Today’s writing tip is not about writing but about finding the time to write and to live a writer’s life. This is, in no small part, motivated by the fact that I am soon to be done with cubicle life and will be a full-time writer/freelancer. This means I am going to have to develop that has been missing for much of my life.

Even though I am still at the day job (22 working days left, if I were a counting down sort of person) I am starting to work toward the transition. I found an old book on my shelf and am rereading it with different eyes then when I first got it – A Writer’s Time by Kenneth Atchity.

Here are just a few snippets.

From the book:
“Productive people have a love affair with time, with all of love’s ups and downs. They get more from time than others, seem to know how to use time much better than nonproductive people-so much so that they can waste immense quantities of time and still be enormously creative and productive.”

My thoughts:
I know some people like that. They seem to have time for everything they want to do and time to waste and play and relax. I want to be more like that.

From the book:
“I firmly believe that anyone can be productive once the decision is made to master time and the necessary skills.”

My thoughts:
Oh man, I hope so. I think the key is making a decision you are willing to commit to, like changing eating habits or trying to stop smoking or exercise more. You can’t just say the words. You have to be willing, ready and willing, to walk the walk. For years I have just repeated the words about being a disciplined writer because the thought of becoming disciplined took more energy than it seemed like I had in me at the time. Here’s hoping that being off of work will give me the time to commit and to develop the disciplined state of mind.

From the book:
He talks about laying a foundation for your writing career. “Immerse yourself in the planning process and build the foundation, and take your satisfaction from the doing of it, not from the having done it…….Your career, you’ll discover, will take the shape of your foundation. ”

My thoughts:
I’ve always believed this, believed you should treat yourself as a professional long before you started paying taxes on your writing income. And for those of us who have been writing a long time, does that mean you can skip this? It depends? Is your writing career, your writing life, is it working out the way you want it to? If so, good for you. You must have your foundation firmly set into place. But if not, if you want more out of your writing life or you want to explore some new areas, maybe you can build an addition which, of course, begins with a strong foundation.

From the book:
“Before anything reaches paper, the business of being a writer is the business of developing self-awareness and honest introspection. Keats called the profession of writing “soul-making” and the first step toward success is recognizing the psychological discipline that writing requires.”

My thoughts:
No two ways around it, discipline is the answer. And here all along I had hoped the answer would involve chocolate. Darn.