Family Matters

What exactly is it that you do when you write? When asked, most writers would probably answer with something along the lines of, "I take inert jumbles of ideas, dreams, and inspirations and turn them into compelling reading." Or perhaps that's not precisely how you would phrase it, but however you would, I've noticed that most writers almost always omit one key ingredient.

Time.

Very few of us are gifted with the ability to just sit down at the keyboard, cold, and bang out good copy in one draft as fast as we can type. Good writing takes time: a lot of time. Thinking time, planning time, researching time, writing time, rewriting time, re-rewriting time; at my most productive, I've been able to produce 3,000 words of publishable copy a day. At my worst, I've spent all day sweating over a single paragraph and then thrown it out the next day and started all over again.

Where does this time come from?

Most of us, unfortunately, steal it from the rest of our lives. The habit probably starts in childhood: we daydream in school; we scribble notes and draw pictures in the margins of our class notes; we make up stories on the playground, call them games, and try to get the other kids to play along. Nascent writers always seem to live inside their own heads far more than other children do, and the gap between what's inside their heads and what they can externalize probably accounts for why they quickly develop a reputation for being "weird"—which in turn, of course, reinforces the desire to look even further inward, until eventually the lucky ones develop the communication skills to pull that interior life out of their heads and put it out on media, in a form others can assimilate and enjoy.

At least, I think they're the lucky ones. I may be wrong.

Absent electroshock, the habits developed in childhood stick with you through life. Writers are legendary for being indifferent college students who drop out, and for screwing off at work and thinking about writing when they should be working. Even Isaac Asimov once got fired for thinking about a story he was writing when he should have been thinking about work.

Again, the lucky ones learn to compartmentalize. (The really lucky ones become so successful so quickly that they never have to learn how to do anything but write, but let's leave the lottery winners out of this discussion for the moment.) It has taken me years, but I've learned to build rigid barriers between my work life and my writing life. This actually gives me a slight edge in my professional life, as I'm able to reserve all my natural egotism and arrogance for non-work hours, thus giving my co-workers and employers the illusion that I'm easy to get along with. But that also accounts for at least 50 daylight hours a week.

So where does the creative writing time come from?

I don't know about you, but as for me, I'm afraid that for most of the past thirty years I've stolen it from my family, in the form of evening and weekend hours. The thing is, I didn't even realize I was doing this until #2 Daughter called me on it. She was in college, and we were talking about life after college and careers and all that when she blurted out, "I don't want to be like you, Dad."

Say what?

"You're always working. Even when you're not working, you're thinking about working. I want to have a life, and a family, and friends."

She's right, of course, and so I have slowly learned to recompartmentalize my life. My writing time is now the hour or so before dawn, while the rest of the family is still asleep. Normally I monkey with the time stamps on these posts to make it appear that I'm far more organized than I really am. This morning I'm leaving the actual time stamp on this post, to illustrate the point. It took me about an hour and a half to write this post, including interruptions for biological necessities, letting the dog out, getting the coffee pot going, letting the dog back in, etc., etc., etc., etc. The chronic insomnia I've had for the past month helps, in a perverse way. (Don't worry. I'll make it up by taking a nap this afternoon, while the Vikings are losing to the Steelers.)

I don't know if these 1,000 words are meaningful, in any long-term metaphysical sense. But I do know that while you're busy writing, your children are busy having lives, with or without you in the picture. And the time you choose to take away from their lives now is time you don't get back later.

Let's talk.

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FAMILY MATTERS posts at 7 a.m. each Sunday and is dedicated to serious discussions of marriage, family, children, human sexuality, and all the other things that writers ignore when they cocoon in their offices and try to create fiction. This series will run until we either run out of things to talk about, solve all the problems in the world, or you tell me to shut up and go get some professional therapy. If you have a question you'd like to ask or a topic you'd like to expound upon, send it to slushpile@thefridaychallenge.com and we'll work it into the queue.