In the two years leading up to the pandemic, I flogged my social media accounts pretty hard, producing and promoting over 30 videos on writing and then posting them on my YouTube channel. Each new video linked to previous videos, and then I posted promotional links on Facebook and Twitter. I picked up enough subscribers and viewers to monetize the channel, bringing in enough extra scratch to fund a Mickey-D’s drive through every six months or so.
Then Covid hit and brought with it social fractures that left me stunned. We avoid politics on this site, and I don’t want to relitigate all that passed during those awful years, but suffice to say they left me Angry. Notice the capital A. I’ve learned since that friends were worried about me.
The saving grace for me was that we had a dream house to build out in God’s wilderness. All those selections and decisions were exactly the kind distractions I needed to distance myself from the urban insanity that I would soon leave behind and embrace the rural calm that awaited us in West Virginia. Our dreams of Utopia were shaken pretty hard when out son suffered a workplace accident that broke his leg in 10 places, but that crisis also passed–just about the time we got the new puppy.
Oh, I should mention that January of 2020 marked the beginning of my first-ever (and last-ever) contract to write two books per year for two years. With my emotions on edge and my calendar packed, something had to go. Thus, no new videos on the channel in the past two and a half years.
I’d like to start doing them again, but . . . here it comes . . . I don’t have the time.
And that is 100% a lie. I have the same 24 hours in every day that I had when I toiled away at a Big Boy job, zig-zagging across the country making speeches and providing consulting services while running a 7-person department and still writing a book per year. The difference is, back then, my writing hours were from dinnertime till 11pm every night. I rarely if ever watched television. I just worked, whether one job or the other. That was the schedule for 11 books over 11 years.
When it comes to starting the videos again, yes, it’s something I would like to do, but clearly I don’t want it enough to give up unclaimed downtime. Empirical evidence shows that I would rather go to shooting range than make a video, and when that’s done, I’d rather clean the guns. When it’s not so stinkin’ hot, playing Frisbee with Kimber is more important, and so is just hanging out with my bride.
“Where do I find the time?”
If you lurk around any of the writer-oriented sites on Facebook or elsewhere on the internet, you’ve seen the question posed dozens of times: “I have a story in my head that I want to get on paper, but I just don’t have the time. Between my work schedule and the kids and their athletics, I just can’t do it.”
In the words of that great philosopher, Col. Sherman Potter, horse fritters!
The time is there. Heck, the time it took for the complainer to post the complaint (and check back three dozen times to see what the responses were) is time they chose not to dedicate to writing. So is that half hour they spent playing Wordle in the morning and the hours they spent playing video games or watching the baseball game on television.
Time is a constant. It cannot be lost and it cannot be found. It just is. Each of us finds the way to prioritize that which is important to us. For me, family is always the top priority, so back in the days of early books, soccer games and endless concerts and recitals always took precedence over anything book-related, because those things were fleeting and fixed in space. One and done. If you miss it, it’s gone forever. But the book still needed to get done. The four hours of productivity I lost that night could be made up in 30-minute increments over the next writing sessions.
Truth can be harsh, but I think we need to be truthful with ourselves. When you hear a friend complaining that they don’t have time to do a thing, and you sense that they’re truly looking for a solution, ask them what less valuable time suck they are willing to give up to make room for the new thing. Hint: I know many people who never watch television and do very well on only five hours of sleep.
It’s all about choices.
Yes! A thousand times YES! When I first began on this writing journey in 2010, I met with an up and coming author, Allison Brennan. Her advice was spot on:
Forget about having a social life
Be prepared to give up television, pleasure reading, playing Solitaire
Develop a layer of thick skin – you will face rejection
Because I worked full-time until 2022, I squeezed my writing into short spurts. Now that I’m retired, I can spend idle time playing Words with Friends and watching an hour or so of television a night.
I agree with you – when people say “I don’t have time” it makes me want to grab them by the shoulders and shake them!
I have plenty of time – what I don’t have is the use of a functional brain all the time. Zero energy and bad sleep don’t help – chronic illness makes a bunch of other things inconvenient.
