If you’re like most working writers, finding time to practice the craft is a major issue. Between working and commuting and eating breakfast before and supper after work, about 19 hours of the day are taken up. Not much time left for writing (or sleeping).
Many years ago I realized that if I was going to get any writing done I’d have to get up pretty damned early. Most days that’s just before 3:30 a.m. I try to write while eating breakfast. Ideas come like a furious January snowstorm, but most remain scribbles in my notebook. When does a writer have time to write?
When I was young I had plenty of ideas for stories. I read constantly, and when I wasn’t reading or watching television, I was writing. It wasn’t until college, though, that it became an obsession. After my master’s degree, working in a retail chain, I spent my time off work writing a novel.
After I got married and time after work was occupied with other things, I started writing at work. My employer didn’t have much for me to do besides sit at the desk with a computer. I was, as they say, “underemployed.”
I’ve had lots of jobs in my life. Like most blue-collar kids my first job was manual labor. It’s hard to write when you’re using your hands, but ideas come to the head. That’s true no matter what your job might be. My notebook is my constant companion.
Every day I get ideas of how to improve this or that story. Or ideas for a new story. The outline for a novel. My outdated electronic document already has about 50 pages of ideas. The thing I lack is time. Time to write out the stories.
The time I spend sending them to publishers is largely wasted. Most publishers don’t even bother to respond. They have no idea what sacrifice means. The clock says 3:33 a.m., the time, horror movies say, when demons come. While publishers slumber, I’m writing. And even if I could write all day, it wouldn’t be time to finish all the stories I’ve started.
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