Writing - It's Not The Disciplined Schedule You May Think It Is

I don’t know who came up with the idea that writers have a specific schedule for sitting down at their desks (or wherever they translate their thoughts into words) to work for a designated amount of time. Frankly, I’m lucky if I can string together more than two hours in a row. It’s not that I don’t want to be engaged in creative thought, but the demands of my part time paying jobs (yeah, I can’t rely on book sales alone to survive) coupled with family, pets and household needs pull me in all sorts of directions.

If only I could be as disciplined as J.A. Jance. Do you know that she actually wrote from 3:00 – 5:00 A.M. every day when her children were in school? I felt so guilty when I heard her mention that at a conference three years ago. Good grief! At 3:00 A.M. the only thing I want to see is the inside of my eyelids, and preferably from deep or REM sleep!

When I first moved into my neighborhood in Arizona’s West Valley, the woman across the street said, “I’m so impressed. Every morning at 4:30 A.M. I see your lights on in the front room. You must be busy writing one of your novels.” I should have let her believe that, but I just couldn’t lie. 

“Actually, my desk isn’t in the front room. It’s in the back of house and the only thing I’m doing at 4:30 in the morning is cleaning the kitty litter boxes. That’s what’s in the front room.”  If I don’t clean the boxes at the crack of dawn and again at 10:00 P.M., my cats will inevitably seek out someplace else to do their business. I’m disciplined all right but only when it comes to issues like sanitation! 

So when do I write? Whenever I can. At coffee shops, waiting for an oil change, at doctors’ appointments and even at the dentist while the Novocaine is starting to take. In fact, I almost pushed the panic button during an MRI because I finally figured out the dialogue I had been struggling with for weeks. I said almost. Sometimes common sense just has to prevail.

But the best moments of all are the few quiet ones when it’s just me at the computer with no obligations for the rest of the day. Unless of course, I forgot to clean the litter.