Finding the Time...

How do you find the time to write?

This is the hardest question to answer.

Over the years I have come up with three ways to maximise the time that I can spend writing...

1. Double use your time

2. Mark out dedicated time

3. Delete distractions

Double use your time...

The best way to explain this is to give you a personal example.

I live and work on a farm. Most of my work involves chopping down and chopping up dead trees, brushcutting the edges of the fields, repairing the electric fencing,moving the horses from one field to another and taking food to the horses in the winter.

Although I need to concentrate on all of these jobs (especially the chainsawing), I am on my own (apart from, occassionally, the horses) and, as a result, can talk out loud, run dialogue and prose through my head and generally work on my writing whilst I work on the farm.

I generally don't try to write anything down although I may make cryptic notes in a small notebook. My reasoning is that... "If the words are any good, they'll stick in my mind and, if they're not and I forget them, they probably weren't worth the effort on the first place."

Strangely enough, this works quite well for me and I tend to start the evening writing session off with a decent head start.

Now, perhaps with my particular job, I have an advantage but, even before I moved to France, when I worked in the city I used to 20 minutes or so on the journey to and from work to write (also in a small notebook) and those cigarette breaks every hour...

They weren't for my health and I certainly wasn't that desperate for a fag; they were 10 minute writing sessions, on company time.

When I first moved to France I spent 6 years working in a pig abattoir - albeit in the less blood and guts part of it. For the first 3 months I used to put crates of little bits of dead pig on a conveyor belt for the girls to pack in cadboard boxes and then, for the next few years, I worked at the other end of the line, putting boxes of little bits of dead pig onto pallets.

Believe me, it wasn't very intelectual work!

Of course, this gave me time to write. Or, more specifically, watch the video of the film of the story I was working on in that private cinema in my head. Once again, writing on company time.

Strangely enough, because my bosses saw how hard I was concentrating, I got pay rises whilst my colleagues, who spent all their time nattering and complaining about how hard their work was, didn't. I used to get sent to Coventry for a week every time I got a pay rise; I didn't care - I was busy writing on company time.

Way back when I was still young (It is so weird being the same age as old people now) I used to out for rides on my bike. Not because I had anywhere particular to go (I didn't) or because my bikes were so sexy (they generally weren't) but just so that I could write, in my head, whilst riding somewhere, anywhere - it didn't matter at all.

Mark out dedicated time...

No matter how much of other people's time you use to prepare your writing, that's all you are doing, just preparing.

The big event happens when you actually get to put your words down on paper (or, a computer screen, these days.) For that you need dedicated time.

I used to have little rules to help me with this.

After work I wouldn't open that first bottle of wine (and, in those days it was always more than one) until I had done at least an hour's writing after work. On those days when the writing went well (and there were quite few of them) I'd often find that I'd been writing for two or three hours before hunger, and the lure of the corkscvrew, overcame me.

The same in the mornings.

I'd set my alarm an hour early and use that time for writing before I took my shower. It's amazing how much you can get done in an hour if you know that that's all you've got.

And I could never take a day off and have a lie in; that would mark me as a Would be writer - somone who talked about writing rather than actually doing it. Those people are up there with muderers, rapists and Arsenal supporters in my book.

Delete Distractions...

This may actually be the most important of them all.

On my writing PC I don't have a web browser or an email client. In fact, I've deleted everything that isn't absolutely essential to the act of writing. This means I don't get distracted.

Even though I live on my own, the door is closed and locked - my neighbours know not to knock.

I listen to music whilst I write - more to drown out other noises than because I like music. I listen to classical music - the same classical music all the time.

I don't want to be listening to rock or pop and suddenly hear a track that means something to me, personally.

I once lost a whole evening's writing because I was listening to the radio and they played "Echo Beach" by Martha and the Muffins.

I remembered the first time I heard that song - I was sixteen and desperately in love with a girl at college who didn't know that I existed. Then I found out that she was going out with an older boy; a boy who rode an RD400. How could I, an immature sixteen year old, compete with boys who rode RD400s?

I had this image of me sitting next to her at the canteen table at lunchtime; me gently stroking her neck in a grown up and seductive manner whilst taking intellectually about the story I was working on whilst, rather than purring in admiration, she was staring, lustfully, at the RD400 rider, across the table, who had just put Microns on his bike and, as a result could now do 50 mile an hour wheelies.

How could I compete with a boy who rode an RD400 - with Microns, to boot?

I was bound to be a virgin forever!

So, no more radio whilst writing.

Even pre-recorded rock or pop can distract. I can't hear Stairway to Heaven or Bohemian Rhapsody without stopping what I'm doing and doing the Air Guitar thing. I don't tend to do the Air Guitar thing if I'm listening to Brahm's first piano concerto.

My advice is to identify any possible distractions and remove them from your life.

Perhaps that's why I'm single?

“Well, that's my little ramble over and done with. If you're interested in writing yourself, you probably won't have learned anything worth learning from it and if you just like to read, there's only one thing I can say to you...”

Read to Live, Live to Read!

I hope that you have enjoyed this article.

All the best

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