I’m good at focusing when the stars come together, and get a decent amount of work done then, but everything else in life that has to be done also wants the usable brain. So the third book in the mainstream trilogy is coming very slowly, and that’s the best I can do – so I don’t bother with angst about it.
I know I can – the two published volumes are 167K and 183K – so I keep chugging along. Already have a strong idea for the final cover, and plans for some possible short stories in the same universe. If the researchers in Long Covid (and similar) ever produce anything I can use, everything is ready to up the speed; if not, the snail keeps slithering forward.
But time, that I have plenty of. And use it as well as I can.
I, too, know that it’s not lack of time – it’s the choices already made and not changed of how to use it (assuming they don’t have problems like mine). Just as well – too many books, anyway.
So true, Mr. Gilstrap. I am taking part in a Sisters in Crime Mentoring program to help others get past the “I can’t seem to finish the book I want to write” syndrome. I’ve been trying to tell my mentee to find time, make time, set reasonable goals, but that the book won’t get written until she sits down and writes it.
The saying goes, “If you have a project that needs to be completed, give it to a busy person.” Somehow, busy people find the time to do it. When I wrote my first book, I had two children at home, a full-time job, and a part-time job. I wrote in the early morning, late at night, and on weekends when I could squeeze in the time. After it was selected for publication and before it was published, I wrote three more, one in ten days when I had a hiatus.
When I retired, I thought I could churn out three or four books a year. Silly me. We spent winters traveling around the country in our RV, and I had a great writing area set up in it, figuring the words and stories filling my head would pour out into my computer. Um, nope. At home, other than shuttling grandchildren around, there is nothing that honestly keeps me from writing, but it’s very sporadic. It’s obviously a matter of priorities. And motivation. What am I willing to give up in order to spend time writing? I’m not even sure if it’s the writing that stymies me, or what comes after. The whole marketing thing seems insurmountable. It’s easy to justify not writing.
So, the time is there. The mind is willing, but the flesh is weak. 😉
Amen!
We make time for what we’re passionate about. And passions change with different seasons of life. I wrote 17 books and 5 novellas in the past 10 years, but writing is about all I did. Now, I’m in a season of care-giving and I’ve cut back on my writing. I’m also getting older (Thank God writing there isn’t an age bias in writing).
I used to spend/waste hours as an “accountability partner” encouraging people who claimed to want to write. They dabbled for a short time but soon lost interest when that new toy got boring. I finally learned to recognize the difference between those who are serious and those who whine about it.
Now I don’t waste time with time wasters. I smile politely, wish them luck, and scoot.
That said, Covid focused my priorities more sharply. Family and friends always came first. But now I drop what I’m doing, deadlines be damned, to spend time with a friend. You never know if this will be the last phone call you receive from them.
As you say, John, “The four hours of productivity I lost that night could be made up in 30-minute increments over the next writing sessions.”
Time is a constant. It cannot be lost and it cannot be found. It just is.
Mr. Gilstrap, these are not just words. These are bricks falling on my head.
Thanks for the truth-telling this morning. Needed it.
🙂
So true, John. I had an old relative who used to say that people spend their money the way they want to. I think the same is true for their time.
Granted, some people have commitments that take up much of their waking hours, but most of us have some disposable time we can put to use. Having said that, I better get back to work. 🙂
Wise words, John. On the flipside, we shouldn’t take on too much and burn ourselves out. Balance is key. I learned that lesson the hard way.
I didn’t think I would enjoy a blog (any blog) as much as getting lost in a great book but I was wrong. Your post hits home and I truly enjoyed knowing that I’m not the only person who gets lost in doing the simple things. Thank you.
Writing is a hobby, an avocation, or a career, but it is not a life. Real life is what matters most. You will regret it if you look up from your keyboard one day to discover life has passed you by, and the writing wasn’t worth the cost.
The trick for me is not finding time but finding the LENGTH of time I want. But I’ve had to resign myself to writing in short spurts of time. Not my favorite, but better than nothing.
Funny thing, time. Looking back today at, say, 1971 (not all that long ago — to me anyway) is the same as 1971 looking back to1918. Yipes!