Protect Your Boundaries, Feed Your Writing, by Lauren Sapala

Protecting your time as a writer comes down to learning how to use one magic word:

“No.”

It sounds simple, right?

But “no” is one of the hardest words to say—especially when it comes to pleasing others, indulging in things that catch our interest, and falling prey to procrastination.

Because although we like think of our precious time as being stolen from us, the truth is that we’re usually the ones giving it away.

When writers resolve to make more time for creative work, we frequently choose the strategy of setting up guard against distractions. But after a while we let down our guard, because it’s exhausting to keep fighting off every distraction as if it’s yet another mosquito. And everyone suffers from this approach. You feel harassed, and your family and friends feel deprived. It’s also very likely that your writing ends up feeling like more of a burden than a source of joy.

However, we can shift our strategy. We can refocus the perspective we hold toward our time and the way we implement boundaries to protect it. Instead of constant gate-keeping against distraction, we can build a gate that distraction never even gets past. By setting firm, appropriate boundaries around our time, we shift out of resentment and into empowerment, and everyone ultimately gets more.

You can start with two meetings a week.

The first meeting is between you and your writing. This meeting should ideally last for one hour. A quiet library or low-key café are great places to be by yourself, while benefiting from the white-noise buzz from others. It’s also a good idea to set the time and day for this meeting as a permanent fixture in your schedule so that there’s no putting it off or getting around it.

I meet with my writing every Thursday night at 6:30pm at a little café with delicious food and soft music playing in the background. I set my phone to silent and turn off my email. After three years of keeping this meeting everyone in my life now knows that, when it comes to Thursday nights around six, I’m busy.

Your second meeting of the week is your meeting with…you. This meeting is with your own creativity, and it works best with a little spontaneity thrown in. Give yourself two hours a week to do whatever you want, as long as it feeds your creative flame. If you want to sit in the park and do nothing, go for it. If you want to sit at home and finger paint, do it. If you want to go to the theater and watch a movie that you’re dying to see, give yourself free reign. The key is to block off these hours as a “meeting” and treat them as such.

I meet with my creativity on Saturday and Sunday mornings before anyone else in the house is awake. Sometimes I walk to the beach and meditate, or sometimes I read or watch a movie by myself. It might seem to anyone else that I’m not doing much of anything, but as an artist I know that this time with myself is crucial to my writing work. It’s my time to imagine and dream.

By using the term “meeting” you are telling yourself and others that your writing, and your time, is important and it should be respected. People understand that most meetings are necessary, that they are scheduled for a purpose, and that the people involved are trying to achieve valuable results. When you use language that carries these inferences it gets the point across that, when you’re in a meeting, you’re focused on important work and simply unavailable.

When you finish reading this post, sit down and think about your schedule for the next week. Zero in on one hour for writing, and then nail down another couple for yourself. Circle this time in red. From now on, your creative time has a sign on it that reads: Writing Zone. No Trespassing.

From this point forward, your time to imagine and write and dream gets first priority.

Follow Lauren

Blog: www.laurensapala.com

Twitter: @losapala

This blog post is Copyright Lauren Sapala 2013. All rights are reserved Internationally. You may not reproduce it in any form, in part of whole, without the author’s prior written permission. That includes usage in forms such as print, audio and digital imaging including pdf, jpg, png etc. A fee may be requested for re-use if it is for a commercial venture. Images used are from Open Clipart Sources and may be re-used.

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