Two Hours a Day
Spring and early summer were unusually busy for me, workwise. And then the middle of summer was largely taken up with a family vacation, helping my mother move, getting our house ready for my mother-in-law to move in, etc.
All that is mostly settled now, however. And the question now is, how much time can I realistically put into my creative writing? And will that be enough for me to get anywhere?
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There’s power in putting time into doing things. There’s no guarantee, of course, that hours spent tapping away at the keyboard will translate into wonderful and eloquent writings. But it’s pretty clear that without the hours, chances of it ever happening drop to zero.
A while back, I calculated (not very scientifically) that in light of my writing speed and process, I probably need to put in a minimum of four hours a day on my story writing, 5-6 days a week, in order to build up a decent enough momentum to actually have a fiction writing career. That includes both general research (e.g., reading about medieval technology, soil types, climate, etc.) as well as writing activities: worldbuilding, outlining, writing, and rewriting. It doesn’t include marketing efforts, since I need to get that far before that becomes an issue; nor does it include peripheral activities like participation in my writing group.
This doesn’t seem like it should be that hard a goal. In particular, it doesn’t seem like it should be a hard goal to reach on weeks when I have 20 hours or less of paid work to do, which to be honest describes a pretty fair proportion of my weeks. And yet I seldom or never find it possible to put in that much time. Why is that the case?
One reason, I think, is that my brain gets exhausted. After a certain amount of time on a particular project, it’s hard for me to focus on it anymore. I also find that with my creative writing in particular, if I put in large amounts of time, it starts raising the emotional bar in ways that make it harder for me to face writing at all.
And then there are the distractions, of which there are many. Indeed, the fundamental question that determines whether I will have any kind of creative writing career at all will very likely be whether I can make myself write instead of goofing off, reading fanfiction, etc. That’s a question as yet largely unanswered.
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And so my current goal is to put in two hours a day.
Advantages of this goal are that it is small enough to be feasible. It’s a rare day when I can’t fit in two hours, if I try — especially when that includes reading general interest nonfiction books. It’s small enough not to be intimidating.
Two hours a day creates a certain consistency and keeps me engaged in my writing. Most days, it’s possible for me to come up with one or two new ideas: a new character or plot point, landmark, or magical ceremony. I currently find that this kind of piecemeal creativity works better than brainstorming everything at once, or (worse yet) trying to invent it all as I write the story.
And two hours a day is enough for me to make perceptible progress. I’ve seen my plot ideas start evolving. My electronic notes files are growing. I’ve even started making progress on the stack of papers where I’ve jotted down ideas from times past: processing these, turning them into part of a mental framework for the story I’m currently writing. While I don’t as yet have significant draft pages to look at, it nonetheless feels like I’m going somewhere.
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Someday, I think, I will need to accelerate. Someday I’ll need to put in four hours a day or more. It may even happen more or less automatically, as things start coming together and I’m further into the process of actual drafting. I can only hope.
In the meanwhile, two hours is better than nothing.
