Writer's Support Room - Writing Schedule

Jan Fields, ICL web editor, has published in many and varied children’s and family magazines including Boys’ Quest, Highlights For Children, Shining Star, Crayola Kids, Ladybug, Single-Parent Family and Charisma-Life.  Though she began her career writing for adults exclusively, she was soon lured into the challenging world of children's writing. Jan has taught adult and children’s writing for over twenty years. In addition to this busy schedule, Jan is the editor of Kid Magazine Writer e-magazine. She is a member of the SCBWI and a repeat speaker at local SCBWI conferences. Her articles about writing have been published both in print and online markets such as Keystrokes, Byline, Children’s Writer, and Children’s Book Insider. Her first middle grade novel is presently in production with DRG Publishing. In her spare time, she sleeps.

"So Little Time"

by Jan Fields

As I write this, I am smack in the middle of spring break. Plus, my husband has decided to take the week off to work on household projects. But my deadlines and obligations remain the same as always - even when more demands for my time spring up. There was a time when that was a serious problem for me.

Before I got married, I was a serious workaholic. I worked on something related to writing (market research, submissions, actual writing) ten hours a day, at least six days a week. And I had told myself certain things about my writing: (1) I need to be able to complete a whole project at once - getting interrupted kills my writing flow. (2) I need to have quiet while I write so I can concentrate. (3) I can only write on my computer - any other method inhibits the flow. I believed those things because that's how I always worked.

Then I got married. About a year later, I had a baby. Suddenly everything about my writing changed except one - I still said "yes" to virtually every writing project offered to me. But since my core beliefs about my writing were crippling my output, I realized something needed to change. I could give up sleeping. I could hire a nanny. I could run screaming into the night. Or I could change the way I worked. I love my sleep. I couldn't afford a nanny (and didn't really want one…um, not much anyway). And the screaming really annoys the neighbors. So I changed the way I worked.

I began by giving up my core beliefs. Yes, I still love it when I can complete a project at one sitting, but I now know that I can stop, clean out a gutter on a wobbly ladder, and then come back and finish the sentence I left behind. I actually can do it. I still love to work in a quiet, empty house, but I can actually write while curled up on the couch next to a seven year old who is watching television. I actually can do it.

I also had to learn some tricks - and polish up on tricks I had learned in college and allowed to lapse. These little tricks could be helpful for you as well.

1. Make your writing portable. I don't write a lot of poetry but when I do write it, I usually sell it. And I've discovered the poetry can come to me while I'm waiting in the dentist office, while I'm sitting on the sidelines at my daughter's soccer games, and while I'm sitting on the narrow wooden benches outside my daughter's dance class. So I pull out my notebook and write.

My little notebook is useful for other things too. I often use it to create "sensory photos" of places where I end up waiting. If I'm waiting and I'm not feeling particularly struck by a story idea or a poem, I'll spend the time describing the place where I'm waiting. The smell. The sights. The feel of the air, and the textures I encounter. The sounds around me. Then, if I need to create a story set on the edge of a sporting event - I have this wonderful sensory photo of exactly what that feels like. I don't have to "remember" it - I can relive it through what I wrote. I've written these for clearings in the woods, grocery stores (high-end and discount), thrift shops, etc. And I've used them many times in my short stories. There is nothing like authentic sensory details to bring a strong sense of reality to a piece.

If you really are someone who doesn't like scrawling on paper - or, like me, you've wrecked your hands until you really can't do a lot of handwriting without pain…consider buying a computer you can carry. Can't afford a laptop? Don't feel bad - there are low cost alternatives. Many of the writers I know love the AlphaSmart because it can travel, it's incredibly durable, you can write for hours and hours on plain old batteries (no expensive laptop batteries) and the tiny view screen keeps you focused on what you're writing next because you can't spend a lot of time editing on the thing. You can plug it into your computer, upload the stuff you've written, and edit when you have more time in your chair.

2. Make friends with speed. When I was in journalism school, we were expected to write fast and write well in noisy rooms, but the years of working alone in my apartment had robbed me of those skills. I was easily distracted and annoyed by sound and I liked the luxury of writing slow - rereading and tinkering endlessly with each line before moving on to the next. All things that slowed the process but which I thought we important to good prose. I was actually wrong.

I needed to go back to the days of speed writing anywhere in highly distracting situations. One way to do that is to give yourself "speed writing drills" just like the ones my journalism teachers gave us. Give yourself a short assignment - maybe a filler about something you already know about or have sources at hand. For example, I often write essays about aspects of writing because I spend a lot of my life explaining writing techniques using different approaches. So, a "speed writing" exercise for me might be to write an essay about "fear of writing" in 15 minutes…or ten minutes. Or write a poem about seeds in five minutes. Start your exercise with something you know a lot about. There's always something.

For example, if you love gardening - can you write 150 words about why compost gets hot as it breaks down in the bin? Or why poo makes good fertilizer and what animals make good fertilizer poo? Or why different fertilizers can make hydrangeas turn different colors? What very specific scientific things have you learned from gardening?

Think about what you know and see how fast you can write about it. A speed writing exercise is also a great way to start out a writing sessions - gets all the writing muscles warmed up super fast.

3. Give up that which you do not need. Now, sometimes I really need to sit down and watch CSI. I just need it. For one thing, it's a great way to avoid evening snacks - I mean, really, ewwww. But I have cut out almost all television and when my daughter was very young, I cut it all out. I've also had to mostly set aside other things I like - like drawing, sewing, and making crafts. I also love a computer game called Sims 2, and when my writing is all caught up and I have a little downtime, I play it. But my writing comes first.

To make writing fit my new life, I had to become efficient about those things I could not set aside - feeding the family, keeping the house off the hazardous waste lists, and making sure the daughter and husband remember my face. I'm not an efficient person by nature so it was hard work to change the way I did things. And I'll backslide in a second if I don't take care not to. But I am determined to write, no matter what it takes.

It hasn't been comfortable to make such sweeping changes so I could change from a writer who sometimes has a life into a mom/wife who also writes successfully. For me, though, there was never an alternative. Being a writer is something I simply cannot walk away from. But it is something many people can walk away from. Each of us really has to ask, "How important is writing to me?"

You cannot make your writing important to others, and get them to help you make space for it, until you've shown it's important to you by using the space you have.

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