Tag Archives: making time to write

Writing Life

Droughts and making time for your writing

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This entry is part 5 of 14 in the series My writing journey

My first original novel was almost my last. Writing it had already changed the trajectory of my life (or at least my major!). But around 80 single spaced pages in (no idea on the word count; I didn’t measure that way back then!), my plot kind of fizzled and I wasn’t really sure what to do next.

Hm… Sounds a little too familiar.

After some struggling and some deleting, I eventually abandoned the novel—and, with it, my writing aspirations. That mostly had to do with 1.) aforementioned blocks, 2.) leaving my computer and the manuscript with friends while I went home (2000 mi away) for the summer and 3.) not having quite so much free time to write when I came back.

But when there was no other creative writing, no solutions for that novel, and no ideas for a new one, the doubts would creep into my mind: I’m a failure. I’m not a real writer. I’ll never finish a novel.

That writing drought lasted for over five years: through the rest of college, meeting my husband, and having our first child.

That didn’t mean I left writing entirely alone. Whenever I was really upset about something, I always needed a short story to work through my emotions. And of course, those short stories had to be highly “literary” because that’s what “real” writers wrote: literary short stories. I had no idea where they got them published, but that wasn’t my intent.

I still wanted to be an author, but somewhere in my mind I think I figured it’d be something I’d do later. After college. After my kids were in school.

Okay, I’m still not to the point where all my kids are in school, but I’ve learned something since then. You don’t have to wait to write. If you wait until the time is perfect, you’ll miss out on all the time you have now.

Making time for writing is all about making choices—sometimes hard choices, sometimes sacrifices. It’s about making writing a priority—not necessarily your top priority all the time, but putting it ahead of other things that you don’t really want as much.

In the end, however, my writing drought didn’t end because of this realization (that came later). It ended because of one particularly inspiring dream—and, I guess, another loose variation on the fanfic theme.

Have you ever quit writing for a while? Why? Come join the conversation!

Photo by Justin Cozart

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Technique, Publishing

J is for Jumping in

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Here’s a complete shocker: J is one of my favorite letters 😉 . But I had a really hard time thinking of something for the letter J. I was going to do an acrostic—but I still couldn’t think of anything for J, and then I’d have to think up even more letters? Blech.

So instead, I’m jumping in. This works on two levels in writing. The first is that we need to jump into our stories. In medias res is the common phrase: in the middle of things. Don’t spend five or fifteen or fifty pages warming up, giving us your characters’ life stories, waiting for something to happen. Readers don’t like to be kept waiting!

But we have to balance between opening too early and too late. We don’t have to have the central conflict on page one, line one. We need to have some sort of conflict in the first section of the book, but sometimes the biggest conflict of the book takes some time to set up. I’ve been more guilty of starting too late: at a point where the conflict is obvious, but the reader doesn’t know the character well enough to sympathize, or at a point where the conflict itself takes a lot of explanation instead of playing out in front of us.

The other way we need to jump into our writing is to do it now. So many people wish they “had time” to write. But having time to write doesn’t mean you have hours of down time (I certainly don’t, with three kids five and under). It means making time by making choices—and making sacrifices. Time you spend writing is time you can’t spend watching TV, playing piano, painting, knitting, practicing the piano, with your children, sleeping, etc.

On the other hand, sometimes it’s not that we’re not ready and willing to make the sacrifice—we’re scared. Guess what: you don’t need a degree or a certificate to write. Heck, I know people who write without a basic grasp of grammar and punctuation. There are no requirements to be a writer: just pen and paper. (Or a laptop. Oh wait, are those requirements? Crap.)

What do you think? Do you jump in?

Photo credits: plunge—Konrad Mostert

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Technique

Carpe de pen

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When I was in high school, I thought I was busy. I had church youth group, youth orchestra, early morning scripture study class, after school stuff, accelerated classes, multiple AP/IB tests every spring, something like a social life, etc.

My dad told me I’d only get busier—with college classes, activities, papers, socially stuff. Then you’re working—often more than 40 hours a week—spending time with family, responsibilities at church, hobbies.

And then we had kids.

A lot of times when you talk to someone who falls among the 90% of the population who wants to write a book, they’ll smile wistfully and say, “I wish I had time for that.”

And of course, the correct answer is, “YOU THINK I HAVE TIME FOR THIS??! YOU THINK I DON’T HAVE A MILLION OTHER THINGS I NEED TO BE DOING??!”

Surveys show that most people do want to write (or to have written) a book. And yet most people don’t actually do it. The minority who do write a book aren’t all just a lot less busy than those who don’t.

It means that we make choices—often hard choices—to create the time to write. The correct response to those wistful smiles might be “If you want it bad enough, you make time.” Because if you wait until you’re not “too busy,” you’ll probably be waiting until it’s too late.

Yes, life does have its seasons, and some times will be easier to make the time to write. But if you can’t find even 15 minutes a day, then maybe you need to look at the reasons why.

There’s really no time like the present.

How do you find time to write?

Photo by Grant MacDonald

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