Choices

Probably the second most common question established writers get is “How do you find time to write?” If the writer is known to be a full-time writer, it’s usually phrased as “When you had a day job, how did you…” but it’s still the same question. These days, I’m tempted to say something like, “I check under the bed” or “I take some out of the drawer where I throw spare minutes that I haven’t found a use for.”

Because even a little bit of thinking about it would tell you that time doesn’t work that way. We talk about time as if it can be saved or spent or wasted or managed or found under the couch cushions, but it can’t. Time just moves along. Everybody gets 60 minutes per hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, no more, no less.

And every minute, hour, and day that everyone has is occupied by something—sleep, commuting, day job, eating, TV, reading, complaining on social media, helping kids with homework, staring at the sky and thinking about nothing. The only way to do more of anything is to do less of something else.

When people talk about “managing time” or “finding time to write,” they’re actually talking about managing their own behavior, only nobody wants to admit that part. No one I know has enough time to do all the things they’d really like. It’s really a matter of deciding, minute by minute, “I will do this; I will not do that, the other, or anything else.”

A long while back, I gave an evening talk at a local library to a collection of writer’s groups. During the questions afterward, one gentleman spent a good five minutes describing his incredibly busy schedule, finishing up, of course, with “How do you find time to write?”

I looked around and said, “How many of the rest of you have trouble finding time to write?”

Every writer in the audience raised their hand. A couple of them raised both.

I looked around again and said, “If you’re all having that much trouble finding writing time, why are you here? I’m glad you came, but you just chose to spend at least two hours (counting travel time) not writing.”

Most of the audience got the point, but one lady responded indignantly that coming to my talk was helpful for her writing. To which I could only respond, “I’m glad it was helpful, but it still is not writing. And if you spend all your writing time doing things that are not writing, it doesn’t matter how helpful they are, because you won’t have any time left to write.”

Writing fiction for publication includes a lot of tasks that are not actually writing fiction. Research is not writing. Reading how-to-write books or blogs and attending author lectures is not writing. Talking with other writers on Twitter is not writing. Emailing your best friend about all the problems you’re having with your plot is not writing. Planning a publicity campaign is not writing. Outlining, character sketches, and other “prewriting” is not writing. Neither are editing, revising, and other “post draft cleanup” work. Journaling is obviously writing, but it isn’t writing fiction. Same for writing a blog post, or composing a submission letter.

It is very easy to get caught up in all these not-writing tasks, because many of them are necessary, and others are fun or just make one feel better. (And writers are very good at finding excuses not to write.) And there are plenty of obvious not-writing life maintenance tasks (laundry, sleep, day job, etc.) that are also necessary. But when and how thoroughly one does them is still a choice.

Sometimes, the trade-off is worth it. Spending two hours reading how-to-write blogs or outlining one’s next novel may make the eventual actual writing go more smoothly. Sometimes, something else is more important than writing. No one I know would argue that writing today’s pages should take precedence over rushing a child with an obviously broken arm to the emergency room. But each thing is still a choice between writing and doing something else.

Until one recognizes this, asking how to “find time” to write is pointless. There is no easy, magic solution. You are not going to find ten minutes hidden in the couch cushions, or half an hour that somebody dropped in the hallway. You choose to sit down and write, or you choose not to.