Category Archives: Making Progress as a Writer

An Obsessive’s Balancing Act

Balancing Acts First Drafts Leigh Galbreath Self-Awareness The Writing Life The Writing Process Work-Life Balance No Comments

I often find it funny how much time is spent talking about “balance” in the writing life, and how often that equates to finding time to write. Me, I actually have the opposite problem. I don’t have much in the way of a social life. My family expectations are minimal and my day job hardly impinges on my off time. I only do the dishes or clean my house when I absolutely can’t stand the mess anymore. I’ve got time to kill. I’m an obsessive when it comes to stories.

Raise your hand if you have a tendency to become enamored with something (an idea, a story, your own personal real life macguffin) that is so completely awesome that you eat, sleep and breath it. You’re friends get tired of hearing about it. You’re distracted at the day job, lose focus in conversations, and are generally lost in the niftiness of your new “thing” that it pretty much takes over your brain.

I know I’m not the only one this happens with. As writers, I think just about all of us have that period when we absolutely fall in love with something to the point that we want to delve deep and write about it. The issue for me comes when 1) I can’t let go of the idea until I get so completely sick of it I can’t bear the thought of going near the thing, 2) while I’m in the throws of my obsession even talking to people can be irksome and I start entertaining scenarios in my head where I thwart my antagonist with something heavy and suitably cathartic, and 3) nothing else gets done…at all.

Now, while I’m in no real danger of going postal on some bystander who innocently asks me a question while my concentration is attempting to focus on my current obsession, the first and third issues stated above can be something of a problem.

Like I said, I think all writers have the eureka moment when they find a truly cool idea for a story and dive right in. That’s great when it happens. I love those bursts of writing frenzy when I just have to get it all down. But, inevitably, the burst will end. When this happens with me it’s incredibly difficult to get back into that story idea. I start floundering around until I get so frustrated that I give up on it. Not good.

The other issue with this particular scenario is when I obsess about things that I will never…ever…write about. I’m a habitual daydreamer, and most of my daydreams, while vastly entertaining to me, would not a novel or short story make. And like in the story idea, I can’t let go of it until it’s run its course, which could be days or weeks. Days or weeks when little or no effective writing is being done.

What have I learned from this happening again and again? Mainly that those writing ideas that I get so excited about are usually not the ones I finish. It’s the stories I make myself sit down to write, without the obsession driving me, that I stick with. The obsessions I can sometimes go back to after a long break, but it’s rare. As for the non-writing obsessions? I’ve started using those as writing exercises. They take me places that my normal writing practices don’t, so even if I never use them in a book, I’m still writing–still practicing the craft while I lose myself in a fancy.

As for the last issue, where nothing else ever gets done…well, with all the focus on trying to avoid distractions and finding time to write, I start to wonder if this is an actual problem or not? Perhaps this is just the inevitable conclusion to ignoring the distractions. The TV will go unwatched, the dishes unwashed, that cat’s litter box un…okay, maybe that’s not a chore anyone wants to skip, but my point is that there are only so many hours in the day. If you want to make time for one thing, something else will most likely go unattended. I feel guilty about dusty shelves and laundry splayed over the bedroom floor like a teenager on summer break. I’m an adult, I should have learned by now to make my bed in the morning, but in reality, should I be balancing out my day by doing these chores or is it okay to get it and let myself feel free to rampage through fantasy land?

What it comes down to is what exactly “balance” is to each of us. Is it catching that movie with your family rather than writing or indulging a new obsession with a story idea rather than gossiping with coworkers at the day job? Is it getting in a certain number of hours writing vs a certain list of chores in a day?

It is in the end about priorities. What is truly important, and what are you willing to sacrifice to make it happen? I am aware that my tendency for obsessing is excessive, but to be honest, I don’t think I can turn it off. And I’m not really sure if I would want to. I mean, really, why would I want to sacrifice the stories in my head for the humdrum of every day? To me, stories, whether they be written down for others to read or kept securely locked in my head, are where my bliss is. Perhaps that’s the “balance” that keeps me sane and happy. Maybe that’s all right and I should just accept that about myself. Or maybe I’m just crazy, in which case acceptance is probably a symptom of the insanity and it doesn’t really matter in the end. I don’t know, but I’m going to enjoy it either way, housework be damned.

