Guest post by fearless writer, Wendy Manner:
“and it came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to Father Time.”
~Death Cab for Cutie
There are lots of days I don’t write. I know all the psychology of how we make time for the things we want to do most and how we just have to do it, make it a priority even when we don’t want to. I totally get it. But there are still a lot of days that pass that I just don’t make it happen. There are two people living in my house that just can’t seem to feed themselves without a significant amount of help (one is four and her brother is five). And the grass keeps growing no matter how often I mow it. There is produce pouring in from the garden that has to be processed and preserved, there are friends to catch up with on sunny afternoons on my deck, there are creeks to explore and chickens to chase and mountains to climb. I try to tell myself I am just living all the stories I am going to write later.
But I want to write. I really do. My two best thinking times are showering at the yoga studio (but I have to think fast because there is always someone else waiting for a shower after me) and mowing the grass (it is easy to ignore my children over the sound of the mower). Neither is very conducive for note-taking. I wonder how many writing ideas have washed down the drain or blown away in the grass clippings. My journal is full of first sentences and tiny catches of dialogue that I never manage to flush out. I scribble phrases on the back of receipts and scratch out plots on the back of grocery lists. Most of the time when I read them later I have no idea what I had in mind. But I like to think that every plan, every half-formed idea and illegible turn of phrase is a tiny prayer to Father Time:
“please let me remember this later. please let this come back to me when I have time to type it out. I promise to write more, to be more disciplined, to try harder, to get up earlier; please just bring it all back to my brain as clear as it is right now when I actually have a pen in my hand.”
Sometimes it is enough just to see something written down, even if I have no idea what I was trying to say. It is enough of a confidence boost to make me feel like a “real” writer just to know I was thinking like one earlier in the day (or week or who knows when). And it is a reminder to schedule the time to make writing the priority it has to be so that I really can call myself a writer.
What about you? How do you keep track of ideas when you don’t have time for a full writing session? How do you plan your days to make writing a priority? What tiny prayers are you lifting up to Father Time these days?
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Wendy Manner spends her days raising happy, healthy children and helping other families do the same through her work as a parenting educator and coach. She loves words, water, compost, yoga, and her husband, though not necessarily in that order. Wendy and her family garden and grow in an intentional community in Western North Carolina.
P.S. (from Susan) Check out Wendy’s blog at: www.mindthosemanners.blogspot.com Also, please consider commenting. We writers can go a long way on a little bit of encouragement.
Happy Birthday to Wendy on June 5th! The world is lucky to have you.
Celebrate deep and well. xo
Great post, Wendy! Almost everyone feels time crunched. As a business coach, I think back to the classic Big Rocks approach via Steven Covey. We have to put our Big Rocks (what’s most important) into our calendar and let all the sand (all the things that aren’t Big Rocks) fill up around them. We will always get the laundry done when we have to, but if we put laundry first, our ability to devote time to the Big Rocks will keep slipping away.
What keeps me writing is that I miss it after a while. This summer I’m on major projects–Just cleared thirty years from the attic. A few more projects after that. The breaks really help me attack my writing with renewed gusto.
Hi Barbara, I call this clearing the decks. Once I de-clutter and let go of baggage (will I ever stop thinking like a psychotherapist?!) I have more psychic room to create. I think non-writing projects are good, as long as we don’t get lost in them, and it doesn’t sound like you do.
Good luck with the attic! Thanks for taking time to stop by.:)
Wendy sez:
> There are lots of days I don’t write.
> I know all the psychology of how we make
> time for the things we want to do most
> and how we just have to do it, make it
> a priority even when we don’t want to. I totally get it. But there
> are still a lot of days that pass that I just don’t make it
> happen.
I totally get this. I don’t think it’s a bad thing, really. I know the belief is you’re supposed to write every day. But some days you just don’t “got it.” That’s one of the things about a creative endeavor vs. a job that’s more mechanical. You can’t always summon the muse. I know a lot of people use that as an excuse to procrastinate and even not produce much of anything at all, all the while claiming to be an “artist.” But it *is* real. Leonard Bernstein’s children tell stories about how their dad would compose in this shed behind their house, and there were days when he’d go in early in the morning and kick the door at 6 pm because he hadn’t been able to come up with anything good that day. For a while I tried getting up at “commuter’s hours” and forcing myself to go to work on Welsey Shaw right away. I’d write words–and then delete them later, because while I filled a quota, it wasn’t good and it didn’t work. Creativity is not a quota-job. Beethoven went through a whole period of years–roughly 1809 to 1817, where he barely wrote a thing.
Susan sez:
> I call this clearing the decks. Once
> I de-clutter and let go of baggage
> (will I ever stop thinking like a
> psychotherapist?!) I have more psychic
> room to create.
I wish you could persuade my wife of this! She never throws anything out.
I have a mate with similar issues, John. Maybe they need us to help balance them out. Other than that, I try to stay focused on the more positive traits.
I do a full time job,have 6 grandchildren and run a creative writing group for children and am always squeezing in micro writing sessions. My secret is an hour in a coffee shop week day mornings. Such a relief! Great post.
Hi Jilly,
I believe in coffee shop writing, too. I consider them adjunct offices. “Micro writing sessions” is a GREAT way to look at it. Thanks for stopping by. I’m glad you enjoyed the post!