Finding the Time (or Energy) To Write

One of the biggest misconceptions about writing is that when you sit down to write it should be this grand event.  That your pens and paper should be of a certain brand, that your beverage should be in a particular mug, and that you should be ready to start churning out thousands upon thousands of words with a single stroke of the pen (or press of the keys).

Or maybe it’s not so much the set up for the event as the fact that you’re making it into an event in the first place.  That writing must happen at a particular hour of the day and that you have to carve out hours of uninterrupted time for writing.

And there are people that write like that, sure.  

But there are also the rest of us.  The people with an assortment of pens collected from hotel rooms, school supply closets, or an unsuspecting colleague.  The people who have never seen a cabinet of matching coffee mugs and instead continue to use that one chipped mug that their child gave them for a birthday present a decade ago.  The people who can barely manage to squeeze in the daily routine of personal hygiene, getting dressed, and breakfast before work.  And fitting a “sacred writing block” into all of that?  Forget it.

Or, maybe don’t forget it.  

Because finding the time or energy to write doesn’t have to be an all or nothing deal.  Writing doesn’t have to take hours and it doesn’t have to take up pages either.  Writing can be a single minute to write a single sentence about something you heard someone say, a dream you had last night, or even a moment you’d like to take time to cement in your memory.  And if you’re only writing a single sentence during a single minute, writing doesn’t have to take a lot of energy either.

But what if you want to write more than a minute or a sentence?  Another way to find the time and energy is to instead find someone who will support you when you don’t think you have the time OR the energy.  It can be a friend, it can be a writing group (like this one), it can even be your students.  Just someone who – when you really aren’t feeling it – will step up and say “Hey, did you write today?”  Or, even better, “Hey, write with me today.”

One minute, one sentence, one friend is all it really takes to start.  And once you start, well, then you just have to write for another minute and another sentence.  And then another one after that.  Writing is like any other art out there: you just have to start somewhere.  Write when you can, with the energy you have, find an accountability buddy, and the rest will work itself out.