When you’re writer, there are many times you might have to wait. You wait for the Muse to visit, you wait to find the time to write, you wait to hear back for feedback, you wait to hear whether your submission was accepted.
Then if your work is accepted, you wait for the publisher to do their bits and pieces, until the book is printed. Then it may be that waiting stops, and you are in full-mode marketing of your book, or maybe not. Either way, a part of you will be waiting to get back to your next writing project.
And then, when you actually get back to that next project, the wait for your Muse, and the ideas, and then the feedback, etc, etc, comes again. This could be tedious, but if you’re a clever writer, you have a secret weapon. And that secret weapon is that you never actually stop thinking about writing! Yay to that!
Well, actually, calm down a bit … It’s probably a good idea, rather than always be thinking about writing, actually living a life worth writing about, could be the best thing ever. If you can do that, you will be living such a good life, that there is no room for anything tedious. And how do you manage to live that good life?
Do the things that interest you, amuse or enthrall you, that confuse you, intrigue you, irritate or bemuse you. Live a life that brings puzzles to be solved, reasons to be bold, challenges, triumphs, but losses too, so that you understand the points of view of everyone who may ever be found in something you might write about.
Books, whether fiction or non fiction, work best if there are winners and losers, heroes and villians, loves lost, loves found. These things make the world of your writing go around, living, and breathing, and above all, worth writing and definitely worth reading!
Well, have you ever thought about why you write? If you have, but don’t know the answer, that’s fine. If you haven’t, because you think the answer doesn’t matter, that’s fine too. The reality of it is that most writers write because it’s the thing that brings them the most joy, than means the most to them, that is the thing that makes them feel like they’re doing the thing that matters the most to them.
If you’re one of those people who writes, a writer, then everything you do is really a gathering of more material, to use when you can next get your words written down, so there isn’t really any ‘waiting’ as such, you just need to be good at using time in the best way you can, to add the most to your writing.
The time in between shouldn’t be considered useless waiting time, but useful gathering time, living your best life, thinking about it, and putting what you have gathered into what you are currently writing. And if you aren’t actually writing anything, are you sure about that? Maybe there’s a spot at the back of your mind that’s busily putting X and Y together, and coming up with story Z!
Getting story Z written should be you most important thing, you know that, don’t you? Your mind had done the work behind the scenes, but you need to drag it from the back of your mind, into the forefront of your mind, so you can look at what you have, and write that story, book, poem, article, whatever your next thing is.
So make the time, give that next writing thing what it deserves, your attention. Whether you work full time, part time, or not at all, but have this or that, in other commitments, realise what you most need to do to do the best you can for yourself, and give yourself time to write. Don’t wait for the time, make the time. It’s your life, and you are a writer, so don’t wait for the best time, the best time is right now, so write!
Carolyn Cordon - Creative 