I have met a great many people who claim they want to be writers, but who don’t act like it. I have also met more than one professional writer who claims to want to quit his/her day job and go full-time as a writer, but who doesn’t act like it. And I’ve even met a couple of folks who claim they want to stop writing, but who don’t act like it.
What it all boils down to is the decisions people make, most especially the decisions they make about how they spend their time and, to a lesser extent, their money.
For instance, the first category includes a gentleman who complained of not having enough time to write. “What do you do in the evenings after work?” I asked. He said he either watched TV or went to the bar with his friends, and no, he couldn’t possibly cut an hour out of either thing. “What do you do on Saturday morning, then?” He said he was an avid body-builder and that was his time at the gym. “OK, how about the afternoon?” That was for catching up on the TV he’d missed when he was out at the bar with his buddies; he had everything set up to tape his favorite shows. Saturday evening was late night at the bar (no wonder he needed all that time at the gym!) and Sunday was for more TV and the occasional catchup with family. It boiled down to about thirty hours of TV every week, and he absolutely, positively could not give up any of it, and he had a Netflicks queue about 300 movies long for if he ever ran out of TV to watch.
That man doesn’t want to be a writer; he wants to be a professional TV watcher.
The first category also includes a young woman with an equally crowded schedule, except hers was taken up with voice lessons on Monday, art class on Tuesday, photography Wednesday, community theater group Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings (when there was a performance; other days when something was in rehearsal); outdoor photography sessions during the day on Saturday, and a desperate round of weekly life maintenance (laundry, shopping, housekeeping, prepping for all those other activities) on Sunday. And another whose week was similarly crowded with volunteer activities, and another with a social schedule that simply would not quit, and even one person who’d gone to great lengths to “balance” everything – photography class Monday, gym on Tuesdays and Thursdays, volunteer at the food shelf on Wednesdays, dinner with friends on Friday, one of four monthly meetings or events on Saturday (church committee, investment club, knitting group, family outing), life maintenance Sunday.
Those sorts of stories are common and fairly obvious, at least from the outside (the folks who overschedule themselves like this never seem to realize that they can’t get more time without stopping something). But there are also a few older writers who “want to retire,” but who keep cranking out stories and articles as if it’s a habit they can’t break. And one who claims in one breath to want to retire, and then in the next complains that he/she has no ideas for the next story and feels twitchy for not writing. If you’re retired, the whole point is that you’re not writing…at least, that’s what I always thought (which is why I’ve never felt much inclination to worry about retirement in the traditional sense; my “retirement fund” is basically there for late-life medical conditions that would actively prevent me from continuing to write, because that’s what it’s going to take to stop me).
But there’s another level of anti-writing decision-making that’s one up from the folks who can’t give up their TV or who’ve overscheduled. It’s the level of major life decisions that end up making it easier or harder to do other things (like write), and it’s a lot less obvious and a lot more complex than just overscheduling.
For instance, you have the folks who’ve embarked on a career path doing something they hate because it pays well, and then discovered that it pays well because you have to put in 80-hour weeks. Between time on the job and hating what they do, they’re too physically and emotionally exhausted to do much of anything else with what little “free time” they have. Or you have the first-time homeowners who didn’t realize in advance how much time and money they have to put in on maintenance and yard work.
When a person decides to do anything that takes time, the time has to come from somewhere else. “Somewhere else” means “something that you’re doing now that is less important than the new thing you’re adding to your schedule.” If one thinks about it in advance, one can make reasoned decisions based on what one is willing to give up in order to have the new thing. If one doesn’t think about it, one ends up with more to do than one has time for, and something has to go. Quite often, it’s the writing time that gets cut “temporarily” (as if there’s ever going to be more than 24 hours in a day). Which, logically, says that writing time is less important than whatever you’re doing instead.
Actions, they say, speak louder than words…but quite often, if one doesn’t think about the consequences, one ends up saying something completely different from what one intended.
