Tag: #WritingLife

  • Steal That Time to Write

    Last night I was able to get about 500+ words done on the novel. (My goal is 1,000 words a day, but that might be too ambitious.) I had to steal moments to get it done while I was making dinner. The brussel sprouts were sautéing, and I added a paragraph; that sort of thing. It was very scattered, but I am trying to finish a first draft; it doesn’t have to be perfect.

    It reminded me a conversation I had with a playwright friend of mine about setting aside time to write. He is a married father of two, both kids under 10. He is a stay at home dad, but that position does not afford him any additional time to write, as any stay at home parent would tell you.

    What my friend told me was that before kids, he wrote anytime he felt like it. Now, as a stay at home parent, he had moved into a system of taking notes when an idea hit him, and then having to find the time in his schedule to write out the idea. He actually felt it made him a better writer. As he told me, he might only have one hour to work a day, so he knew that if wanted to get his idea accomplished, he had to focus and use every minute of that hour.

    Not that I am at that point, but I am beginning to find this to be solid advice.

  • Making Time to Write, Again

    Today has gone better, when it comes to making time to write.

    I have stuck to the schedule and I was able to get some journal time in at the park. About 30 minutes, total. Luckily, the kid has started to make friends with the other regular children at the playground, which leads to the air of stability for both of us.

    I am in the afternoon quiet playtime section of the day, where the kid plays in her room, and I finish up my chores, and get about 30 minutes on the couch to do this; blog.

    I am trying not to delve in on the news of today, as I know that will be a distraction for me. I am working at staying focused on finishing this. Then I will have some art time with the kid-o, which can be a fun creative outlet, a palate cleanser so to speak. Then I will let the kid have an hour of free TV time, which will give me a chance to get back to the novel, which sadly, a month has passed since I worked on it last.

    As I go through all of these motions, I am aware enough to know that I will need to repeat this process for at least two to eight months for this habit to form. It does feel like I am the sideshow magician spinning plates, trying to keep everything going.

  • Scheduling Writing Time in a Pandemic

    There might be a lot to unpack in this statement, but I have the feeling that kids will not physically go to school in New York for the first few months of the school year. My guess is that there will at least be two months of remote learning, and that’s if a safe and effective vaccine can be developed. (But this is a topic for another blog.) With that said, I don’t think I will have a few hours to write every day, as I will need to be the kid’s teacher for the foreseeable future.

    So, I need to look for the time in our schedule to make writing happen.

    Right now, I’m getting about two hours in on a perfect, everything breaks my way, kind of day. I can get about 30 to 45 minutes to journal in the morning, when me and the kid have some park time. The kid used to take a daily nap, but that has morphed into “Quiet Playtime” in the kid’s room, and depending on how much I have to clean the kitchen up after lunch, I can fit 30 minutes of blog time. Finally, the kid has an hour of free tv time, which I sit with her and monitor, and that is when I can fit in an hour to work on other things. I used to try and write in the evening, but that’s the only time me and the wife get to have some time together, and that’s pretty important to us. Since rarely does anything break my way, I’m lucky if I can get about 45 minutes to an hour day.

    What complicates this even more is that my wife is working from home, so the family desk is now her’s, and I haven’t found a good landing place to work in the apartment.

    So, as I look to the next month and Fall in general, I am trying to figure out what our schedule will be so everyone can get what they need, and I can still fit in a little more than 2 hours a day to write.