“But I don’t have time!”
That’s the single most common thing I hear as a writing coach.
And as long as you keep telling yourself this, it’ll be true.
Consider: if you’ve got time to scroll social media (the average is 4 hours per day); if you’ve got time to watch a few hours of your favourite streaming service every day, then you have time that you can reassign to writing your book. IF it’s important enough to you, that is.
It’s a privileged position to *have* this time to reassign, of course it is.
But if you do have disposable time you’re choosing to use one way, then you can choose to use it in another.
And that’s the thing. We resist making that choice.
My first port of call for people who say they don’t have time to write is to figure out where they’ve got chunks of disposable time. And then the decisions become a mindset thing rather than a practical thing.
Of course, some of us work full time and also have people who depend on us every day, so we’re already not ahead with chunks of disposable time we can reassign.
This is where things get political.
Usually it’s women or caregivers who are in this position, and while Woolf wrote ‘A Room of One’s Own’ in 1929 it’s still relevant today: we don’t assign importance (time and resources) to voices that aren’t centred in public discourse (those who are centred are usually white, cis men).
That the people I work with usually need to work through feelings of guilt for taking the time to write, but also have guilt for not writing, is exactly where it suits patriarchy and capitalism to have us.
When the feelings are not pleasant ones, and they’re coming at us from all sides, we’d rather just stay quiet and not go there. This of course keeps us silent on issues that matter to us.
I’d like to offer another way.
I’d like for us to be our own advocates.
I’d like for us to choose ourselves, make the time and then write the things that we have in us that need to be written.
The crucial thing is that this is hard to do by ourselves. (And the stereotypical image of the solitary writer has a lot to answer for here!)
Having a community of writers who know the emotional quagmire we’re dealing with, helps.
Having a cheer squad who get how carving a half hour out of our day to write is a major feat sometimes, helps.
Having a crew who remind us that our writing matters, that the inspiration is meaningful, that our words are needed, helps.
And it’s not just an empty thing: over time, having this sort of support fundamentally changes the way we think of ourselves as writers. As people with something to say. We grow into our writing selves, and give ourselves the grace of our own acceptance.
And that makes all the difference.
Tamara xx
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