Making Tea…and time to write.

Balancing Acts Day Jobs Emily Godhand Finish It! Motivation Self-Awareness Self-Motivation The Writing Life Work-Life Balance No Comments

Here’s a stupid joke:
“How do you identify a writer in a crowd?”

You call out “Shut up and write!” and wait for them to wail back “But I don’t have the tiiime!”

Haha, I’m so funny.

But also, I’m that writer. We all are at times. We think, “Oh man, if I could just quit my day job, then all I’d have to do is write! I could wake up at the crack of dawn, grab some coffee after a nice brisk walk to get my blood flowing to the creative part of my brain, and just sit at the keyboard until lunch and bleed.”

Oh and how I dream, readers. I dream of this idyllic life. All that free time just to sit and write and write and write…

If that’d be the case, if I were so disciplined and motivated, on my days off of my Breadjob, I’d be doing that. I mean, wouldn’t I? 

But what do I do oftentimes? Get some coffee, sit down at my keyboard, and not write a single word.

Oh sure, I’ll type out some things on Facebook. To people. I can tell them all the words. I can tell them all about my story and my thoughts and my feelings and what happens in this particular scene. Meanwhile, my manuscript is sitting all alone in its little folder, quietly sobbing to itself and wondering why, if I love it so much, I tell other people and not it?

So what am I doing, really? Waiting for Calliope herself to descend to this mortal plane and wrap her arms around me, sing sweet hymns into my ears to inspire me? Not even inspire me, just tell me what to write! It’s not like writing is work or anything. Make her do all the work and complain when she doesn’t.

That’s the ticket to success right there.

JimCHines_Writethestory
One of the things that helps is to prioritize what needs to be done today, and what my needs are for the week. For example, on my days off from work, is it more important for me to recover and rest from whatever is going on and spend time on myself, or is it more important to get my deadline done for my long-term goals?

But in our drive to succeed, we can’t forget that we need to nourish ourselves. Not just our bodies with food and sleep, but our connections to the things and people we love. The story isn’t more important than the person writing it, and oftentimes seeking out new experiences or conversations will refill your creative well, so to speak.

Authors often talk of rituals that work for them, and you should find what works for you. I have mine, but they don’t always work.

For example:
“I’ll brew some tea. A little caffeine to help me focus. Also, tea.”
“I’ll just check Facebook while it brews!”
“…Aww those rat pictures sure are super cute.”
“A political argument? On the internet? This is important and I should join in!”
“Ooh, this article my friend linked is super interesting.”
“I should talk to them about it.”
“Well, they’re afk, so I’ll check on Wattpad.”
“Maybe another episode of my favorite TV show will inspire me…”
“Aww my friend is back! I love talking to friends!”
“Oh man! What time is it? Jeez, what have I been doing. I never have any time to write. I don’t know how other authors do it. It’s not fair.”
“I’m going to go write and be a Good Writer.”
“I should make some tea before I write.”
“…Oh.”

But the better one that works involves eliminating those distractions:

“I’ll brew some tea. While it brews I can look over what I have and edit the outline a bit more and organize what scenes I plan to get done.”
~Two Hours Later~
“Well, got 1,000 words done, about half the chapter. I’ll give it a look over tonight before I post it.”
“Didn’t I have some tea? I should make some tea…”
“…oh.”

When I get distracted, what gets me back on track is to realize how much time I’m wasting and eliminate those distractions. I turn off the WiFi and go find a secluded spot where I can put on my noise-canceling headphones and just write. It takes about 15 minutes to get really focused on a task, and then once I’m focused I dedicate the next 45-55 minutes to it, since that’s about how long something can generally hold attention.

Then I like to do something else that doesn’t take much thought, such as walking, errands, or chores. I get my work done so I’m not neglecting other aspects of my life, and it gives my brain a chance to recharge and refresh for when I sit down to write again.

So when are you going to find time to write?

WRITE-NOW-LOGO-AWI make no apologies for puns.

