Georgia Writers Association - Serving a diverse writing community

Why Time to Write is a Choice

As 2008 passed over and 2009 rolled in, I did what I do every New Year: I reviewed my accomplishments for the previous twelve months and set fresh goals for the upcoming year. During this activity, I realized that two things happened in 2008 that caused me to put writing on the back burner for a few months. First, I totally rennovated my house, including all new carpet, new paint, new bathrooms, and an updated kitchen. That meant I had to spend about four weeks packing my things up for storage, throwing out junk, and giving away as much as possible  in preparation for having the old taken out and the new brought in.

The second thing that happened was I got a new full time job, one that required longer hours than my previous job. So I had to spend some time adjusting to a new schedule, not only for work but also for writing.  These two major events happened one right after the other, and I had to put writing on the back burner for a while to accomodate them. Notice I didn't say, "It left me with no time to write." I didn't say that because it's not true. There's always time to write! The problem is that we allow other things to take priority over it. In my case, I allowed the demands of rennovating a 20-year-old house and starting a new position to take priority over writing. Could I have gotten in a few minutes of writing every day before I started cleaning out closets? Could I have squeezed in some writing after I got home from my job instead of relaxing after a hard day learning demanding new duties? Of course I could have. I just didn't do it. I didn't make writing a priority. I made a choice to work on the house or adjust to my position instead of write. But at least I was honest with myself about it. I consciously chose to deal with rennovating and learning a new job instead of sitting down to write. Here's the secret as to why those two events did not completely derail my writing goals: because the decision to not write was temporary, and I made up the writing time later. In other words, the second the dust settled (literally), I resumed my Early-Morning Writing Schedule and made up for the lost word count.  I gave up some extra sleep every day in order to get extra writing done before leaving for my wonderful day job. I got caught up, and now I am back on my usual 4:30 - 6:30 AM writing schedule.  That's how the professionals I interviewed for TIME TO WRITE do it. They make writing a priority over other tasks and activities. They choose to write instead of sleeping in, watching television, mowing the front lawn, and so forth. And when they get derailed by life, they simply make up the writing time later.  If your goal is to make writing time a habit, then you want "time to write" to be a permanent space holder in your day. You can do this only  by choosing and working a writing schedule. There are 7 of them in TIME TO WRITE that the professionals use. Have you started working yours yet?