In this interesting, busy world we live in, time has fewer hours than a cat has lives. We scurry and flurry from event to function to work, shouldering guilt over unaccomplished tasks. Writers are no exception. I read their blogs, facebook pages, and websites. My own life is the same.
Since I decided against moving to a mountain and becoming a hermit, I had to find time to write and still enjoy my life. But how? Now, before you get depressed, there are avenues we can explore in this search for time. I’ll share mine with you today. Hopefully, others will have discovered writing “pockets” and will share them with us at the end of this blog.
Planned time. The easiest to discuss is planned time. This is different than writing a certain amount each day or week. Planned time, to me, is days or hours when I can write and work for long stretches. When my husband is working a twelve-hour shift and I have no baby-sitting or doctor’s appointments, I mark off this stretch and go to it. No excuses.
“Pockets” of time. In my everyday life, I often have more “pockets” of time than planned time. I actually wrote this article during the thirty minutes I have to wait after I receive my allergy shot. I forgot to bring a pad of paper in my purse, so I found a scrap page crammed in the bottom of my bag and scribbled it out. I cleaned it up when I added it to my launch folder during a planned day.
During the night. These don’t occur often, but occasionally I awake during the night having a dream or an idea for a story. I keep a pad by the bed and if I can get awake enough, I write enough down to remember. I’ve gathered material for several short stories this way and once I captured it on paper, I can go back to sleep. A word of warning: Sometimes I don’t want to go to the trouble to get up and assume I’ll remember it in the morning. I seldom do, so don’t chance it. Get it on paper.
First thing in the morning. This is similar to in the night writing except its ideas or thoughts I have the minute I awake. I write them on the pad also. My devotion time occurs before I crawl out of bed in the morning, and often while reading the Word or listening to music, more ideas come and I jot them down.
I believe as we continually seek God first and give Him our lives, He’ll show us new and wonderful ways to write our story or article. What ways have you found to increase your writing time? Please take a moment to share with others.
Writing this article has taken on new meaning as I work on promoting a book project I’m involved in, a romantic novella e-book called “A Dozen Apologies.” This romantic comedy portrays a young lady who needs more time to apologize to twelve men she’s offended through a sorority prank while in college. Mara needs more time and so do I. No, I need to take my own advice…
Blurb for A Dozen Apologies
In college, Mara and her sorority sisters played an ugly game, and Mara was usually the winner. She’d date men she considered geeks, win their confidence, and then she’d dump them publicly. When Mara begins work for a prestigious clothing designer in New York, she gets her comeuppance. Her boyfriend steals her designs and wins a coveted position. He fires her, and she returns in shame to her home in Spartanburg, South Carolina, where life for others has changed for the better.
Mara’s parents, always seemingly one step from a divorce, have rediscovered their love for each other, but more importantly they have placed Christ in the center of that love. The changes Mara sees in their lives cause her to seek Christ. Mara’s heart is pierced by her actions toward the twelve men she’d wronged in college, and she sets out to apologize to each of them. A girl with that many amends to make, though, needs money for travel, and Mara finds more ways to lose a job that she ever thought possible.
Mara stumbles, bumbles, and humbles her way toward employment and toward possible reconciliation with the twelve men she humiliated to find that God truly does look upon the heart, and that He has chosen the heart of one of the men for her to have and to hold.
Bio
Jennifer Hallmark: writer by nature, artist at heart, and daughter of God by His grace. She loves to read detective fiction from the Golden Age, watch movies like LOTR, and play with her two precious granddaughters. At times, she writes. Jennifer and her husband, Danny, have spent their married life in Alabama and have a basset hound, Max.
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ReplyDeleteI like the pockets of time. I've learned to take advantage of waiting for my son at soccer practice or waiting to pick up the kids after school. It's amazing what you can squeeze in in a small amount of time :)
ReplyDeleteIt is, Michelle. It seems sometimes I focus better when I'm away from home...
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