 

Don’t “Find” Time, Make the Time

Choice Day Jobs Living Deliberately Making Progress as a Writer Superstars Writing Seminars The Writing Life Wayland Smith 3 Comments

A Guest Post by Wayland Smith

I was asked to write about finding a balance between work, life, and writing. Instead of talking about my writing credits, I’m going to run down my weekend as a way of showing what I know about the struggle to find time to write. It’s something I understand.

My regular shift is a long, overnight one. Thursday I went in to work with my shift starting at 6 PM. I was supposed to get off work at 6:30 AM, but there were some issues and our usual shortage of staff, and I ended up being released at about 12:30 in the afternoon. By the time I got home, I had been up for 24 hours. I had the rest of Friday and Saturday off, then worked a different job Sunday from 4 in the morning until 9 at night with one break in that stretch. With all that, I still got a few thousand words done over the weekend, and finished a chapter of one of my current works in progress. That’s not, “Hey, I’m cool,” that’s me showing that it doesn’t matter how busy you are, you can write if you chose to.

I hear people asking all the time, “When do you find time to write?” The answer is a simple one, but it’s one a lot of people don’t like. You fight for it. You make a commitment to yourself and you stick with it. Some people write every day, some have a word count per week, or month. It doesn’t really matter what you set for yourself. What matters it that you DO it.

Sometimes that means you don’t get to watch the game with your friends. Sometimes you don’t get to the movie you wanted to see. But, as I’ve heard many other people who are much more successful than I am so far say (and this may be part of why they are successful): Writing is a job. If you’re at all serious about it, you have to approach it like that. Jim Butcher has said, “I don’t have a muse, I have a mortgage.” That’s the attitude you need to get the words down.

So how do you find the balance? Well, that’s something you have to think about carefully. I believe the usually accepted statistic is that something like ten percent of writers manage to actually make a living off their writing. The rest of us have jobs in addition to writing. And, if you’re fond of eating, not living in a relative’s basement, and occasionally going out (or to cons), you need to keep the job.

Family is important, whether it’s a traditional tied by marriage and blood kind, or people who have become your family over time. You need these people in your life. If you don’t have them, you’re not well balanced, and that comes out in your writing, which suffers.

You need to manage your time, and you need to do it carefully. It’s going to be full of compromises. Occasionally, you’re going to have to go to work when you’d really rather be chasing the latest story idea. Sometimes, you’re going to have to tell your nearest and dearest and that you have a deadline coming up and you need some uninterrupted writing time. And sometimes, the voices in your head, or your imaginary friends, or however you like to think of it, are going to have to take a back seat so you can spend some time with the people you love. Or at least like.

You need to manage to be nice about it, but really firm. If you’ve promised time to your family, don’t slip out and start writing. If you have a goal that’s important to you and you need to put in a big push to get there, turn off your phone, shut off your internet connection, and write. It’s both the simplest and the hardest thing about writing. Writers write. Not talk about writing, not say, “I really should get some words down.” They write. And then write more. And revise and edit and rewrite. And while they’re doing all that, they have to keep a job and relationships with the people who are important to them.

All that said, I can offer a few suggestions about making some time. Note, making, not finding. You’re not going to suddenly trip over an extra hour somewhere. If you do, let me know how that happened. A few standbys that a lot of people I know use are either getting up half an hour earlier and/or writing during your lunch hour. If you bring your lunch to work, then A) it’s generally cheaper and B) the time you spent going somewhere, waiting in line, buying something, and then finding a table to eat it is time you can write. Yes, this requires some planning and dedication. So does writing. Remember those bits about it’s a job and making the time?

If your writing is really important to you, if you’re going to pursue a full time writing career no matter what, find a job that lets you write. I’ve heard Brandon Sanderson say he got a job as the night desk man at a hotel for just that reason. Night time security guard works, too. Yes, those are really radical changes to make to your life to get time to write. But then you’re back to the balance issue again. What are you willing to give up to move forward with your writing?

I’m not trying to scare anyone, or paint a picture of doom and gloom. I have a full time job, and work a few part time ones, and have a decent social life. I also managed to write just shy of 500,000 words last year. It can be done. You just to plan your time carefully. It’s worth it to me. Whether it is to you or not is something only you can decide.

