I’m going to start an experiment.
I’ve been working on a book. Well, technically I’ve been working on about 8 completely different books at varying levels of completeness, but the one I’m thinking of right now is much more of a “thing I really want to get done” than an “idea that may or may not work out” which is where most of my book ideas are right now. I’ve got a decent start on it. I was doing fairly well at sticking to a schedule too.
And then I got a job.
Now there’s a stay at home Dad, and he can’t write the book for me (nor would I want him to really) but I don’t have the time I used to have. I used to get up early and write for an hour before the day started, but now that would mean getting up at 5. I have tried that before. I cannot do that. I don’t care how many motivational books I read or who says that if I can’t get up in the morning and write then I don’t really care about writing. The truth is that I just can’t function at 5 in the morning. Anything I write then is going to be bad. Period.
When I get home in the evenings it’s even worse. I’m exhausted, and anything I do on my own is taking away from the few precious hours I get with my baby girl. What’s the point of fulfilling my own dream if I never get to see her?
When I could possibly write is at lunch. At work, this is hard. I don’t have a lot of privacy, for one thing. For another, people are often doing stuff at lunch socially, which I feel the need to participate in for the sake of having actual relationships at my job, and, by extension, furthering my goal of actually keeping said job. To make matters worse, I often need to have “working lunches” at my desk to get a particular project done while still leaving at a decent hour.
Simply put, I have no time.
But I’ve always believed that you make time for the things that are most important to you, no matter what. I’ve been thinking about my schedule and realizing that while I don’t have a regular block of time, I do have small moments of time throughout my day. Time on the train if I get to sit down and bring a notepad and pen. A couple minutes before I leave for work. Maybe ten at lunch if I’m quick. And probably a few moments stolen away between my baby sleeping at night and my own bedtime.
This is not enough time for say, participating in NaNoWriMo, but it is time enough to write, especially if I keep a writing “mindset” all day, getting the staring at a blank page out of the way with my mind so that when I have the two seconds to rub together, I can just sit down and freaking *write*.
NaNoWriMo, incidentally, involves attempting to write a smaller sized novel in a month. That’s 50,000 words, which works out to more than 1600 words a day. No way I could do that.
50,000 words in a year though, that only works out to about 140 words a day. I could do that in 5 minutes flat. Less, most likely. And in a year, I’d have a book. (minus editing, of course)
So that’s my plan. 140 words a day, every day, for one year. I can do that.
My only question now is if I should try posting it here or elsewhere to have some accountability or not. I know how hard it is to get myself to write, and I have to say that the thing that kept me writing the most consistently of anything I’ve done so far, was the fan fiction community. Knowing that if I didn’t sit my butt down and get a chapter done, I’d be disappointing *specific people*, not just myself, was a powerful motivator. (not perfect, as indicated by the several unfinished stories I have up, but helpful) On the other hand, I do want to sell this book someday, and I haven’t really thought through the process of posting rough drafts.
So we’ll see. But 140 words, that is a go. Right now. Come on Sarah, go write…
