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Finding Time to Write By Shon Bacon
In late 2003, I was in a quandary. I was in my final year of an MFA program. I was a graduate teacher. I was an editor. I was owner of an online magazine. I was helping to develop academic textbooks. I was a long-distant friend and sister, which meant I sent money I often didn’t have and spent long hours on the phone helping and dealing with my loved ones’ issues. I was a million other things, too. The quandary? I couldn’t find time to write. Before this moment, I was one of the students who always had an arsenal of work at the ready for fiction workshop. Now that I had a 200+-paged thesis due a few months into 2004, it became hard for me to find the time to write. When I told my fiction professor, he said, “If you can’t find the time now to write, you won’t find the time to write when you graduate.” I laughed. At the time, I thought, “When will I ever be ALL of these things…at once…again?” Fast
forward to 2008. Today, I am an English Specialist
and I just began teaching additional classes in the mass communication
department. I’m still an editor. I
now help to develop two online magazines. I still
develop academic textbooks. I conduct workshops
dealing with the importance of effective documentation. I
now mentor many new writers. Now that most of my
family is here in Once again, finding time to write is an issue. But is it really an issue? Is it that there is no time, or is it that I am not allocating my time wisely? This is a question that all writers need to think about – especially those writers who find it difficult to find time to write. A hard reality is that life is not going to stop and provide you with the optimal time to write to your heart’s content. You’re still going to have to get up and go to work. You’re still going to have to make dinner and help your children with their homework, or pay bills, or work out, or attend meetings, or deal with loved ones, or wash your clothes, or clean your home, or…and on and on. The goal isn’t to lament over not finding time. The goal is to seriously sit down, examine what you dedicate your time to doing, and figure out how to MAKE the time to write. It is extremely important to look at where your time goes. What do you actually DO in any given day? Week? Analyze it. You’ll be surprised at how much time is given to daydreaming, to watching TV, to playing on the Internet (MySpace, anyone?), to “spacing out”, etc. You’d be surprised to notice that you took an hour to eat breakfast because you were so busy watching something on TV while you ate. You’d be surprised to notice that your “quick check of e-mail” left you online for three hours instead of the thirty minutes it could have really taken. Examine what you do during a day, during a week. What are the things that you must do? We all have jobs; those are priorities. If you have families, taking care of the children and feeding them are important. Spending time with hubby or wifey, equally important. Weekly cleaning of the house? Well, if there are other able-bodied people in the home, allocate duties to others so that you can free up some of YOUR time. At some point, it will be important to divvy up some responsibilities to enable you to write. If you’re a person like me who fears that no one could possibly do things as well as YOU do….get over it. Let others help you so that you can help yourself. Also, think about your optimum energetic time. When are your engines blazing? When do you feel like you can take over the world? See if there is a way to integrate writing into that time period. You want to feel refreshed, happy, energized, and excited when you write. It’s a daunting task; you should feel that you could conquer it. If you’re a morning person, try to wake up thirty minutes early and spend that time writing. If you’re an afternoon/early evening person, come home from work, dress in something comfortable, and before you do ANYTHING for the family or the rest of the world, WRITE for thirty minutes to an hour. If you are a vampire, take that last hour before you go to bed and write. I’m a weird person. First and foremost, I’m a vampire. I love the night. Because I’m forced to get up early everyday for school, I also noticed that once I’m up, showered, and dressed, I have remarkable energy for at least the first five hours of the day. Up until this point, I’m sad to admit, I have done nothing to benefit me writing-wise. When I get home from work, I feel that I must immediately do school-related things. I MUST grade. I MUST prep my classes. I MUST do online work for the students. Then, once those things are done, I MUST do some extra work so that I’m always prepared. By the time I do all of that, I’m spent and ready for bed. Makes for an excellent professor but a lousy writer. In the morning, I often reset my alarm several times instead of getting up and making my morning useful. When I get to work, I often have between 30 minutes and an hour before I have to go to my first class. What do I do? I check e-mail. I post my daily blessing on MySpace. I check and recheck, then check a third time (part of my OCD) my planner to make sure I’ve completed all necessary tasks and am truly prepared for the day. What I DON’T do is write. I’m slowly realizing that the real goals and passions of my life will never come to fruition because I focus all of my time on being a teacher and not on becoming (again) a published author. I won’t die if I take two, three weekdays and write as soon as I come home. Hell, my students would probably love me more than they already do because I would be happier. Sometimes, we need to sit back and reflect on what we do and how this helps or hinders our writing goals. Sometimes, we have to break the monotonous mold we have created for ourselves in order to MAKE the time to write. In the end, only positive things than occur. One thing that many writers think is they have to find HUGE CHUNKS of time to write. If they aren’t sitting at their computers for hours on end writing, it doesn’t feel like they are doing anything productive. NOT TRUE AT ALL. Grant it, I LOVE when I’m in the ZONE, and the words just tumble from me onto the computer. What I love more? Those times when my students are taking an exam or are writing an essay, and I’m sitting at my desk, post-its or pad in front of me, and I’m jotting down notes and storylines and/or writing scenes. If you are a very busy person…and who isn’t these days…always keep pen, paper, and post-its near you. You never know when an idea or a scene will manifest itself. You always want to be at the ready. Also, consider doing short writing jags. Fifteen minutes here. Thirty minutes there. Fifteen minutes may not sound like a lot of time; however, if you set the stage for those fifteen minutes being solely about you putting words on a page, you’ll be amazed at how much you can write with concerted effort. Two fifteen minute or thirty-minute sessions a day – one in the morning and one in the evening – will make you excited to write again, will make you happy to see words accumulating into something important to you, and will ultimately make your mood for everything else better because you are doing something for yourself. If writing is truly important to you, then you will make the time to fit it into your schedule, your life. Changing small facets of your life and analyzing your life and your time will enable you to make the time to find a place for writing in your life. What is YOUR writing schedule? How often do you write? When do you write? What advice might you offer to writers to help them MAKE the time to write? E-mail me and share your advice!
Next: Article #14: I Declare! Envisioning Your Writing Future |
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