my current favorite writer<\/a> (she\u2019s won Hugos, gotten on best-seller lists and all that smack) has a \u201creal job\u201d in an office that she has to commute to.\u00a0 Chances are good that many of your favorite writers have \u201creal jobs\u201d, too.\u00a0 At the midlist level, writing doesn\u2019t pay all that well, especially if you\u2019re worried about having health insurance.<\/p>\nBut it\u2019s more than that.\u00a0 There was a time when I had all day, really, no-kidding, the<\/em> whole day to write<\/em>.\u00a0 I often didn\u2019t.\u00a0 I balanced the checkbook (this was before we had an internet connection), I did origami (my husband could always tell a bad writing day because he\u2019d have to wade through origami figures to get to my desk to say hello), and oh my word<\/em> the house was never so clean as when I just didn\u2019t feel like writing (this is still true.\u00a0 I use cleaning house as a procrastination method more often than I like to admit).<\/p>\nLater on we had a kid, and after that, the household living situation changed so that I never had all of any<\/em> day to do anything, ever<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\nIt was then I learned that a certain level of \u201cnow or never\u201d was a great boost to productivity for me.\u00a0 I needed to schedule time.\u00a0 I needed to threaten the household that I was writing and if they disturbed me for anything less than blood or fire during that scheduled time, the fangs were going to come out.<\/p>\n
I learned to take myself, my goals and my writing a little more seriously.\u00a0 I could not<\/em> make my household respect my writing time if I, myself, did not respect my writing time.<\/p>\nI learned not to be such a damned special snowflake artiste<\/em> about writing.\u00a0 During my origami period, I had to have my perfect little routine before I could write.\u00a0 I would arise, make myself a mug of espresso, turn on my writin\u2019 music on the CD changer, and go to the computer (an Apple IIe at the time) and write in perfect, blissful solitude.\u00a0 A knock on the door would throw me.\u00a0 If my husband had a day off for some reason and spoke<\/em> to me before I got to the computer, it would throw me.\u00a0 Knowing I had an appointment in the afternoon would throw me.<\/p>\nYou get the point.\u00a0 I permitted the situation to be far too fragile to bloody well get anything done<\/em>.<\/p>\nOh sure, I still like to have a mug of something hot when I write.\u00a0 I still hate it if someone tries to talk to me while I\u2019m writing<\/em>.\u00a0 I like to have my writin\u2019 music when I\u2019m working.\u00a0 But I can write on a plane, or on a train.\u00a0 I can write in the morning when I first get up, or in the evening before I go to bed.\u00a0 I\u2019ve trained myself that routines and locations to create the mood are so much frippery.\u00a0 As Gurney Halleck would say, \u201cMood is for cattle or making love\u2026\u201d\u00a0 Writing is work time.<\/p>\nIt doesn\u2019t even need to be a lot of time.\u00a0 I don\u2019t write for hours without getting up.\u00a0 For the most part, I write in 20 minute chunks in hyperfocus, get up, wander around, check my email, lather, rinse repeat until I\u2019ve made my daily word count.\u00a0 While I have more time than some, 20 minutes a day of hyperfocus writing still gets stuff done.\u00a0 Maybe not as quickly as one would like, but if the writing is the important part, at least you spend a chunk of time really practicing<\/em> your art.<\/p>\n\u2018Course, writing is no more compulsory than knitting or weightlifting.\u00a0 If it\u2019s not really important to you, it isn\u2019t.\u00a0 But if it is<\/em> respect that and give yourself at least a little<\/em> time even to write something utterly awful.\u00a0 Hey, if musicians are allowed to be crap sometimes when practicing, so re writers!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIf I lose the light of the sun, I will write by candlelight, moonlight, no light. If I lose paper and ink, I will write in blood on forgotten walls. I will write always. I will capture nights all over the world and bring them to you\u201d \u2013 Henry Rollins I had someone say that … <\/p>\n
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