Traps for Muses: Making Time to Write

   There's something inherently icky about scheduling creativity. I would so rather go out and live life and revel in the explosion of color that is fall in New England and have lingering wine nights with my husband and buy other people's old photographs for a song at garage sales. Then, in like late January, I'd be having the perfect french toast (buttery, yet cloudlike in texture, with real maple syrup) at the perfect diner (lots of linoleum, gritty, but not gritty enough to give me food poisoning, with a waitress who is wise and sassy or timid and unconsciously beautiful) and the muse would walk in. She'd wait patiently for me to finish my meal before grabbing hold of my hand and walking me home and tying me to my desk chair. By the time I've escaped her clutches, the trees would be starting to bud again. The sun would be setting later. I'd be holding a thick first draft that sings with brilliance and needs only light revisions that would make me feel competent and productive without actually doing much work. The muse would then wish me a lovely summer, and depart until next January. But unfortunately, it just doesn't work like that. Muses (if we're working with that metaphor, I don't love it, but it's so pervasive that I feel like I have to) don't often trap us, we've got to trap them.

     In plainer terms, writers write. Every single writing book says this. Every single writer, when interviewed, says this. Now, sometimes they say it in a fancy way, babbling on about "trapping the muse" or "showing up to the page" or whatever, but what they really mean is that writers write. Unfortunately, it's true. If I ever discover some sort of loophole, I'll be the first to let you know, but for now we've got to work within those parameters. Writers write, and you are going to write too. Today we're going to carve out the actual logistics on that.

WHEN?

Maybe you have the kind of life that contains enough free time that you don't have to schedule your writing. If so, good for you. Skip this step if you want, but keep in mind that you might be more apt to stick to your habit if there is a set time that you're theoretically supposed to adhere to. This article gets into the psychological mechanics of habits a bit more.

If you're a slave to a gray cubicle and a dog and a household with endless laundry like I am, you're definitely going to need to create a stricter timeslot. First of all, when do you conceivably have time? First thing in the morning? Late at night, after everyone else is in bed? If your day is really packed, is there an activity you could let go of and replace with writing? I mean, does your kid really need to eat? Couldn't he skip dinner at least a couple nights a week?


WHERE?

This one really matters to some writers. Do you need to be in a space with positive energy and soothing sounds, surrounded by objects that delight and inspire you? If that's your game, start setting up that space today.

If you don't care where you write, (and I don't, I actually write at the gray cubicle that I slave at for the rest of the day) just do a cursory check of the space to make sure you have everything you need to get started. As my coworkers discuss the ins and outs of their morning Dunkin' Donuts runs in excruciating detail every morning, earbuds are a must for me. So are snacks and lip gloss.

I will say this about Where: it's one thing to have a pleasant environment in which to work. It's quite another to spend weeks making everything just right. You're not an interior designer or an independent coffeeshop reviewer, you're a writer. If something about the space you chose drives you batshit, you can always change it later. Decide on your spot today, and let good enough be good enough.

FOR HOW LONG?

There are a few ways to approach this one. If you haven't been writing regularly, I'd suggest committing to 10 minutes. It's not too intimidating, and you can always continue on for longer if you feel motivated to do so. After a month or two of this, you may want to up your commitment to 20 minutes per day. There are a few websites that time your writing and word count. I'm partial to this one.  I like it because it's a weirdly poetic graveyard of spam posts for imported silk, impotence drugs, and weight loss regimens, so it feels like a pretty low stakes space to write.

If you've already been writing regularly, I'd suggest committing to an hour a day, but only you know what's realistically going to work for you. Try an hour, and if it feels too long, cut it down to 45 minutes and gradually build up to an hour.


PLAN B

There are going to be days when the block is bad and dark and gut-seizing. Days where you just want to read everything you've written previously and bemoan your ineptitude. Days where you know that your fingers are just not fucking physically capable of hitting a single key. These days are completely unjust and the worst and shouldn't exist, but they do, so what's your plan when you're faced with one?

I try to write through it. I'm usually not able to tackle ongoing projects on one of these days, but I can force myself to bang out a ten minute journal entry just to clear my head and remind my fingers that they do need to move eventually. After that, I read. Books, not Buzzfeed. Reading is almost as important as writing in this whole journey out of the block, so if you can't write, do the next best thing with the time you've set aside. If you're working on a longstanding project and you've got research to do, work on that. Plan B is different for everyone, but it should run parallel to your writing in general, or to a specific writing project. Don't mope, focus on the work, and take solace in the fact that tomorrow probably won't suck quite as much.

TODAY

Take 10 minutes and write down your plan for daily writing. If there's time left over, write down some aspects of your own personal Plan B. What do you plan to read during the time? Is there research you need to do? Having a list of possible tasks will make a bad block day a bit easier to weather.