I’ll admit. There was a period in my life when I didn’t sympathize with anyone who moaned about a lack of time to write.

Life was radically different for me back then.

I lived alone in a streamside apartment overlooking Mount Tremper. With vast savannahs of time spread out before me, I had a full-fledged writing practice. Accompanied by mourning doves, cardinals, and the river rushing down the mountain, my writing spells were broken only for food, yoga, and mid-day siestas spent lying on a giant rock in the middle of the stream.

Life was simple. Uncluttered. Harmonic.

In two years I finished a short story collection, wrote a series of essays on the craft of fiction, and earned my MFA. I must have read something like two-hundred-and-fifty books. And I was healthier, fitter, and calmer than ever.

Around this time I also met and fell in love with my then soul mate, Ian. Within a few years, we gave birth to our daughter Safira.

Priorities shifted in epic proportions.

And for the first time in my life, I relinquished all control over my time.

To say my relationship to my work changed dramatically is an understatement. No more writing in solitude and silence. No more eight-hour stretches of uninterrupted flow. Nope. I wrote with my baby beside me, under me, over me, on top of me.

As she grew from toddler to preschooler, my weeks became even more jam-packed.

There were day trips to caves, museums, parks, and lakes. Play dates, costume parades, and fairy-themed birthday parties. At home was the constant surge of meal and snack production, perpetual laundry, and a house that, most days, looked like it had been ransacked by wild chimpanzees.

Meanwhile, project upon project piled up on my queue: manuscripts to edit, coaching calls to deliver, books to outline, workshops to prepare. Revisions. More revisions. Always revisions…

To frustrate matters, Safira rarely napped and was typically, most nights, still leaping off furniture until around midnight.

Which was about the time I’d finally sit down to write. Not exactly my brightest hour, as you might have guessed by now.

So what was an unschooling work-from-home writer-mama to do?

I tried everything.

I renounced minor pleasures like Netflix and HBO.

Deferred house cleaning to the point that, to have friends visit, we required at least a 48-hour lead time.

Negotiated with Ian to take on the lion share of gardening, house clean up, and organization.

I just about stopped doing yoga, my one pillar of sanity.

I pleaded. I blamed. Yelled. Burst into tears.

Yet, for all the fragmented time I dropped back into my writing cache, I didn’t have much to show. For every page I managed to eke out, there were multitudes of drafts, all on the brink of completion, but not a single one finished.

So these days, when someone tells me they don’t have enough time to write, I get it. I sympathize. Really, I do.

But I’m still not letting you off the hook.

The Myth of Time Management

To paraphrase something the author Stephen Covey once said, we can’t manage time. We can only manage ourselves.

Because let’s face it. Time is not really the problem.

We all have plenty of it. We all have a say in how we use it. Yet we often squander the hours available to us. And sometimes in the most inane ways.

I used to fire up the Internet first thing every morning. I’d respond to emails. Read a stream of online newsletters. Check in on my Facebook friends, add my two cents to their updates. Hop on Twitter.

Before I knew it, I had frittered away the better part of my morning.

When I turn off the Internet, when I say “no” to low-level distractions, I get reams more writing done. And the most mileage out of my time.

What can you say “no” to?

Make Writing A Priority

Then schedule everything else around it.

It’s not about cramming more into our day. It’s about stripping down to the few things that really matter. And then making those things absolute and non-negotiable.

If writing isn’t the first thing I give myself before anything else, the rest of my day is, for the most part, shot. I’m tightly wound, ready to unspool and explode at the slightest infraction. Sure, I can survive a day or two without my fix, but beyond that, I’m pretty unbearable to be around.

Of course, there will always be things we must do, like it or not. Writing can’t always take front row and center. But scrubbing the tub or reloading the dishwasher can usually be put off until after we’ve written our pages. Laundry, phone calls, paperwork — all these can be tackled a little at a time during scheduled writing breaks.

It’s all about energy. Not time.

Time is finite. And for most of us, increasingly scarce.

But even if we have just one hour a day to devote to our writing, we can get a lot more done – and done brilliantly – if we’re firing on all cylinders.

How can we level up our energy?

For starters, we can swap out processed, canned, and sprayed food for real, whole, organic food. We can load at least half our plates with leafy greens. Drink less alcohol. Minimize caffeine. Avoid refined sugar. And get our bodies moving; a brisk fifteen- to twenty-minute walk, or ten- minute jump on the trampoline can do wonders.

There’s is a relationship between your health and your creative output. Your body is your operating system. Upgrade your operating system, and your writing will soar accordingly.

Define Your Ideal Writing Scenario

Then move closer to it.

Maybe you write best in crowded cafes with jazz pulsing in the background. Or late at night while everyone else in the house is asleep.

My ideal setting is early morning, wrapped in solitude and silence. It’s not the amount of time I crave so much, it’s the quality of it. Uninterrupted. Focused. Pure.

Not easy to come by in a house teeming with life.

So recently, I did something radical. Something I always knew I should do, but never believed I had the pluck to pull off.

I began waking up early. Very, very early.

Nowadays, almost without exception, I rise between 5:00 and 5:30 a.m. The silence, the sense of expansion and creative liberation is sacred. And it’s the closest I can get to that ideal writing space I luxuriated in before becoming CEO of my household.

These days, I can outline a book, edit a manuscript, revise a short story, maybe even slip in a brief meditation — all before Ian and Safira even stagger out of bed. Any writing I do during the balance of the day is a bonus.

When I take the reigns and create my own oasis of writing time, rather than demand my family bend to my will and create it for me, writing and everything else that follows, becomes easier. Time stops being this unwieldy force I have to wrestle, control, and conquer.

I may not be writing all day, every day like I used to. And yes, my house is still a mess. But I’ve produced far more work in the past few months than I have in the last three years. And I’m moving ever closer to my ideal.

 

How about you? Is time getting between you and your writing? What are you doing about it?