There's Never a Perfect Time

A friend of mine, who is a school teacher, once mentioned that when life settled down she would love to write a children's book. "Why wait?" I said. "There will never be a perfect time."

My answer was a bit simplistic, I know. My friend is very busy with the demands of work and family.   I understand what it's like trying to find a little time for oneself and how the muse doesn't always cooperate when that sliver of time opens up. Right now, I'm watching my daughters run through the sprinkler on the front lawn and I'm holding my breath, hoping it will occupy them long enough for me to jot down a few thoughts. This is the only quiet time I will have today. If I don't seize this brief opportunity this week's blog post will never happen.

This is life. We have so many responsibilities we forsake the things we really want to do. Yet how many of these responsibilities are truly necessary? Maybe fewer than we think. How much free time do we actually have? Maybe more than we realize. A little web surfing, a little TV. There is breathing room in our days, but we've found ways to fill it. Ways that might feel like we're doing something substantive but leave us feeling drained, dissatisfied. Why do we compulsively check our email all day long when we say we'd like to spend more time reading? Why do we rob ourselves of even things that bring us pleasure?

Time isn't really the the obstacle--it's fear. It's easy to postpone our dreams by blaming our schedules. It takes the pressure off. Deciding to finally take that leap into the unknown is terrifying. We are afraid to fail. Committing to action is to court disaster. So we hide behind our to-do list. It's safer that way. The decision seems to be made for us.

Time is our enemy in that we have only a finite amount of it. How much? No one knows. When we are young, we foolishly believe time is a luxury. This is not to say we should spend every minute being productive. We should spend as much of our time as we can doing what fulfills us--not on empty habits or on pleasing those who do not occupy a place in our immediate circle of family and friends. If we don't act now, then when? There will always be a problem or two plaguing us, an inbox that never empties, another holiday around the corner. There will always be an excuse we can point to  if we allow it. Years can slip away before we notice.

The perfect time is now. But it doesn't have to happen all at once.

I suggested to my friend that she buy a beautiful notebook and a pen just to jot down a some ideas. Spend a few minutes every day or week on it. Let go of outcomes, expectations. Make it fun. Just start.

Now.

You Can Have It All--Just Not at the Same Time

The winter blues have officially set in—and not just because we're buried in fifteen inches of new snow and vacation is now a fading memory. It dawned on me this morning that in June it will be five years since my novel, THE GREATEST MAN IN CEDAR HOLE, was released in hardcover.

Oh, my. Time has certainly slipped away from me.

Knowing that five years have passed and I have not published anything makes me feel quite panicky, I assure you, though I’m a little less panicky than I used to be. The first and second anniversaries of the paperback edition gave me the prickly sweats and led to many sleepless nights. If I had had a project in the pipeline, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But I had nothing. I was losing momentum. The more I white-knuckled it, the harder it was to write.

So, I relaxed. An idea finally did come to me, but the problem was more about time than will. Being the mother of very active, preschool-aged twins leaves me with very little mental or physical energy to be productive. It used to be that when I had a moment to be still, a narrative would constantly be flowing in my head. Now, when I find that rare moment of quiet, I hear nothing.

When I started my writing career, I was single, living in New York, and producing four books a year as a ghostwriter in addition to working full-time at a literary agency. I lived with a constant adrenaline rush, always facing a deadline or having a book coming out. It felt great to be doing the very thing I loved the most. In six years, I produced 14 books, though I won’t pretend for a minute that ghostwriting teen books is anywhere as difficult as writing an adult literary novel. It took me five years to do that, largely because I am a very slow, deliberate writer.

I remember a conversation I had with some housemates (I lived in a boarding house) about work and relationships, and someone brought up an old adage that has many different permutations, but his version was this: “You can have a great relationship, a great social life, and a career, but not all three at the same time.” Everyone at the table looked at me, as though I was the apparent exception to this, but I assured them that even though I had a great relationship and a career I loved, I had no social life at all. This seemed to bring great relief to my housemates, who all felt that they were lacking in some aspect of this trinity of happiness.

I used to think that people who complained about not being able to “have it all” just weren’t trying hard enough, but now I’m thinking that the rule of three is probably true for most of us. I still have the great relationship (and now family life), I have a great network of friends (though some of you keep moving away), but at the moment, no career. There are some people who appear to have no trouble with this balancing act—Soule Mama, for example—but I have yet to figure out the trick to having success on all fronts. Every time I focus on one aspect of my life—writing, for example—something else goes to hell, like the housekeeping. Every time I put out a fire, I inadvertently start a new one someplace else.

I take the edge off my panic by telling myself that there is a time for everything, and right now, it’s my time to be a mother. In two years they’ll be in school full time and I’ll have a much easier time with my juggling act, so enjoy the moment. And I really do. But I’ll never fully surrender to literary idleness, either. My moments of creation are so rare but they still give me such deep satisfaction that giving up just isn’t an option. As far as my career goes, I'm thinking I may have to re-adjust my expectations just a little.

(P.S. If anyone familiar with Blogger can help me with my inconsistent fonts, I would really appreciate it. For some reason, I can't fix this problem.)

Cleaning House

Happy New Year to all! I, for one, was very happy to see 2008 go—it was not my favorite year by a longshot. I think 2009 is very promising. I’m feeling enthusiastic and energetic. Maybe this is the year I’ll have the time to make some serious headway on my novel. I’ve just spent the morning reading bits of what I’ve written and I’m really happy with what I have so far.

I’m not normally one for New Year’s resolutions. I agree with Puzzle Master Will Shortz—self-improvement can take place any time of year, not just on January 1st. That being said, I have a few simple writing-related goals in mind and now is as good a time as any to get cracking. Here they are, in no particular order:

1) Clean My Desk. As you can see from the picture above, it’s a bit cluttered. Unfortunately, I don’t have separate areas for writing and general household management, so my writing space has become a dumping ground for everything, including toys (note the Barbie on the far right). Normally, the mess doesn’t prevent me from writing, but just looking at it can drain my energy.

2) Speak Correctly. In high school, I made the conscious effort to sound more “folksy” so I wouldn’t be accused of being “nerdy”. Dumb idea. If I really wanted to avoid being nerdy, I should have quit the math team and the marching band. Instead, I developed a life-long bad habit of using words like “gonna”, which I’m finding impossible to break myself from. Someday, if Charlie Rose calls for an interview and I haven’t broken my habit, I’m gonna be mortified.


3) Read More. I am embarrassed to say that I spend very little time reading. Stephen King once said something along the lines of: “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have time to write.” His meaning, of course, was that writing and reading go hand in hand—you can’t be a good writer if you don’t read. Very true. I also take it as an affirmation: I have very little time to write and my lack of reading is proof. I actually read all kinds of things during the day—catalogs, magazines, children’s books, online articles—but what I truly need is more good fiction.

4) Write More. Sometimes I develop an all-or-nothing attitude toward writing. If I don’t have a significant block of time to write, it doesn’t seem worth making the attempt. While it’s hard to dig deep during short spurts, I think I need to try writing even when I only have ten minutes to spare.

5) Brush Up. I feel like there are giant holes in my general knowledge—particularly of history and grammar—that need filling. I’m going to dig out that old Strunk & White and some history books and try to plug the holes.

If you have any goals for 2009, I’d love to hear about them.