

Look into yourself to determine when your most productive time of day is. If it’s midday, no, you can’t get out of work, but you can use your lunch hour to sit by yourself quietly and work on the outline, synopsis, or first chapter. Just let others know you’re not to be disturbed.

Discover how many hours of sleep you need to be alert and productive. Taking away precious hours is only going to add more stress to your life, so don’t schedule writing during your downtime. But do keep a pen and paper by the bedside to jot ideas and dialogue down if you happen to wake up with a brilliant idea, because you won’t remember it in the morning.

I find that I’m very alert when I’m in the shower, that my thoughts travel down various paths, and I can hit on solutions to writing problems when the creativity flows with the water. Keep a waterproof pen and pad just outside so you can get everything down when it comes to you.

Put your writing time on the family schedule and explain its importance, so everyone knows when you need to be alone. Call it your “homework,” if you like.

You’ve got a plan? Now stick to it!

Writing only happens when you sit down and do it, over and over and over again. Maybe not the same place, but definitely the same time. Be as regular as a clock to build in preparedness. If you start to find excuses for not writing at your designated times, you’re not sticking to your plan, and that’s a waste of precious time.

Ultimately, the ball’s in your court. Writers write; it’s in the job description. Now make the time and discover all the stories you have to tell.