Thursday, May 19, 2011

Making Time

Long time, no posts.  Yeah, I'm painfully aware.  In my defense, though, things have been ridiculously crazy lately. 

    But after tomorrow, thanks to a little blessing called summer vacation, things are bound to get better.  More writing time, blogging time, family time . . . writing time . . . hey, maybe I'll even be able to see my desk again soon, without having to excavate a hand-sized tunnel.  Maybe.

    Still, for the past couple of weeks, any spare time has been pretty sparse for me, and my main writing time has been editing on the bus or in those snatches of class time where I've finished my work already.  As I'm sure you know, moments like those don't come often enough. 

    Anyway, I've been trying to figure out how I'm going to structure my writing time this summer, and it really makes me wonder:  how do other people do it?  What's the best way?  I'll have plenty of time for writing this summer, but once school starts again in the fall, time will crunch again, too.  In some ways, writing with school is worse than writing with work, because there always seem to be plenty of those days where all the teachers have plotted together to give you Guinness record-worthy loads of homework.  Of course, I'm sure writing with work won't be a walk in the park, either.

    So when summer's over, I'll need to have a system worked out.  I'm thinking the best thing is going to be having my plot figured out well enough that I can set deadlines for myself and won't waste time puttering around my storyline.  (Don't judge.  While I realize those last four words of the previous sentence make me sound like an old lady, I refuse to hit the backspace button.)  In doing so, I'll also be (theoretically) much more focused when I do get the chance to write, so I'll hopefully get more work done in whatever time I have.  I'll work through lunch.  Get up earlier, even though I'm usually not a morning person (I prefer not to speak to anyone for at least the first thirty minutes after I wake up.  My sister and I get in a lot of fights, because she's also a total bear in the mornings -- but if I'm getting up to write, I won't have to talk to anyone, will I?).  Also, I'm going to be ordering The Weekend Novelist by Robert J. Ray and Bret Norris any day now, and judging from the exerpt I read on Amazon and the feedback I've read online, that book will help, too. 

    To be honest, I don't have a ton of this worked out yet.  But one thing I do know:  there's never time.  For writing, for anything.  And there never will be. 
   
    Time's something you have to make.

2 comments:

Jenna Cooper said...

I can relate on the time issue. School and work and friends and family, it can all add up. I just take whatever time I can get to write.

Jenna Blake Morris said...

Good point! I guess at the end of things, that's all you really can do.