Saturday, July 19, 2008

The Perennial Question

What question do people curious about writing ask more than any other? Well, besides, "Where do you get your ideas?" (And besides, "How much money do you make?") I'd say that the #1 biggie question is: How do you find the time?

By now, I've juggled writing time every way there is to juggle it. When my kids were little, I wrote nightly from 9 to midnight. At times I tried writing before they got up in the morning. Glad to finally become a daytime writer when the youngest started school, I may have had the best of all worlds when I was "home with the kids" yet had most daytime hours to myself.

But then I began teaching, by correspondence. Still at home and able to devise my own schedule, I tried writing mornings and teaching afternoons; teaching mornings and writing afternoons; teaching three days and writing two, the particular days of the week shifting now and then; teaching during the week and writing weekends; writing evenings -- and sometimes just plain all of the above.

Writing is funny. Not funny ha-ha, but funny peculiar. People often expect their writing to live on the edges of their lives, yet it requires a fair amount of immersion. Regular writing, reading, and market study are the three basics, but most publishing writers also take classes, study writing books, attend conferences, join professional organizations, do considerable topic research, network, read and comment on blogs and message boards, maintain a website and blog, and continue to read, read, read. And when you finally publish, promotion and speaking engagements enter the picture, as does producing approximately a book a year. Few career writers put anything other than God, family and day job ahead of writing. Hobbies or an active social life, if there's room for them, come after.

So, you're saying, "Okay, I get that I have to make time, not find time. How?" Try thinking in terms of a balance between regularity and flexibility. Can't write on a regular schedule? What if, each weekend, you schedule the upcoming week's writing? JUST the coming week. Block out those times on your calendar. When the time slots arrive, WRITE. When the next weekend comes, again block out your writing times for the coming week. It doesn't matter if they bear any resemblance to last week's writing times. It only matters that they mesh with what's on your plate for the week in question. Regularity feeds your momentum, and though we may seem to be crawling forward at times, books get written.

6 comments:

Tabitha said...

Very inspirational. :)

Laurie Halse Anderson has been doing a fifteen minute writing challenge this month. She's been challenging her blog readers to write for at least fifteen minutes each day. Many have taken her up on it, and many end up writing for longer than the required fifteen minutes. My guess is that was her point - that if you can just make yourself sit down with an easy goal, you'll get so much more out of it. :) Smart lady.

Marcia said...

That's a great tip! Yes, sometimes it's just a matter of making yourself sit in the chair in the first place. And my guess is that after a few days' momentum, it doesn't take so long to prime the pump and the fifteen minutes get more productive.

Mary Witzl said...

I get asked this all the time too.

One thing I've noticed is that a lot of people who claim they don't have time to write will happily spend hours watching television. Once you cut out t.v., there is plenty of time.

Marcia said...

Very true, Mary. Though other things (mainly the computer) can be big time drains as well, I suspect TV is still the granddaddy of 'em all. Cut even 2 to 3 nights of TV out of a 7-day week, and voila -- time!

Mary Witzl said...

True: the internet is a huge time eater -- almost worse than the t.v.! I have to remind myself that I'm at the computer to write and do research...

Marcia said...

Me too. Now that I've broken the Minesweeper habit (had to go cold turkey), I do think most blog-and-board activity falls into the market research and/or promotion categories. But there's always needing to keep a lid on it.