Tag Archives: time management for writers

My Clocks Hate Me! I Don’t Have Time to Write! Step One Continued

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Step 1 – Admitted we were powerless over our art and our creative lives had become unmanageable.

Now, my friends, we talk about the time card. I can’t write because I don’t have time. That’s playing the time card. You can put this under powerless, but really, the time card is more about unmanageability. Or really, a perceived unmanageability.

More and more, I’m seeing playing the time card as a cop out. I have a friend who writes novels on his cell phone when there is a lull at work. On his cell phone. With his thumbs.

Let me repeat that.  HE WRITES NOVELS WITH HIS THUMBS ON HIS CELL PHONE!

Another woman I talked to writes whenever she has a spare moment, like waiting in line to pick up her kids from school. Yeah, whips out her laptop and types a couple of words while in the carpool pickup lane.

If you aren’t blocked, if you feel fearless and inspired, you’ll find the time. Yes, you might not sleep as much as you want, and yes, your TV time might get clipped, but the bottom line, there are people, right now, with less time than you, doing more. So more and more, when I play the time card, it’s because there’s something else going on.

One old idea that I had that relates directly to the time card is the all-or-nothing idea.

If I can’t write for eight hours a day, I won’t write at all. I would fritter away my writing time, then look at the clock, and sigh. Only two hours to write? Why even bother? And so I wouldn’t write that day. Artists are people who create art. When I’m writing, I’m a writer. When I’m not, I’m just a human being. We have lots of humans on this planet. Be an artist. Create.

I love the stories about Anthony Trollope.

He was just like us, he had a day job, but every day he would write for two hours in the morning. He was a machine. If he finished one novel, and he still had fifteen minutes left in his writing time, he’d start the next one, and homeboy produced those Victorian novels you can murder people with. Lots and lots of words, two hours a day.

Once I realized I was playing the all-or-nothing game, I swore that I would use whatever time I had to write. Sometimes I only had forty-five minutes. Sometimes less, but I would put the time in because every minute counts. And once I got into a rhythm, I would naturally drift into writing.

The reality is this: most of life is stupid habit. If you get into the habit of art, even when you don’t want to create, you’ll find yourself just doing it anyway because it’s just what you do from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. Stupid, blind habit. And the minutes pile up fast, just doing a little bit every day.

Use the time you have wisely. A friend of mine says he wastes his life in ten-minute increments. You could write epic novels in ten-minutes increments. Go forth. Write. Create. Use your minutes.

Because before you know it, they will be gone.

You Are Too Busy To Read This – The Case of the Postponed Interview

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Hello, all you happy people.  Normally, as many of you know, Thursdays I post interviews.  I had to miss this week because of a technological mix-up.  And real life got in the way.

However, I wanted to post because I have been thinking about how hard it is to juggle writing, marketing your writing, and real life.  I think those writers, like Poe Ballantine, who I adore and would love to interview, who live monkish lives, have it right.  You write, sleep, work a dull day job, and that’s all you do.  No family, no stressful job, few distractions.  Other than bills and food.  But most of the time, you are reading, writing, working, or sleeping.  Food and pooping fit in there somewhere.

And yet, other writers, with families, have made it work.  Stephen King.  He wrote in the laundry room of his trailer park at night.  While working crappy jobs and dealing with his family during the day.

It can be done.  But it is hard.  If you have a writer or artist in your family, be kind to them, because art is a burden –on the artists, on the artist’s family, on everyone.

And the art doesn’t care.  It is a needy child, and it needs to be created.  And it won’t let you sleep (I was up at 4 a.m. today) and it doesn’t care if you eat, or if you neglect your family, or if you are constipated.  The art needs to be created, and if you are blessed or damned, you will be the conduit for the art.

Sometimes, to your detriment.  But what is a broken body and a shattered soul compared the glory of immortality, and the joy of the moment, when the fire of life drips from your pen?

Ugh, let me sleep.  I’ll storm the castle later.