 

Wayland Smith:

WAYLAND SMITH is the pen name for a native Texan who has lived in Massachusetts, New York, Washington DC, and presently makes his home in Virginia. His rather unlikely list of jobs includes private investigator, comic book shop owner, ring crew for a circus (then he ran away from the circus and joined home), deputy sheriff, writer, and freelance stagehand. Wayland has one novel out so far, In My Brother’s Name, and short stories in the anthologies “This Mutant Life: Bad Company”, “HeroNet Files, Vol 1,” “SNAFU: An Anthology of Military Horror,” and “Legends of the Dragon,” among others. A black belt in shao lin kung fu, he is also a fan of comic books, reading, writing, and various computer games (I’ll shut Civ down in one more turn. Really). He lives with a beautiful woman who was crazy enough to marry him, and the spirits of a few wonderful dogs that have passed on.

Writing is Life

Balancing Acts Conventions Day Jobs Family Scott Lee Starting a Career Superstars Writing Seminars Teaching The Writing Life Work-Life Balance Writing as An Emotional Outlet No Comments

A Guest Post from Scott Lee

I pulled in to the house, just back from my third time attending the Superstars Writing Seminar. I had spent the ride home rehearsing the arguments I would present to my wife as to why I should pull out the credit card and immediately pay for Superstars 2017. After all, the price was the lowest it would ever be, it was set to go up in the morning, and we had a rough idea that our tax return was going to be pretty sweet… Argument in the bag, right? In. The. Bag.

Then I noticed that our little car wasn’t in the drive way. Huh. Becca wasn’t home. Perhaps I would end up waiting awhile before delivering my winning Superstars argument. Or then again, Becca wasn’t home…but no, I’ve lived enough to recognize that thought as a trap.

So, I walk into the house, playing it cool, calm and confident. I had an argument to make.

***

So here I am. Blogging. About writing. And life. And balance. Feeling that I owe you, dear reader, some modicum of advice, insight or wisdom. So here goes.

As I’ve thought about this over the past few weeks I knew pretty quickly that the story I started the blog out with—I’ll finish it later, don’t worry—would have to be included somehow. It is too ironic not to be, and it embodies what thoughts I’ve managed to gather.

First off, I find that framing the question as finding balance between life and writing, writing and real life, or between art and life—creates a false dichotomy. When I considered opening with this point, I had to ask myself if I wasn’t nitpicking. Was I just giving way to personal prejudice against any dichotomy? Everyone talks about writing this way. But I don’t think I’m just picking nits. We can talk about balancing priorities in life, we can talk about where writing fits in our lives, but as long as we split life from writing, even subconsciously, we’re self-sabotaging.

My job doesn’t define me. I am a teacher, but it’s a single facet of who I am not the sum of my identity. Even so, I don’t separate my role as a teacher from my life. It’s not something I go and do when I’m not living. And my role as a writer is no different. If you allow yourself to separate your writing from your “life,” then you make any pursuit of writing time, let alone balance, much harder.

Furthermore, in my experience, most writers are likely to experience things in exactly the opposite direction. It is writing that feels most like life. If we adopt a mental stance where we’re saying that isn’t true, suddenly we’re trying to find time for and balance with, a triviality. Good luck with that.

Second, in practical experience I’ve most often found “balance” by being a binge writer. My typical day didn’t include writing at all. And then when the muse struck in the form of some deadline, I became a zombie with an IV drip of caffeine who taught school and was hubby/daddy during the hours in a day that a sane person was awake, and, during the late night and early morning hours, I wrote like mad in order to get the paper done while the house was quiet. I wrote my grad school papers, my published short story, and my published short story collection/thesis, in this fashion. By the way, 16-19 hours of work/family followed by 5-8 hours of writing, is not balance, it’s insanity. But when I had to, I got writing done, and that seemed like enough. Not an approach I recommend.

