Catherine Egan's Blog - Posts Tagged "finding-time-to-write"
On finding / making time to write
Dear Blog,
Here is something I have heard a lot since Shade and Sorceress was published and I started prancing around saying la la la I’m a novelist I’m a novelist to everybody I met: “I don’t know how you found the time to write a book while taking care of two little kids.” I enjoy hearing this, actually, because it makes me sound very disciplined, or like a time-management genius, although I am neither of those things. I generally reply breezily, “well, I write during naptime,” and leave it at that. I have more to say about it, but nobody really wants the long answer. Except you, blog! Right? You want the long answer, don’t you? Isn’t that why you exist? So here it is.
Everybody I know is busy. Last weekend That Guy took the boys to the park and I raced around trying to make our apartment look less like insane, drunken squatters live here (because that is decidedly not the case – we pay rent). While I was digging lego pieces out of the back of the dishwasher, I thought wrathfully about the expressions “finding time” and “making time” – like you could go rooting around in the basement and turn up some extra minutes somebody left there once– or like you could create it somehow, if only you had the right ingredients – and then while everybody else scrambled through their 24 hours and into the next 24, you’d have jars full of spare hours tucked away in the closet and could take one out when you needed it, for a nice long shower, a snooze, or a quiet afternoon to revise that troublesome chapter seven.
But there are no extra hours. There is always too much to do. If you manage to do one thing, it’s because you are not doing another thing. I write for two hours, every day, while LittleK naps and LittleJ has Quiet Time and then watches something on the kindle. The price for that time, of course, is all the things that don’t get done because #IAmWriting.
Around 4 o’clock, a sudden wail, Moooo-oooo-ooommyyy, comes from LittleK’s room, which means my time is up. The floor is sticky from who-knows what, there are crumbs under the table and dishes piled on the counter, toys and books scattered everywhere. I need to go to the post office, and I didn’t buy groceries or do any dinner prep. LittleK wakes up miserable and clingy, and LittleJ is clamoring to go out after his two hours of neglect. I contemplate going straight from the post office to the grocery store with both of them, then coming back and trying to keep them relatively happy while I cook supper, but can’t face it. So after the post office we go to the snowy park for half an hour until it is too cold and dark, and pick up chicken shawerma for supper at the corner market on the way back.
And I am annoyed with myself for doing takeout two nights already this week, I am embarrassed by the state of our apartment, I am depressed by the huge pile of laundry I need to get through this evening when really I just want to read or hang out with That Guy and I am so short on sleep and why does LittleK have to wake up at the crack of are-you-fucking-kidding-me in the mornings, and seriously, seriously, is somebody playing a joke and stealing single socks or single mittens from every pair we have?
Then That Guy comes home and does the dishes, and the boys climb all over him, and the three of them build a lego house for LittleK’s stuffed cat while I pick up a bit and then sit at the table and stare at them with glazed eyes, thinking, I should really sweep. The chicken shawerma is pretty good. After the boys go to bed I do the laundry, and That Guy sweeps. I make pancake batter, and he makes the pancakes so that I can wash the sticky floor, but instead I just stand there and watch him make the pancakes, offering commentary. We wrap up 25 little pancakes and put them in the freezer. There is a point in the evening when productivity runs aground, flops a bit, and dies. I say, “I should really wash the floor,” and sigh deeply. He says, “I’ll do it,” and looks dejected. We stand there a moment, and then I say, guiltily, “We could watch another episode of Game of Thrones. Just one, though.” “Right,” he says, cheering up. “Just one episode.”
There is a way in which we are always losing. There is no time to be found – down in the basement, under the floorboards, in the dragon’s lair, anywhere. There is no time to be made – no secret recipe guarded by dusty, dying wizards, no method lost to humankind from some early time-filled era. There are only things to give up, and battles to lose, in order to make room for some other, tiny victory. The floor is still sticky, it is closing on midnight, and LittleK will be up in five hours. But the kids are OK, and I am writing a book. I’m not proud of the filthy apartment, and I am tired, but I can live with it.
