TIME'S CURRENCY_IWSG POST

"You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.

Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land.  There is no other land; there is no life but this one."
 - Henry David Thoreau


"The cost of a thing is the amount of life required to be exchanged for it immediately or in the long run."
 - Henry David Thoreau



Time resides in the strange realm of grim mathematics: 

where he who works adds, and he who retires subtracts.



The question for this month is:  How do you find the time to write?

Mark Twain warned us that each day is a coin: we can spend it any way we wish BUT we can only spend it once.


The ledger that shows us how many coins are left to us is hidden beyond our sight.  We may have many coins of days or only a precious few.


Thoreau would ask us what we purchased with the irreplaceable coin of yesterday.


Our desperate dream to be a writer seduces us to spend those rare coins in a pursuit of a goal that many pursue but few reach.



HOW TO SQUEEZE THE MOST PENNIES OUT OF EACH DAY'S COIN?


What did Lewis Carroll write: "Oh, if I had but the time, and you had but the brain!"



1.) MAKE WRITING A HABIT SET TO A DEFINITE TIME


Discover the part of the day where you can squeeze in a few minutes and NO MATTER IF YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT TO WRITE, write! 


Promise yourself to write at least two sentences.  By the time you get to the end of the second, the third sentence will occur to you.


The water only comes on if you turn on the faucet.




2.) MARK YOUR TERRITORY


Pick a spot where you feel comfortable and safe from interruption.  Write there.  

The very sight of the surroundings will shift your mental gears into the writing mode after a month.


Every ship has its own berth, so should your writing mind.





3.) THE CROW-BAR APPROACH


Fifteen minutes of writing squeezed in three times a day come what may will get your book done faster than 30 minutes every Saturday.


Passing by the place where you write?  Pick up a pencil and jot down the first thing that occurs to you.  When you sit down again, reading that phrase will bring back more than you think.





4.) BLOOM WHERE YOU'RE PLANTED


I know what I said about your own writing place.  But do not sacrifice a great idea or a splash of time obeying routine. 

Get a great idea as you are drifting off?  Get out of bed, write a short paragraph, and you will sleep more relaxed.

Waiting in the doctor's office, standing in line at Wal-Mart, taking a shower ...


these minutes add up.  Make them count for something. 

Carry a small notebook and jot down those bits of dialogue or plot twists or descriptions of how a person moves or speaks.




5.) BE YOUR MOTHER-IN-LAW


Be Ruthless.  

Don't let yourself off the hook.  So you want to write a book?  Well, stop talking and start doing.  

Ever have a maddening itch you couldn't get to?  You found a way, didn't you?

If you want something bad enough, you find a way.

Facebook calling you with cute kitten videos?  Ignore it and them, ignore the urge to check in on your friends, and WRITE ... or stop calling yourself a writer.



6.) BE A MULE

Look at all the famous writers.  It was not their talent.  It was their sheer stubbornness that drove them to keep writing until things turned around for them.

Set a writing goal and stick to it.  Didn't write the number of words you wanted?  In the attempt, you wrote more than if you had given up.




7.) ENTER THE TIME OF STRANGER THINGS

Emails and cell phones do not exist once you sit in YOUR WRITING SPACE.  Break your email and cell phone addiction.

And many are addicted to them both.  Dare to go HOURS without either. 

Have we gotten so terrified of being alone with our thoughts that solitude is threatening somehow?

Use an hourglass or a kitchen timer to go A WHOLE HOUR without checking your email or touching your cell phone and WRITE!

Our concentration and attention span have become fragmented by our obsession with social cyber communication.

Without time for contemplation and reflection our creativity resources have become shallow and dried up.


8.) YOU DONE GOOD

Write any at all on a day when you didn't think you couldn't a sentence?  Reward yourself in some small, meaningful way.


Promise yourself that lusted-for second cup of coffee when you finish one more page. 


Hey, those gold stars worked in Kindergarten.   :-)



A WORD OF CAUTION


Yes, we want to prosper in writing, but please do not overlook the loved ones or hurting ones in your life to follow the Will O' Wisp of Success.



Remember the words of Charles Dickens:

"No space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused."

Just because I wanted to: