Making Time for YOU
Is this is a familiar scenario?
Keyboard is fired up. Coffee/tea/whatever is poured. You know exactly what you’re going to work on today. You’ve made a month-long commitment to reach a certain goal, and, dammit, you’re going to DO it. You’re excited about this. More importantly, you’re excited about your story and can’t wait to get the words down.
You’ve warned everyone you know: I am writing this month. This is very important to me. Please try to understand. They all nodded their heads and wished you luck. Or maybe they rolled they eyes and nudged each other. Whatever. You told them, right?
The house is relatively quiet. It’s a good time to begin. You open your document with a flourish, eager to dive in. The creative juices are already flowing through your veins. Maybe you’re writing something you suspect is one of the best things you've ever written-isn’t that a great feeling? Or maybe you realize you’ve written a bunch of crap, but you just figured out what's wrong and how to improve it. Now you’re really on a roll.
Then the phone rings. If you’re like me, you ignore it. Not everyone can do that, though, for various reasons. If it’s an emergency phone call from your kids’ school, or a home invasion (though they usually don’t ring the bell) you’re screwed. Otherwise it’s a temporary annoyance. Usually you can get back to what you’re doing.
Or your day could go something like this:
The phone rings twenty times. Half of those times it's the same person and you can't get rid of them, but you're too nice to be rude.
Your kids, who are not in school, demand to be fed, dressed, entertained, etc. As it’s against the law to use kiddie cages in most states, there’s not a lot you can do about this except cave in. Older kids need to be driven places. Grandparents regularly get asked to babysit their grandkids. I swear there's nothing more detrimental to the writing than KIDS, lol.
Your spouse decides there is a chore you need to do immediately, never mind that same chore’s been sitting around, undone, for a solid six months now, or that you are not the only one capable of doing it, hint, hint. Or he insists on coming into the room fifty times to strike up a conversation, complain about something, or ask a very important question. e.g. "Does this hotdog smell funny?"
And it's not just the family. It's friends. It's relatives. It's people asking you to do things for them. Or maybe people inviting you to things with them, which is always nice...but maybe not at this particular time.
Oh, and in my house: The dog has to go out. No one else hears him scratching at the door. The dog is eating a piece of foil. No one else has the guts to pry it from his jaws. The dog just barfed. No one’s touching it.
Some days it’s one thing after another. You spend more time jumping up and down than you do at the keyboard. Then, of course, there are the other time-sucks: TV and the internet.
Suggestions:
1. Whenever possible, don’t write at home-go to the library, a coffee house, McDonalds. Even the backseat of your car. This is only possible if you have A. a laptop (or can write by hand) and B. someone to watch the kids. If you don’t, then set your alarm and write in the morning before they get up, or write after they go to bed. If they’re in school, take advantage of that and write during the day. Trying to write around kids is like walking a tightrope in a blizzard.
2. Set limits with your significant others. Consider bribery. If batting your eyes and sweet talk doesn’t work, get mean. Maybe not as mean as Jack Nicholson when Shelley Duvall kept interrupting him in The Shining…but you get my drift.
3. Seriously, stay away from the TV, especially when the only time you can write is late in the evening. Of course we all have our favorite shows, but if your time is that limited, you have to prioritize. Same with the internet. It’s not that important.
4. Neither is cleaning the house. Nobody ever died from a month’s worth of dirt (after all, look at “Hoarders”.) “I have to vacuum/dust/whatever” is NEVER an excuse for not writing. I’m fairly confident my family plans to carve that into my headstone.
5. Remember, it's perfectly okay to say no to people. "No" is a great word. Sadly, sometimes it takes us years to learn how and when to use it to our own advantage.
Think of it this way: Suppose you burst into your teenager's party and insisted he come home to finish up some chores. Or interrupted your husband's Superbowl game because you want that leaky faucet changed now. Or told your elderly mother you can't drop her off at church because, well, you think organized religion is stupid.
Wouldn't happen, right? Then why are we so casual about allowing others to sabotage us?
Writing is YOUR party, YOUR Superbowl, YOUR church. It's every bit as important to you as anyone else's activities. Until you realize that, and learn to take it as seriously as others take their interests, you'll find it harder and harder to make time to write.
February is YOUR MONTH, people. Try not to let anyone or anything come between you and your goal!