I began to make headway a few years ago, when we went on our 10th anniversary vacation. We picked a destination vacation rather than a running-around-seeing-things vacation, and our schedule was determined almost entirely by my writing. I got up in the morning a bit before Becca and wrote my morning pages—three pages, long hand—a daily journaling/meditation exercise I encountered through Julia Cameron’s Artist’s Way books. Then, later, we made our way down to the public library where I’d get a guest pass and a computer and write while Rebecca patiently read whatever caught her eye. I never wrote for more than an hour and a half in a sitting, and most days I wrote for just at an hour, if not a little less. In those five days I wrote well over 10,000 words of new fiction. Not the most I’d ever put together over five days, but I did it without a deadline, without having to try to kill myself in the process, and without suddenly achieving the miraculous hours and hours of writing time I had been subconsciously waiting for before I could “get serious.”

The point isn’t go take a long vacation to Telluride, Colorado without any kids, it’s that in less than two hours-a-day, I put out one of the best steady chunks of words I ever had, and at the end of the process I was neither dead, high on caffeine, delirious, nor stressed out of my mind. I did it as a small part of my ordinary life.

When I got home I had to admit to myself—for the first time, although it seems painfully obvious in retrospect—that I could in fact find balance. Make time to write without killing myself. And I started doing so.

I would love to tell you that I immediately became incredibly disciplined and dove into writing what is now my bestselling novel an hour or less at a time over the next few months. That’s not what happened. My life wasn’t transformed. Nor was my writing. But I wrote more than I ever had, with greater regularity, greater ease, and less stress. And I produced more than I’d ever produced on any single project before.

So here’s my two tiny bits of wisdom: (1) You don’t need a ton of time. Just because Kerouac supposedly wrote On the Road as a highly caffeinated high speed physical endurance test doesn’t mean you have to somehow trade life for writing time. You don’t. Make writing time a part of your life. Make it routine, work-a-day, consistent. Don’t bargain for hours, days, weeks, months, or a year’s sabbatical with your work or your family. Bargain with yourself for an hour or so at a shot, or when you get really smart for any tiny snatch of free time. Make writing life. And you will discover more time and more peace than seems possible if you haven’t done it yet.

(2) Writing isn’t separate from life. In Neil Gaiman’s excellent “Make Good Art” commencement speech, he suggests that the response to negative experiences in life ought to be make good art. I often hear people simplify this to “When life happens to you, make good art!” I know what they mean, but it makes me sad. Because it’s wrong. Art isn’t the counter to life. It’s the ultimate expression of life, and its beauty, tragedy, and value. Art—or writing—isn’t just a record of life, it is the most positive and life affirming of human of acts—the act of creation. So don’t pit your writing against your life. Because the minute you pit anything against your life instead of embracing it as part of your life and making it essential, it will lose. Every. Single. Time.

Now I promised you the rest of the story…

***

My wife was waiting for me back in our room. I felt something coming, kind of the way the lady tied to the tracks in a classic melodrama must feel something coming.

“Hi Becca,” I said. “What happened to the car?”

“Well,” she said, “about that. I was driving on the other side of town today and every warning light on the dashboard came on at once. So I took it to the Toyota dealer. They say the transmission is shot. It’s going to be $5000 dollars to replace it.”

I asked about Superstars 2017 anyway. Why? Because writing is part of my life. An essential part. My wife knows and supports this. We talked about it. I didn’t apologize for asking, and she didn’t yell at me for being stupid, selfish or ridiculous or impractical.

I haven’t paid for Superstars 2017…yet. And I won’t for a while. Seems we need that big tax return elsewhere. I didn’t insist on paying for Superstars immediately, or get down about not being able to. Instead, we made plans for exactly how to pay for it later.

I’ll pay for my car now, because that’s part of my life, and I invest in it. I’ll go to Superstars next year, because writing is part of my life, and I invest in it. In the mean time I’ve had a few hours here and there, and I’m about finished with draft one of a new short story. I’ve loved writing it. I haven’t had a lot of time, but I’m getting it done, and every minute so far has been pure pleasure.

 

Scott Lee:

Scott Lee is a strange individual who chose teaching and writing as his two primary careers. Obviously he has no desire to make any money, and on that count has largely succeeded. He has, however, written much poetry, some individual short stories, published a short story collection entitled Singular Visions, directed 15 plays, and fathered several human children to go along with his less material offspring. He has thoroughly succeeded, in his own humble opinion, at living a worthy and interesting life.