IS FINDING TIME TO WRITE IMPOSSIBLE?

Finding Time to Write is up to You. We're all Busy. We all have Jobs. Ask Yourself This: Do I Really Want it?

For some people, the answer is absolutely. For others, not so much. I bring this up today because someone in one of the writing groups that I’m a part of on social media made the comment that they weren’t able to start anything because they weren’t going to be able to finish it, or something to that effect. They have a full-time job (I don’t even think they have kids, from what I read), and other normal life things that require their attention. And the question: “is finding time to write impossible?” was something I figured out a long, long time ago. It’s also one of the most annoying (to me) things that my non-writer friends seem to ignore or not understand, that while their lives are busy with work and kids and the things they have to do every day, so is mine. So, I want to attack this question from two different perspectives, which you may relate to or, maybe, not.

First, to the question “is finding time to write impossible?” The answer is no. Not unless you’re working 24 hours a day, which, let’s be honest, you absolutely aren’t. At least not on a daily basis. I’ve broken the night plenty a time over my 50+ years on this planet. Some of those nights (ok, maybe a lot of them) because I was out drinking with buddies and we stayed up playing Tecmo Bowl (remember that?!), or Ass%*le, that wonderful card game everyone played in college, or, well, you can imagine what else a kid in his teens and twenties was doing by breaking the night. But even back then, I was writing. Maybe I wrote for ten minutes. Sometimes I’d break the night to write. For a long time I wrote at night because it was the only time I could concentrate (I’m not really good at writing and concentrating when people are making noise around me). But once I became an adult taking writing seriously, my answer was a resounding yes. I could write no matter what, because I made the time to write. It really is that easy.

See, the excuses writers make for why they don’t write are just that—they’re excuses. I have writer’s block (I get people believe in that, but once you’ve been writing seriously for a long time, that excuse goes out the window). You’re not writing what you want to write when you want to write it—which is valid. And I get it, it’s easy to say I have writer’s block and believe it; I’ve been yelled at online more than once because people didn’t like me dismissing their writer’s block, which is, to them, real. Okay. Whatever. But in terms of finding time to write, that’s up to you. You either want it (meaning to write, to potentially be published, get an agent if you want to go the traditional route, etc.), or you don’t. And the don’t part is sort of loose, because there is no set number of words or hours or whatever that you are required to write to get towards your goals. And I know this will sound like I’m peacocking, but it’s not—it’s just how I got my writing done even when I had two kids, a full-time job I had to drive an hour and a half minimum to get to and return home and that I often worked sixty, seventy hours a week and on the weekends, if I wasn’t traveling for work and creating presentations for client meetings, feeding my kids, exercising, and a dozen other things. You know what I did? I got up and 3am and wrote until 7am. That required me sleeping less than I’d like—believe me, I hated the getting up part, but I loved the smell of the coffee, heading to the basement, and diving into my imagined world. Was it “healthy?” Probably not. But I got my writing done. And that is what it’s always been for me. My writer friends know that I normally kick out the first draft of a novel every year, and work on one or two or three other novels, editing full drafts over and over again for years. Because I want it. I want to see my books in print. I want to fulfill the goals I set for myself as a kid, when I’d pin motivational writing quotes above my desk. When I’d talk to people about writing who couldn’t care less about writing because they weren’t readers, because they hadn’t read a book since they had to read Of Mice and Men in the seventh grade. Am I a martyr? No. Do I deserve a pat on the back? No. All I’m saying is this: If you want something bad enough, you find a way to do it. You make sacrifices. You do what you have to do to get what you want to get done done. That’s all.

Now, to my friends who don’t understand why I don’t make the effort anymore to see them whenever I “go home,” which is Miami. Or was Miami, thirty years ago. This is a personal little rant, so forgive me. But when I head to Miami, where my parents lived (they’ve moved further north but stayed in Florida and my other set live in Hollywood, thirty-five minutes north of Miami), my friends from high school always want to hang out. And by hang out I mean they want me to drive to where they are (South Miami), because they are “so busy” with their lives. Of course, if I’m in Miami, I’ve flown in with my kids from Denver, or Atlanta, or Illinois, where I live now. Per the above paragraph, I have very little time to do anything. But my friends believe since I’m “home,” and since they’re so “busy,” that it’s up to me to keep the relationship going. It’s not. For a long time, I did make the effort. I drove in traffic for hours at a time to visit friends who really didn’t make the effort to come visit me wherever I lived (except for Colorado, of course, because they could go skiing). My kids hung out with their kids, I hung out with my friends and their spouses, had a few drinks, maybe ate dinner, yada yada. But then, one day, I was done. I got tired of hearing how busy they were. I got tired of it being a one-sided friendship. For me, writing is number one, behind my kids. Driving ain’t on the list. Keeping one-sided friendships, it ain’t on the list either. And I guess this all goes to the finding time to write bit. Most of my friends now are writers. And the reason for that is they understand my life. They get what it means to bust your butt working all day only to come home and find five, ten, thirty minutes to write. Because they want it. Because writing is something they can’t not do. So, if I’m going to sacrifice things so that I can write, it’ll be sleep. It’ll be time hanging out at the newest bar in town, throwing back a couple (or eight, I wasn’t great at that thing called will power). And it'll be keeping those one-sided relationships going.

See, the excuses writers make for why they don’t write are just that—they’re excuses.

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I want it. I write daily. If that means I have to write from 3-7 am while the world sleeps, then I’ll write from 3-7 as the world sleeps. I’ll work tired. I’ll rally, because sometimes that’s what you have to do to get the words down. Don’t talk to me about being too busy, about having writer’s block, about your schedule just not being suited to writing. If you want it, you make it happen. And that doesn’t just apply to writing—it applies to anything. And if you don’t want it, that’s fine too. Complaining about it is fine. But get it out of your system (that’s what I’m doing with this post), and then get back to writing. Because if you’re a writer, you write. You don’t make excuses.

Cully Perlman is an author, blogger, editor, and other stuff. He can be reached at Cully@novelmasterclass.com

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