I’ve found that I have to cut back on my social media time. Facebook was the biggest culprit with the least good coming from it (for me). I deleted my account and was amazed how much more time I had. Granted, this solution isn’t for everyone, but maybe they just need to cut back on the time they spend there. The first step is to at least analyze where you spend your time.
I definitely agree with a lot of this. Until recently I never made any time for writing. Luckily for me though, my hours got cut at work and I re-thought my life a little. Now I spend my time that would have been spent working writing.
Thanks for this. It is just what I needed to hear right now. Why do I waste my time on things that are not where I want to focus? Because I need to prioritize.
That was the epiphany I had this past summer. I’ve always known, if I wanted to write, I had to give something else up, because my days were always full. Then, this summer, I ended up with a chunk of free time. I started to write, really write, every day. It was amazing and addicting and they’ll have to pry my cold, dead hands off the computer keyboard when I finally kick the bucket. But I was lucky–I had that chunk of free time to get my groove on. Now, the high I get from writing is enough to get me past any other amount of giving stuff up. Except my writing time. Hands off, it’s mine!
Oh, this was something I had to learn last year, when I was talking about my career plans (and not wanting an academic career, but a writing one, despite not being published), and my dad made this very point — that if I *said* I needed to write, then I had better be writing. He and my mother weren’t taking my talk as seriously as I’d like, you see, because they didn’t see me actually write very often. It stung hugely at the time, but it was true, and has made a big difference — not least in my actual writing!
Amazingly enough, once I actually started to commit my *time* as well as my mental energy to it, my family became a whole lot more supportive of my plans to get off the academic career ladder and go off on an otherwise deranged plan to go walk across Europe and write the rest of the time. Now it’s just deciding getting properly fit to make this a fun adventure instead of an utter grind that needs to be made a definite priority …
So very, very true. I figure most people, on a good day, can get to the top three things on their list of priorities. (Eating & sleeping counts as at least one.) If writing is number four on that list, you’re not going to manage it very often; if it’s number ten, it might as well not be on the list at all.
An awful lot of “being a writer” seems to involve shoving writing into the top three, and keeping it there more days than not.
My writing is pretty much the first thing on my list 5 days/week. Weekends are for family.) If I must choose between tidying up the kitchen and writing, I’ll choose writing. Groceries or writing: writing. Laundry folding or writing: writing. You get the idea. It means my house is often messier than I like (my natural tendency and preference is tidy). Sometimes I’ve got to really dig in the fridge to come up with a meal. Sometimes the clean clothes sit in a laundry basket unfolded for a few days. Of course, it’s often possible to get chores *and* writing done, but when it isn’t…I write!
Hmmmmm, I see my name and address on this message, somehow. Particularly the job. I have been known to say that work owns my soul, though they pay me well for the privilege. So I’m at least a step up from Merle Travis.
I wonder if all of them work through lunch. Because while it’s not my sole time, it’s certainly useful.
I don’t write as much as I want to, but I’ve clung stubbornly to my once-a-week scheduled time for it. And the nights when I drive home after a full evening of writing is my favorite time of the week. It’s when I feel the best and the most fulfilled. No TV show can ever replace that.
I wonder what would happen to the TV guy if he was willing to give up a single TV show for just one month. Only a month. They say it takes about a month to form a good habbit.
I’ve also found that committing to things indefinitely is crazy. Leading a book club indefinitely is insane. Attending a scrapbooking club with no end in sight is confining. For most of my activities, I set a very clear end date. That way, when it’s over, I can fill that time with something else. If I really liked it, I can always continue for another three months, but I will always set an end date. This way, I can cycle all the activities I want to get done and I don’t feel like I’m stuck in a rut.
“I’ve also found that committing to things indefinitely is crazy.”
I think I’ll have to try your method for extracurriculars, RJ. To date, mine has more resembled a binge-purge cycle than anything sustainable.