Silences

It’s been a long time since I wrote here. I reached a 12 month milestone, celebrated it and then not long after, for some reason I cannot fathom, stopped cold dead, suddenly and completely silent.

What happened? Work took over my life in the main; a very busy and demanding work role, things to solve that could not be satiated, consuming the creative part of me. At night and on weekends, there was little left. It was definitely hard to create in this space. Some poor life choices too, like too much television, but sometimes it was all I could do. The reading, writing part of me I treasure so much languished sadly in this interchange.

This blog as for many, is a tool to keep me writing. In the post celebrating the first anniversary of ‘Transcending’, I spoke about my sense of achievement in keeping at it, ‘writing, researching, tuning in and reading others’, the value of writing, the process and the product. When I look back and read that post, it celebrates so much that is central to me, then comes to that screaming halt, one more post later and 180 days ago.

So time to transcend the silence, move on. It will take some doing; the work role remains insistent. I’ve reached for Tillie Olsen’s ‘Silences’ to help interpret it all. But in the end,  I can spend more time analysing the politics of it, reading about it, trying to understand the reasons for stalling but maybe it is best just to accept it happened for circumstantial reasons and move beyond.

As Anne Lamott exorts us in her article, ‘Time Lost and Found‘, it is really most likely to be an issue of choices, priorities and time management.

I’ve heard it said that every day you need half an hour of quiet time for yourself, or your Self, unless you’re incredibly busy and stressed, in which case you need an hour. I promise you, it is there. Fight tooth and nail to find time, to make it. It is our true wealth, this moment, this hour, this day.

I’m reading Kate Grenville’s ‘Searching for the Secret River‘ and am reminded through that journey of Kate’s writing experiences of the need for stealth and commitment.  Kate uses a whole arsenal of mantras to keep herself writing: ‘never have a blank page,’ ‘don’t wait for the mood’, ‘fix it up later’ and ‘don’t wait for time to write’. She further writes:

I learned to work in whatever slivers of time the day might give me – one of my favourite scenes in ‘Joan Makes History‘ was written in the car waiting to pick up Tom from a birthday party, on the only paper I could find, the inside of a flattened Panadol packet. I had slivers of time, so I wrote in slivers of words: a page here, a paragraph there. Eventually the slivers would add to something. (p145)

It really is so important, as Chris Guillebeau reminds us, to start with what you have, not wait for more and generally just to keep moving. So I begin again here and elsewhere, in slivers of words, in slivers of time, to counteract the silence of the blank page, moving on.

Gems #13 Time to write

I’m working on my annual review at present, reviewing 2010 and setting priorities for 2011. A consistent theme for me is about finding time to write. I work full-time in a very busy leadership role in the vocational education sector. I am passionate about my work and making a difference. At the same time, I am committed to creativity, writing and my personal goals. Making the time and space to write is a constant challenge.

Here are some gems I’ve come across recently, and in the past, about making time to write and basically getting on with it.

Anne Lamott’s article, Time Lost and Found, hit me pretty hard mainly because it rang so true. It’s about priorities in life, what matters and how we fritter away time and miss the important things. Her main message is that you need to make time for writing and other priorities and that this time can be found by having a good look at how you live. Twitter and other social media, television, cleaning, work and the gym are mentioned as areas where we might be losing time that we could allocate to our creative priorities such as writing. Anne says, in essence, that we do have this precious time and we can find it, though it might take some work to recover:

I’ve heard it said that every day you need half an hour of quiet time for yourself, or your Self, unless you’re incredibly busy and stressed, in which case you need an hour. I promise you, it is there. Fight tooth and nail to find time, to make it. It is our true wealth, this moment, this hour, this day.

An excellent article in last weekend’s Sydney Morning Herald Spectrum (January 22-23) by Australian author and teacher, Sue Woolfe, encourages us just to get on with it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the article online anywhere to link to but I can share the main points. Entitled,  ‘Don’t think about it – just keep scribbling’, Sue says that the way you need to work to write a novel is:

…to find a way of thinking that is mocked in our culture but that is all in the day’s work for artists, composers and writers.

This is a way based on discipline: reading fiction for an hour a day; writing for at least an hour a day; not rereading, editing or formulating and not sticking to a subject, character or plot when first writing. The whole focus is the discipline of writing and then later imposing other aspects such as narrative technique, plot structure and editing. In summary:

The whole endeavour is to lose self-consciousness.

However, it starts with those two fundamental ingredients: read fiction for an hour a day and write for at least an hour a day. Linking back to Anne Lamott’s article, the trick is to find this time by managing your priorities.

Some of my favourite practical articles on making time to write are by Australian blogger and author, Joanna Penn. Joanna lives and breathes this way of working and writing to come up with real outcomes such as completing her first novel, Pentecost and receiving a strong following and awards for her highly successful blog, The Creative Penn.

Joanna’s two posts: ‘On efficiency or how to get everything done as a multi-tasking writer,’ and ‘What will you give up to write your book?’ are perfect reads on the issue of writing and time and are grounded in practicality. Joanna’s tips include getting rid of the TV, sleeping less, maximising travel time, being organised and investing in education. Setting clear goals and priorities and ‘loving the process’ are also right up there as key motivators. 

As in Anne Lamott’s article, the emphasis is on the value of the outcomes spent on writing and other creative activities vs spending too much watching TV and engaging in an uncontrolled way with social media such as twitter. And as in Sue Woolfe’s article, the discipline to carry it all through is critical.

Now it’s back to my annual review with these valuable thoughts in mind. How are you making time to write this year?

Image, Time disappears by jtravism  from flickr and used under a Creative Commons license with thanks