On Making My Writing Time Matter
Mar. 16th, 2014 12:16 pm
Somewhere along the way, those thousands of daily words began to sound immense. Part of it was the paralysis of acquired knowledge—that second guessing of every phrase because you're thinking of what the story ought to look like after it's been edited and polished rather than thinking of just writing the damned story. Part of it was the internalization of the "appropriate" writing schedule as slow and measured. And part of it was the increasingly complicated life and schedule before me. A thousand words a day? Damn, that became a stretch.
Here is the contradiction I face today: I don't have time to write slowly—not only because my writing time is slim and often broken, but because I can't build the career I want on one book every twelve to eighteen months. But unless I quit all other work, including parenting and homeschooling, I couldn't see how to make that happen. I just couldn't get any umph in my productivity.