Keyboard is fired up. Coffee/tea/whatever is poured. You know exactly what you’re going to work on today. You’ve made a month-long commitment to reach a certain goal, and, dammit, you’re going to DO it. You’re excited about this. More importantly, you’re excited about your story and can’t wait to get the words down.
You’ve warned everyone you know: I am writing this month. This is very important to me. Please try to understand. They all nodded their heads and wished you luck. Or maybe they rolled they eyes and nudged each other. Whatever. You told them, right?
The house is relatively quiet. It’s a good time to begin. You open your document with a flourish, eager to dive in. The creative juices are already flowing through your veins. Maybe you’re writing something you suspect is one of the best things you've ever written-isn’t that a great feeling? Or maybe you realize you’ve written a bunch of crap, but you just figured out what's wrong and how to improve it. Now you’re really on a roll.
Then the phone rings. If you’re like me, you ignore it. Not everyone can do that, though, for various reasons. If it’s an emergency phone call from your kids’ school, or a home invasion (though they usually don’t ring the bell) you’re screwed. Otherwise it’s a temporary annoyance. Usually you can get back to what you’re doing.
Or your day could go something like this:
The phone rings twenty times. Half of those times it's the same person and you can't get rid of them, but you're too nice to be rude.
Your kids, who are not in school, demand to be fed, dressed, entertained, etc. As it’s against the law to use kiddie cages in most states, there’s not a lot you can do about this except cave in. Older kids need to be driven places. Grandparents regularly get asked to babysit their grandkids. I swear there's nothing more detrimental to the writing than KIDS, lol.
Your spouse decides there is a chore you need to do immediately, never mind that same chore’s been sitting around, undone, for a solid six months now, or that you are not the only one capable of doing it, hint, hint. Or he insists on coming into the room fifty times to strike up a conversation, complain about something, or ask a very important question. e.g. "Does this hotdog smell funny?"
And it's not just the family. It's friends. It's relatives. It's people asking you to do things for them. Or maybe people inviting you to things with them, which is always nice...but maybe not at this particular time.
Oh, and in my house: The dog has to go out. No one else hears him scratching at the door. The dog is eating a piece of foil. No one else has the guts to pry it from his jaws. The dog just barfed. No one’s touching it.
Some days it’s one thing after another. You spend more time jumping up and down than you do at the keyboard. Then, of course, there are the other time-sucks: TV and the internet.
Suggestions:
1. Whenever possible, don’t write at home-go to the library, a coffee house, McDonalds. Even the backseat of your car. This is only possible if you have A. a laptop (or can write by hand) and B. someone to watch the kids. If you don’t, then set your alarm and write in the morning before they get up, or write after they go to bed. If they’re in school, take advantage of that and write during the day. Trying to write around kids is like walking a tightrope in a blizzard.
2. Set limits with your significant others. Consider bribery. If batting your eyes and sweet talk doesn’t work, get mean. Maybe not as mean as Jack Nicholson when Shelley Duvall kept interrupting him in The Shining…but you get my drift.
3. Seriously, stay away from the TV, especially when the only time you can write is late in the evening. Of course we all have our favorite shows, but if your time is that limited, you have to prioritize. Same with the internet. It’s not that important.
4. Neither is cleaning the house. Nobody ever died from a month’s worth of dirt (after all, look at “Hoarders”.) “I have to vacuum/dust/whatever” is NEVER an excuse for not writing. I’m fairly confident my family plans to carve that into my headstone.
5. Remember, it's perfectly okay to say no to people. "No" is a great word. Sadly, sometimes it takes us years to learn how and when to use it to our own advantage.
Think of it this way: Suppose you burst into your teenager's party and insisted he come home to finish up some chores. Or interrupted your husband's Superbowl game because you want that leaky faucet changed now. Or told your elderly mother you can't drop her off at church because, well, you think organized religion is stupid.
Wouldn't happen, right? Then why are we so casual about allowing others to sabotage us?
Writing is YOUR party, YOUR Superbowl, YOUR church. It's every bit as important to you as anyone else's activities. Until you realize that, and learn to take it as seriously as others take their interests, you'll find it harder and harder to make time to write.
February is YOUR MONTH, people. Try not to let anyone or anything come between you and your goal!