La la la I’m a novelist I’m a novelist,
Catherine
Here is something I have heard a lot since Shade and Sorceress was published and I started prancing around saying la la la I’m a novelist I’m a novelist to everybody I met: “I don’t know how you found the time to write a book while taking care of two little kids.” I enjoy hearing this, actually, because it makes me sound very disciplined, or like a time-management genius, although I am neither of those things. I generally reply breezily, “well, I write during naptime,” and leave it at that. I have more to say about it, but nobody really wants the long answer. Except you, blog! Right? You want the long answer, don’t you? Isn’t that why you exist? So here it is.
Everybody I know is busy. Last weekend That Guy took the boys to the park and I raced around trying to make our apartment look less like insane, drunken squatters live here (because that is decidedly not the case – we pay rent). While I was digging lego pieces out of the back of the dishwasher, I thought wrathfully about the expressions “finding time” and “making time” – like you could go rooting around in the basement and turn up some extra minutes somebody left there once– or like you could create it somehow, if only you had the right ingredients – and then while everybody else scrambled through their 24 hours and into the next 24, you’d have jars full of spare hours tucked away in the closet and could take one out when you needed it, for a nice long shower, a snooze, or a quiet afternoon to revise that troublesome chapter seven.
But there are no extra hours. There is always too much to do. If you manage to do one thing, it’s because you are not doing another thing. I write for two hours, every day, while LittleK naps and LittleJ has Quiet Time and then watches something on the kindle. The price for that time, of course, is all the things that don’t get done because #IAmWriting.
Around 4 o’clock, a sudden wail, Moooo-oooo-ooommyyy, comes from LittleK’s room, which means my time is up. The floor is sticky from who-knows what, there are crumbs under the table and dishes piled on the counter, toys and books scattered everywhere. I need to go to the post office, and I didn’t buy groceries or do any dinner prep. LittleK wakes up miserable and clingy, and LittleJ is clamoring to go out after his two hours of neglect. I contemplate going straight from the post office to the grocery store with both of them, then coming back and trying to keep them relatively happy while I cook supper, but can’t face it. So after the post office we go to the snowy park for half an hour until it is too cold and dark, and pick up chicken shawerma for supper at the corner market on the way back.
And I am annoyed with myself for doing takeout two nights already this week, I am embarrassed by the state of our apartment, I am depressed by the huge pile of laundry I need to get through this evening when really I just want to read or hang out with That Guy and I am so short on sleep and why does LittleK have to wake up at the crack of are-you-fucking-kidding-me in the mornings, and seriously, seriously, is somebody playing a joke and stealing single socks or single mittens from every pair we have?
Then That Guy comes home and does the dishes, and the boys climb all over him, and the three of them build a lego house for LittleK’s stuffed cat while I pick up a bit and then sit at the table and stare at them with glazed eyes, thinking, I should really sweep. The chicken shawerma is pretty good. After the boys go to bed I do the laundry, and That Guy sweeps. I make pancake batter, and he makes the pancakes so that I can wash the sticky floor, but instead I just stand there and watch him make the pancakes, offering commentary. We wrap up 25 little pancakes and put them in the freezer. There is a point in the evening when productivity runs aground, flops a bit, and dies. I say, “I should really wash the floor,” and sigh deeply. He says, “I’ll do it,” and looks dejected. We stand there a moment, and then I say, guiltily, “We could watch another episode of Game of Thrones. Just one, though.” “Right,” he says, cheering up. “Just one episode.”
There is a way in which we are always losing. There is no time to be found – down in the basement, under the floorboards, in the dragon’s lair, anywhere. There is no time to be made – no secret recipe guarded by dusty, dying wizards, no method lost to humankind from some early time-filled era. There are only things to give up, and battles to lose, in order to make room for some other, tiny victory. The floor is still sticky, it is closing on midnight, and LittleK will be up in five hours. But the kids are OK, and I am writing a book. I’m not proud of the filthy apartment, and I am tired, but I can live with it.
La la la I’m a novelist I’m a novelist,
Catherine
