No Time to Write?
Write and the time will appear
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One of my favourite things is seeing writing start to claim space. I get a little tingle of excitement inside when mentoring clients who had almost no time to write, start telling me they have found new space in their day for this noble craft. It is not that suddenly their days get longer, or their work/home life commitments reduce, but rather that their desire to write sees them prioritising it more, and in prioritising it, other less important things fall away. There is a kind of writerly alchemy that occurs and it is one of the most glorious things to witness. My clients will often go from fitting writing into the gaps (early mornings, stolen moments) to carving out space, setting boundaries and honouring their need to write.
If that idea feels impossible to you now, I totally understand. When I was at my busiest as a travel journalist, I believed with all my heart that there was no space for me to write fiction. And yet, if I am brutally honest with myself, I made time for all sorts of things that were less important to me (scrolling social media, doing free work for other people, saying yes to things I didn’t want to do, going down internet rabbit holes, letting work expand into every space…you know the kind of things). I did have time to write fiction, I just wasn’t prioritising it, perhaps out of fear and perhaps believing I needed big stretches of time to write. And maybe I did, but I wasn’t even giving myself the small stretches to figure that out.
As Elizabeth Gilbert asks, “What are you willing to give up to have the life you keep pretending you want?”
Tough love from Gilbert there, but sometimes we have to get tough with ourselves.
Things definitely have to give if you want to write more, but what I have noticed in clients and in other writers I know, is that at some point it feels less like giving things up and more like claiming more space. We can be scared to claim space for writing when there are so many seemingly more important things to focus on. We can be nervous to say to others “sorry this is my writing time, I can’t help you with X right now,” lest we sound pretentious, uncaring, fill in the blank. It can be hard to claim space for a craft that perhaps is not ‘paying its way’ in a world where the money something brings can determine its value and when we need to earn money to live. However, every writer that I have seen claiming even the smallest space (one 15-minute session a week, an hour after their child is asleep, 20 minutes on their lunch break twice a week) has suddenly found the time they spend writing expanding.
I like to believe it is magic (it is!) but it is also about giving the writing a space to land. Once it knows it has a place to rest, it (and you) want to rest there more. Writing begets writing. It is a hard truth when the words aren’t seeming to flow, but if you can give them 15 minutes a week, I can almost guarantee you that those fifteen minutes will expand into more time. Think of it as being like one of those weird dinosaur egg children toys, that swells when you add water (or in our case, time). Your writing will start wanting to take up space, and you will make that space for it. Like I said, it’s a little sprinkling of writerly magic.
So, if you are feeling frustrated, like you have no time to write, grab your calendar and carve out 15 minutes once a week, GUARANTEED (pick an easy spot, make keeping the commitment easy on yourself). You only need to write 15 minutes a week (if you can add cake, do it). See how you go!
Interview: If you like to get to know me better, I was recently interviewed by the London Writers’ Salon about my thoughts on writing.
Mentoring
I have had a space open up in June for one new longer-term mentoring client (I offer 4 session packages spread over one month or two). I also offer one-off sessions for those who want to work on a particular problem or idea or who want to deep dive into a piece of work and get my feedback on particular ‘craft’ issues.
I so, so needed this, thank you Susannah 🧡🧡
thank you! loved the post.