Making Room

Today's writing lesson is an interesting slant on yesterday's lesson: Making Room to Write

Make a list of things – obligations, attitudes, extras – that you will set aside for the month to make room for your writing.

I hope I’m not being too naïve here, but I think I have things arranged properly so that I don’t have to put much aside. Here’s what I did when I knew that I was committed to this class. I made my spouse aware of the fact that that my writing is going to take up a substantial amount of time. The really great news here is that she is supportive of my passion. As a visual artist, she is aware of how important it is to have adequate time for expression of my art.

I also made the deal with her that things in our day-to-day life won’t suffer, especially as relates to our relationship time. In preparing for this class, there have already been a few brushes with time management. So far all has worked out well. I feel confident that this will continue with communication and making adjustments while keeping writing as a high priority.

Addressing this early is actually perfect because it is my intention to continue to continue daily writing time indefinitely! Getting myself, my family and eventually my friends conditioned to the fact that during certain hours of the day I am unavailable. But afterward, bring it on!

I am a Hemingway fan, and I always admired his commitment to his writing day. Up at 5 am, write through the morning, swim laps in the pool afterward, then rejoin the land of the living! Sounds perfect doesn’t it? (I won’t go into his unfortunate excessive drinking afterward, but you have to hand this to him – as deep as he was into alcoholism, he never drank during writing time). It also won't be 5 am for me, but it will be an early morning writing with a bit of additional time late in the evening in case I need a little more time to finish ujp or perhaps write some poetry.

What makes my happy about setting these things aside?

What makes me happy, no, ecstatic about setting all of this up is that now I’m writing! Every day. There is little I want to do more than that. Well, perhaps my other passion - long distance motorcycle trips. But I’ve got time carved out for that as well, so no worries there. It has been a dream of mine to have daily writing time and now I’m doing it! So I guess you could say that that is my marathon. I may not be the fastest one in the race, but I’ll be in the race.