Making Time When You Have None

2010-01-09T20:04:00.000-08:00

In The Stowaway: Stone of Tymora Series, by R.A. & Geno Salvatore, the main character Maimun is told by his mentor to complete a task within a certain amount of time. At the end of the time period, the mentor asks why Maimun has not completed the task. The young man rationalizes and argues that he had no time to do so, that his days were too busy. The mentor points out that the boy had time to work, to eat, to sleep, and to play, and yet did not complete the task.

The mentor then says, it is not about having enough time, it's about how much time you have to spare.

The hardest thing about having a passion is making time for it. We make time for work, to eat, to sleep. It's easy to say that these things necessitate the time spent doing them, and it's true, they do!

But even if you ate 6 buffet meals a day and worked over time and slept a full night's sleep (probably the least likely of the three), that wouldn't make up all the 168 hours in a week.

Where does my time go? Why do I spend so much time doing things I don't want to do and so little time doing the one thing that makes me feel more alive than anything else? As I watch my word count bar remain stagnant, I wonder: where do the hours go? Eating, sleeping, working. But where is the living? Where is the writing

Time is. How much of it will I spend not writing?

2010: 1 Year, 1 Resolution

2009-12-31T18:42:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year, world!

Every new year I fall into the same routine that so many others do. I make resolutions that, by February, have fizzled into nothing. There's the typical, from managing my budget and losing fifteen pounds, to the extreme, like learning a new language or stalking Orlando Bloom.

This year, I will make only one resolution: I'm going to write. Everyday. Shooting for about 1,000 words a day, most days of the week, for a total of 350,000 by the end of 2010.

The idea for this started in November, when I came across a slice of insanity: NaNoWriMo. "Thirty days and nights of literary abandon!" Excited, enchanted, I jumped in feet first and for 30 days was a mess of woman, constantly babbling about word counts and word padding and plot twists. What came out was 50,001 words of absolute garbage, a chaotic disaster of shallow characters and barely recognizable plot.

I loved every minute of it.

Inspired by my success, I looked for something bigger, something more long term. Finding the WriYe project was exactly what I needed, a way to make myself accountable for writing everyday of my life.

For I now know the reason that all those other resolutions always failed: They weren't important. Sure, I wouldn't mind dropping a few dress sizes or cutting back on shoe purchases. But in the end, the desire to have a smaller waist or more bucks in the bank just wasn't as important as sharing ice cream and pie with my fiance or being free with gifts to friends on their birthdays.

Writing, however, has always been important, and I think so important that it never occurred to me to make it a "must," to make myself accountable for it daily.

In the year 2010, I shall have only 1 resolution, a year of writing. What comes out during those 365 will probably be just as awful and unreadable as what was produced during 30 days.

But I know I'm going to love every minute of it.

By Any Other Name

Making Time When You Have None

2010: 1 Year, 1 Resolution