Common Writing Obstacle: TIME
By Henry McLaughlin
I’d like to explore some of the
common obstacles every writer faces at least once in their career. Let’s begin
with the obstacle of time.
“I think I’ve got a book in me if I could only find the time to write.” We’ve all heard this statement from would-be writers. We’ve probably said it ourselves. I know I have. And not that long ago. I’ve been writing for nearly twenty years, and I still have moments where it feels like I don’t have time to write. I’ve learned this feeling is the Lord’s way of telling me I have too
much on my plate.
There’s a false premise in this
statement and it’s the idea we can find
the time to write. The truth is, we’ll never find the time to write.
None of us has a shoe box in the closet full of time to dip into every time we
want more.
We each get twenty-four hours a
day to eat, sleep, work, relate to the important people in our lives, recreate,
and work on our writing. The cool thing is we get to choose how we spend most
of that time. The tough thing is recognizing there is never enough time to
accomplish everything.
How do we find the time to write?
We don’t—we make the
time to write. Jack London once said, “You can’t
wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” The same idea applies
to time. You can’t wait for time, you can’t find time. You have to go after it
with a club.
This means we prayerfully assess
our schedules and reset our priorities. It may mean giving up something—like
sleep. When I was working an outside job, I would get up at 4:30 a.m. to carve
out one-and-a-half hours of writing time every day. That’s seven-and-a-half
hours per week. That’s pretty close to a full working day. We can get a lot of
words written in that amount of time. And still have the weekends free.
Is it easy to do? No, it’s not. It
requires effort to make and stick to what are sometimes tough decisions. We
negotiate with family, especially spouses, for writing time, asking them to
respect this call on our lives. We learn to say “No” to a lot of things we
would otherwise do.
Some writers write on their lunch
breaks, others write one day a week, still others write while waiting in the
doctor’s office. Got a few minutes? Don’t play games on your phone or check
social media. Write. Even if it’s only a paragraph or a few lines of dialog,
we’ve got more than we had a few minutes ago.
When we hear that voice in our
ear—the nagging one saying we’ll never be writers because we’ve got too much
else to do—we need to slap it like a mosquito, pull out our notebook or bring
up a clean page on our device, list everything we need and want to do and start
making some choices.
We can make the time to write.
What are some ideas you have to
increase the time you have to write?
Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash
Photo by Marcos Paulo Prado on Unsplash
TWEETABLE
Besides his writing, Henry treasures working with other
writers and helping them on their own writing journeys. He is a member of
American Christian Fiction Writers. He regularly teaches at conferences and
workshops, leads writing groups, edits, and mentors and coaches.
Visit him at http://www.henrymclaughlin.org.
Follow him on Facebook.
A good piece, Henry. Like you once had, I have a full-time job and a couple of part time ones, so when do I write? The same time you did . . . early in the morning, usually around 4:30. Thanks for the good advice. :)))
ReplyDeleteThank you, Martin.
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