The Writing Life: Making Time To Write, Part I

Writing fiction is an odd choice of preoccupation. If you play tennis or golf or surf or run marathons, you can at least say you got your exercise in. If you paint or make pottery, you have a finished objet d’art to show off. Music? Your friends and family can sing along. Gardening? A beautiful yard or produce to share. Playing video games can be active and social. Reading is often considered time well spent for the mind and spirit. But our written stories are harder to catalogue. The many hours we want to spend keyboard pounding can sometimes seem unproductive to others, especially when our loved ones mainly see us with our faces lit up by the computer screen when they come searching for us It’s easy to cave to demands that we hang out with family or friends in ways that take our writing time away from us because it’s hard to explain the high of writing a great through line, nailing that character’s backstory in a way that matters to the unfolding plot, figuring out the perfect clue to drop at just the right place in the story.

In common with all the “acceptable” time sucking activities above, it can take years to attain the skills to fully immerse yourself in and excel at the craft of writing. Unlike most of the hobbies above, writing tends to be one of the few that people expect us to derive an income from at some point in time as a matter of course, which is really weird if you actually think about it. That makes a good excuse for many of us, but it’s hard to sustain in the face of writing continually without earning income or wanting to write for the pleasure of it without doing the business of a working writer. How can we as writers fit it all in, our real life jobs, child care, home care, time with our partners and extended family, and still find time to write?

The very best advice I ever received in the art of making time to write came from a panel of fantasy writers on the Writers Track at Dragon Con, an annual science fiction and fantasy convention in Atlanta, several years ago. It came forth as a consensus following discussion over a question from the audience—“how do I make my family understand I need time to write?” The consensus? Tell your family you are a writer. Do not feel guilty about being a writer. Set a time and a time period. Close the door in their pleading faces. Sit down and write. Because you are a writer.

Apply this to some of the activities above. Do you know a musician? A gardener? A painter? A potter? A surfer? A runner? A reader? Why can it be so hard to stand up and say, “I am a writer. I need time to write?” Mainly because we often have only some digital files to show for months of effort, containing stories that may not interest our loved ones because reading tastes vary over such a wide range of genres. That doesn’t negate the pleasure we have derived from writing them or the pleasure readers who do enjoy our chosen genres have taken or will take in reading them, whether we are making money from them or sharing them freely across the web.

Carving out time to write is possible no matter your schedule, though it might require giving something up or setting firm boundaries or both. Practice saying, “I am a writer. I need time to write” out loud. Making Time To Write Part II will address the practicalities of making real time to write and provide links to support your effort in doing so. Join me on the first Friday of each month for exploration, discovery, and discussion of the writing life.