I've recently started working a job as runner for a law firm. I work two hours a day, five days a week. I get paid 8$ an hour + millage for wherever they have me go (the bank, recycling, courthouses, etc.). On weekends, I work at Denny's as a graveyard server (10pm-6am) each night. I'm lucky to get Sundays off. I make about 200$ in tips every weekend. Don't ask me about my Denny's paycheck.... Now, here's my problem, I'm in and out of college, still an undergraduate, still very young, and right now, I'm on SUSPENSION from my college. I've passed a few classes every semeser, failed a few every semester, but I've yet to give up. I see college as the only way out of having to work at a "job." And I still don't live on my own. People have given me advice, saying "You don't work hard," "You don't have problems," and even stuff like, "You always say you're going to write something, read something, yet you never do." Now, maybe it's just a phase, but I was wondering what anyone had say on the subject of "work getting in the way" of writing. I'll even appreciate hearing about "other" things, it doesn't nessesarilly have to be just about work.
Everything will get in the way if you let it. I've been where you are--two jobs, crazy hours--I wasn't in college but I was in the middle of the biggest upset my life had ever seen. Admittedly, I didn't write much. I did join a local writer's group, and it kept me motivated, but to be honest I gave them a lot of stuff I had already written.
So anyway, let's fast forward something like 7 years. I didn't write for about 3 of them. At all. I mean, I wrote for a blog and did some copy, but not fiction. There was no real excuse at the time. I just didn't "feel" like it. I had gotten out of the habit.
Now, I stay at home with an almost three year old who demands my attention, I have to feed her, play with her, make sure she doesn't kill herself climbing on the couch. She doesn't understand that "mommy needs to work" and she doesn't give a crap about "my dreams" (don't get me wrong, she's great). I also handle the majority of things most couples split because my husband works insane hours...and I am writing more than I have written since high school. Why? I just decided to stop making excuses. In fact, I'm now unsatisfied with the amount I've been writing and have decided to commit myself to writing more.
So...what's my point? There is always time. When I wasn't writing but attending that writer's group? I spent a couple hours a day in my home office, chain smoking--and not writing. Today, although I feel like my days are packed full of committments and responsibilities, I still have plenty of quiet time where I COULD be writing but choose something else (hence me making new goals).
You won't get it if you don't want it. That simple. If you can't slug down a cup of coffee and get a few hundred words out between shifts, or on your lunch break--you don't want it. You have to figure out all the moments you're using your free time to do unimportant shit, or shit you could do while you write--then start writing.
And not to be a bitch--but if you are on suspension from college, only work 2 hrs a day on weekdays, and don't live on your own...what ARE you doing with all your free time?
Maybe that 2 hours a day is a typo? Otherwise you have more free time than the majority of us here. I have a fulltime (40 hours a week) job plus up until a week ago, my wife and I owned a bookshop (ebooks killed it dead). Despite that, I write at least 100 words every day (give or take a day a month). Some days it's 100 words, some days it's 1000 words, just depends. Over the last year I wrote a minimum of 35,000 words (I know it's a lot more than that, probably closer to 90,000 words, but I don't keep track).
If you actually want to write, you'll find the time. If you can't find the time, you don't actually want to write. A friend of mine wrote several published (by one of the big six) novels during his lunch hour at work (and weekends, of course).
@SparrowStark--totally agree, there is always time if you make it a priority.
But back to the original question--are you saying that you can't write because you don't have the time or because the work you do is draining your creative energy?
I don't think I'm making any outrageous claim by saying that pretty much everyone on here has jobs and other commitments they need to tend to while still squeezing in time to write.
If you're truly serious about it, you make time for it. It's that simple.
I work fifty hours a week on my day job. I'm also a gradutate student and a single father. I still find time to write. There is always time, even if it is just on a fifteen minute break or staying up an hour later. When you find a moment that you are suddenly free, or you think I should really be writing. Just go do it. It is the only way to do it. I wrote 60,000 words in two weeks by staying up later and working over a lunch break.
Honestly, and I am not trying to be a dick, but there are 168 hours in a week. You are working 10 of them at the law firm and surely no more than 20 to 30 at Denny's. If you can't figure out how to sneak writing in to the other 128 hours you have left in the week, even with college, then you just aren't trying hard enough. Just stop whatever you are doing during the rest of that time and start writing. Write on buses, in trains, while waiting for appointments. Tell your friends you aren't going out with them and stay home and write. That is really all it takes.
Thanks everyone! And Jack, you're absolutely right. I'm being a dick to myself by not writing when I have all this time. I'm being stupid. I only work 2 hours a day during the week at the law firm, about 30 hours at Denny's on the weekends, and I should manage my time better. I've wasted a lot of time in this phase I'm going through. I should also mention that actually I do write, but it's mostly poetry or songs, and it's a consistent thing (about every day). I have quite the collection now. I've been doing that for years. The writing I'm talking about that I can't seem to get myself to do is, writing short stories, screenplays, novel writing. I want to make that consistent. Work is just an excuse, like writer's block - actually those are my only two excuses. It's bull.... I need to be honest somewhere. It's really bull. I feel like I wasted time asking for some advice now....
I'm a little late but for fuck's sake...
The first step is amitting you have a problem. I'm being serious. I blamed work and social life and many things on my long sebatical from writing. When it comes down to it really, I just had my priorities flip flopped and really was just being a bit lazy.
A little while ago I got a postcard in the mail from a buddy i hadn't seen since college in 2004. We kept in touch via phone and e-mail. Every few months he'd ask how my writing was going. And I'd have to tell him it wasn't. And he would Boo at me.
The postcard wasn't singed but I knew who it was from by what it said and from the return adress. Plus the gesture of the postcard really got to me becuase in the cyber age who doesn't just text or email right? In a two word sentence my friend summed it up perfectly and the floodgates opened. I'm having the opposite problem of you now,which I was planning on starting a thread about, then saw yours, I probably will start mine anyway. I need to know how to stop the creative juices from flowing at work. It's really starting to effect my performance.
Oh yeah, The postcard read:
"Writers write."
I have the perfect solution, Jonathan and Jordan battle each other
you get a prompt and you are forced to write
I'm actually about to challenge my rival to a battle. And I don't need any pushing Stacy. I've been writing everyday for hours, or atleast reading about writing and craft and grammar, for the last three months. Plus i never abandoned writing completely. I really can't think of anything I'd rather do. (well one thing, but it doesn't take very long, just kidding) I still wrote my poetry but not nearly as often as I should have.
OOOOOH Who be your rival???
I like pushing, feel free to push back, I'll win though because of my strong man hands. What?!
What everyone said. There's no such thing as not enough time to write.
Some days, all the time I have is when I set the pasta to boil-- I set that timer and write a page or two. You'll write if you want to.
My best piece of advice? Stop thinking of it as a "phase" you're going through, and start making changes. You want to write short stories? Sit down and write one. Tell yourself it's going to suck, write it, let it suck. And then do it over and over again until you have something you're proud of. Then put that sucker in the workshop and swallow your pride when you realize how much work there is to be done.
You're an on again off again college kid living with (I assume) your parents. You've got time to get better. You don't, however, have time to make lame excuses about "work", "writers' block" or "phases" you're going through.
Toddlers go through phases. Everyone else is creating habits.
Real life example: I could be out having drinks right now. I declined to work on the book.
@Stacy
I said i didn't need a push. I didn't say I didn't want one. Man hands, hun? Jerry Seinfeld couldn't deal with that, but I don't look at the hands.
I just finished a short, so I am going to have a beer. Hope the novel's coming along well, Brandon.
