If you're brave enough to fly

Why I write

“It’s amazing and heartening how many people want to be writers. Like all writers, I’m frequently asked about process. Process is different for everybody. When I’m really in a book I work seven days a week, three to six hours a day, starting when I first get up. I write every day because I’m not capable of writing eight hours straight. If I were I would skip the weekends. A girlfriend once told me she had good news. She didn’t have to work on Wednesday; we could spend the whole day together. She didn’t think of me as someone with a job. It made me happy. I kissed her a bunch of times and told her I couldn’t see her on Wednesday.”

I am fascinated by writing process and routine.  I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately – about why the routine I have works for me.  About why routine, full stop, works for me.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about treating writing as a job.  Which is what I try to do.  I commit to making my wordcount every weekday – most of the time I accomplish this by sitting down at the same time each day, but life often means that I need to be flexible with this.  And clearly, I’m going to have to learn to be even more flexible.

My point is this: right now, writing is my job.  Writing for me means getting my wordcount as well as reading and reviewing.  Reading includes reading books (including review books), forums and writing and writer’s blogs.

I find it really difficult to say no to people who want me to do social things during the week.  If I can arrange my schedule so that I can still get my work done and then have time to catch up with friends, then it’s awesome.  Frequently, that just isn’t going to happen.  I cope with this by pretty much hermitting and fobbing off people who want to catch up.  Which isn’t the best way to deal with it.  I need to set my own rules and boundaries and damn well stick to them.

So, a declaration: writing is my job.  Just as someone on a salary doesn’t get to take time off just because they feel like it, neither can I.  There are going to be exceptions, of course, and this is by no means an accusation that anyone has been pressuring me to take time off to see them.  It’s just me stating where I need to be right now.  And that’s committing to writing as a career.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

Here’s where I break silence to admit this: I haven’t written anything of substance in two weeks.

It feels weird.  But I’ve realised that I pretty much haven’t had more than the odd week off from writing for at least several years.  And the years before that I was working on the PhD.  I guess my brain really wants a bit of a break.

But a break can only last so long.  I’ve caught up on a lot of sleep and some reading.  All fun reading, mind.  Which means that I still have a bunch of review reading (and review writing) to be done.  I really need to learn to not take on so much review work, really.  But I also need to properly catch up with it all.

The thing about taking a break is that I’ve pretty much lost my routine.  Which is always a killer for me.  First thing I need to do is re-establish my routine.  Which means that I need to stop faffing about online so much.  Discipline, I needs it.

So!  Tomorrow, I shall be making the effort to get back into it.  Sometimes I dream about being the kind of person who could treat writing as a nine to five job.  Hell, who am I kidding here – I pretty much dream about that all the time.  But the reality is different – I have other things that need to be done, and so I just need to find the happy medium.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.