Making Time

I have always made time to write. Whether I was working as a waiter or a sales clerk, whether I was designing roleplaying adventures or booking and conducting interviews, I have always made time to write. This was not so difficult because I considered writing a pleasure and what I wanted most in the world was to do only things that pleased me. Making time to write often meant choosing writing over something that did not please me at all. Yet I imposed a cost on myself for this choice. I called myself lazy. I believed I wasn’t responsible enough. I felt I should do a few more things that didn’t please me, which seemed like a more grown-up way to live. Children just did whatever they felt like, until they grew up and learned the unavoidable truth of surviving. There’s only so much time in the day, after all. If you spend it all just doing whatever you felt like, houses would never get built and groceries would never get bought.

Time’s a strange commodity. It expands and compresses with my attention. When I become happily lost within the dream of writing, the past and future loose their hold on my imagination, trained as it is in the present moment where creation can occur. When I awaken from this dream, it is like waking from a night’s sleep; it is as if I’d traveled five miles of time in a few steps.

When I am doing things that do not please me, I feel every second. I travel each one, step-by-step, measuring my way toward the end of this chore. Time is a measure, not in where I am, but only in my position relative to the end. I live in the future, in that imagined time when I might be happy again.

Time has never actually existed, but happiness and unhappiness have. In fact, they are all we really know. No one actually needs to find time to write. We need only answer this question: Is my life about doing what pleases me, or doing what I must? Which is actually more important? How I answer that question creates or destroys all time.

Write Within Yourself: An Author's Companion. "A book to keep nearby whenever your writer's spirit needs feeding." Deb Caletti.

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