Livin La Vida Loca the Writer's Way

Ricky Martin's idea of "Livin La Vida Loca" is kid's play compared to my crazy life.

Up a 5:00am. Exercise, then off to work. Don't get home until after 5:00pm. Then, there's dinner to cook, fur-babies to feed and play with, and can't forget spending time with the hubby or tending to the occasional medical issues that arise from his spinal cord injury and paralysis. Toss in monitoring his autistic brother, laundry, dishes, vacuuming, and dusting and I've used up 27 hours in a 24 hour day.

Okay, so I fudged on the dusting. And I forgot to calculate sleep time. Point is, necessities in life dictate my daily schedule. But, time waits for no writer. So, how do I find the time to write?

In a nutshell...I don't.

Time isn't something you find. It's something you make use of. And I have to make the most of mine.


Tiny fragments of time can add up to a chunk of missed opportunity if ignored. So, I carry a netbook everywhere. I write at work on my breaks and lunch hour. I write waiting at the doctor's office. I write when I'm riding in a car. I write while watching TV.

If I'm not writing during these hidden moments, I'm reading. To be a good writer, one must read. A lot. Read for pleasure, read for study, read for enrichment, read for enlightenment. Reading and writing are like Hansel and Gretel. Where you find one, you should find the other.

My brain is hard-wired for writing. At any given moment, a dozen or so stories may be crowding my cerebral cortex. I've learned to make notes on index cards, scraps of paper, the back of receipts, to keep track of story ideas, characters, and situations.

And, like every other writer, occasionally I get walloped with the wand of the writer's block faery. When this happens, if I can't work through the issue on the computer screen, I sleep on it. Yep, that's right. I go to bed. Or at least take a nap.

Of course, as I close my eyes, I'm thinking about plots and characters, turning points and black moments. Sometimes the solution comes to me when I wake up, sometimes it takes several days. But it does come.

Why?

Because the brain never sleeps. It is the ultimate in the state-of-the-art personal computers. I can input a plot point that isn't working, or a character that's misbehaving, and soon the busy beaver inside my head computes a scenario or solution that gives me that incredulous "Ah Ha!" moment.

Think about. Write while you're sleeping. Capitalize on 6-8 hours of untapped time.

Okay, maybe that's not for everyone. But it works for me.

I like to use weekends for marathon writing. Limiting social activities helps. All my friends and family understand and are supportive of my off-the-cuff time management. I haven't cut myself off from spending time with others, but I'm not running to every BBQ, every potluck, or every picnic that comes along.

Another tidbit on time management came to me when my husband suffered a set-back in his medical condition. I was stretched beyond my capabilities, as far as responsibilities go, and I made the decision to hire a cleaning service until things became more manageable for me. From them, I learned only clean what's dirty. If it isn't dirty, don't clean it until it is. Maybe that's common sense, but it was an eye opener for me. I no longer have the cleaning service, but the rule is still fresh in my mind. The floor still gets vacuumed and mopped, but only when dirty. The laundry gets done in bulk, rather than piecemeal. And so on. Instead of spending a day on the weekend cleaning, I clean what needs to be cleaned and use the remainder of the day to write.

I believe that we can always optimize time to include the things we want to do. Though each day is different, I manage to pull it all together and when I finally stop for the night I'm usually satisfied with the time I spent on writing.

So tell me, what are your biggest challenges in carving out time to write and what ways have you found to overcome those obstacle?