It’s time for your favorite part of the week, when folks email me their questions and I draw on way too much romance novel reading (is there such a thing? Nah, hell no) to craft the answer.
I have a really silly problem, but it’s really driving me nuts, and I thought you might have some good advice for me. Basically: I don’t have enough time. I work part time, I have three children, a husband, dogs, etc, and I really, really want to write more. I have a blog that I update with little things now and again but I really want to find more time to write. And I just can’t find it between work and home and life and kids and school and the PTA and fourteen million bake sales. Every day I promise myself I’ll do it – and then I get to the end of the day and there’s no time left before I pass out from tiredness. Any ideas or suggestions?
Signed,
Busy and Wanting More To Do
Busy, I hear you loud and clear – from underneath my four calendars, each tracking a different member of my household and this here website. Seriously. SBTB has it’s own schedule and color tag on my calendar (pink, of course).
We heroines – er, we women, we do it all. We save the day, lure the dude, solve the case, heal the angsty injury, possibly become a vampire or a werewolf or cure someone of the same, battle the aliens, face down the smarmy boss, outsmart the nefarious yet sultry enemy, have some nifty sex, and live happily ever after. I’m tired just thinking about it.
But look at it this way: in a romance, there’s a handful of things that you know will be resolved (one hopes) by the end of the story. Your plot threads will (one hopes) be all tied up and merry by the end.
So, let’s look at your plot threads of your life story right now. Job: I hear you. Not much you can do except maybe take a pad and pen with you on breaks, or hell, to the ladies’ room, to eke out a few moments to compose or doodle your ideas. Home: this is tough. There are a lot of home responsibilities that easily land on women’s shoulders – and what nice shoulders they are, too. Perhaps this is where your spouse or partner can come in to help: what are some things that you do that might be delegated to another person a few nights a week so you can free some time for yourself? I know it’s not necessarily a well-supported concept that you should ask for help to find time for yourself, but that’s what needs to happen here.
Further, examine your current daily to-do list and see where you can trim some activities. Where is the nearest trashcan into which you can deposit your feelings of guilt that your family dinner wasn’t the four course extravaganza you’d planned but maybe more of a whip-it-up-in-20-minutes feast? Find that trashcan and toss that guilt. If you want time, it comes at a cost, I’m sorry to say.
If you label your daily to-do list items with 1s, 2s, and 3s, indicating what’s a top priority and what’s not, you might find that some things can be shifted to secondary or even tertiary levels of importance – or you might be able to jettison them altogether. My point is, you need to move your desire to write more, and your goal to find the time to do so, to a higher priority on your daily list.
Or, invent a more-time machine. And if you do, call me. I’m all over that.
Got a conundrum you’d like Bitch advice on? Email me (sarah @ smartbitchestrashybooks.com) – I won’t reveal your real name, I promise.
I have two methods:
On my work days, I work 6am-6pm with an hour commute on either side. I get up at 4am those days and write until I have to leap into the shower. Even though I only get about 45 minutes to write, it’s enough to bring my focus back every day to the writing. By the time I get home at 7pm, there’s no way in hell I’m writing, so at least I got some done earlier.
On days off, mornings are for writing. At the top of every hour, I get to check email/blog surf for 15 minutes. The other 45 minutes are for working. No email allowed. No twittering. Or at least, very little. Even if I get only two or three hours of writing this way, a lot of progress can be made. The rest of the day is for everything else in life.
Someday, I dream of only having writing days instead of having to put my 50+ hours of work in at the job. We all have that dream, right? But I managed to write a book this way, and I sold it to Avon, in a three-book deal just last month (WHOOOOOHOOO!).
But man, 4am is early. There really isn’t enough coffee in the world. But the dream, yep. It’s worth it.
There’s one thing left that hasn’t been addressed, and that is convincing yourself that you should have some time for yourself, and not feeling guilty about all the other things you or other people think you should be doing.
Does your husband have hobbies? Does he get to go hang with the guys, or play sports, or something like that that is just for him? If they ask you why you need to have this time, or if you ask yourself, that’s the reason. Moms deserve it as much as dads do, and nobody questions that dads do.