At times it seems that, no matter how many hours you could add to the day, it would not be near enough. At every turn there is something else making ridiculous demands on your time. Sleep, hunger, the need to poop, are all finicky bastards who are clamoring for your attention. Then, despite the base instincts these needs tug at, they are constantly thrust aside by other demons, like work, family, time spent carrying shopping bags for my wife and, God forbid, a little writing.
I now have the final edits, sent by my publisher, for my story “The Watch”. There is not much left to be done, as this is the “copy edit” and seems to be mostly just touch up of grammatical errors and typos. There are no major story changes that need to be made, and nothing structural that needs to be meddled with. It’s just gotta be a read through of the story, making the required corrections, and it’ll all be done. But if you believe that I could collect a few hours out of my day to sit down and work on this final task, after I spent more than 2 years in the various stages of work on this novel, then I have a large bridge to sell you at insanely low prices.
The most difficult thing about the writing life, because most of us don’t do this for a living, is just creating the time. If you’re Stephen King, and have more money than God, you can do this for a full time job, or a hobby, or only on every second Thursday when you’re especially drunk. The rest of us still have to work regular jobs, wrangle our relatives, and eek out some time with our beloved. There is not always time in a day to sit down and write, or read, or do something other than work on a blog post that likely only my mother will read…if even her.
But, as Ivan Coyote said in one of her classes at the Surrey international Writers Conference (www.siwc.ca): “Produce words, not excuses.”
A piece of advice that was well said. And so I go…
