Making Space for Writing

When commiserating with other writers, we often talk about the struggle to find time to write, especially if we aren’t getting paid to write. We’ll put the creative work after family, the day job, dinner, and hope that we might squeeze in a few hours here or there.

While that struggle is real, I’ve noticed that having more time on my hands doesn’t always translate into more writing. The true challenge for me lies in making space for writing, in both physical and mental ways.

The Physical

I’m a traveling writer: I work on a laptop. I mark my place at the dining room table or the local coffee shop. Recently, I set up a corner in an art studio where I can slip away and write once a week.

This physical space, wherever I designate it for the day, “fosters my need for creativity,” as K.K. Fox says in a post on Lipstick Junkies in the Trenches. I need that space to fully immerse myself in the work and remind myself that I am serious about what I am doing.

But there comes a time when physical space isn’t enough. Sometimes I need to make mental space for writing as well.

The Mental

I’m a writer with a day job: my regular pay-the-bills job and a part-time part time job, both unrelated to writing. For a long time, I have worked that part-time part time job as a way to cushion my bank account however little. I love the work, the people, and the hours aren’t necessarily killing me. But in the last year I have played with the idea of leaving. The job may serve its purpose monetarily each month, but the energy it takes to schedule those hours, and to get there, is sometimes more than I’m willing to give.

Still, the decision to quit has been a difficult one. I’ve had countless conversations with friends and writers in hopes that someone (or everyone) will point me towards the burning bush that signals stay or go. It’s possible someone did point out such a sign (and possible they did it more than once), but while I anguished over the decision, I don’t think I’d been entirely ready to let go until now.

At a recent coffee date (when in doubt, go for coffee), a writing friend suggested I watch Neil Gaiman’s commencement speech from 2012, saying that my part-time part time job may be the kind of thing that stands in the way of my goals as a writer.

I watched the speech, and there it was–the burning bush. The same message I’d been hearing all along but a message I was finally ready to absorb. He says:

Sometimes the way to do what you hope to do will be clear cut, and sometimes it will be almost impossible to decide whether or not you are doing the correct thing, because you’ll have to balance your goals and hopes with feeding yourself, paying debts, finding work, settling for what you can get.

Something that worked for me was imagining that where I wanted to be…was a mountain. A distant mountain. My goal.

And I knew that as long as I kept walking towards the mountain I would be all right. And when I truly was not sure what to do, I could stop, and think about whether it was taking me towards or away from the mountain.

Leaving the job became a little more clear cut. The cushion in my savings wasn’t worth the energy I was giving up. No longer working there won’t grant me 20 more hours a week to write (but again, time isn’t always the factor); letting it go, however, opens up more mental space for all sorts of new and creative things. And for me, all signs point to writing.