Finding Time to Write: Old-School Technology Saves the Day

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All I need is ten minutes. I’m notorious for saying those words after a late night, a long day, or in a moment of exhaustion. Ten minutes of sleep. That’s it.

And, it usually works.

I wake up refreshed, ready, and I don’t feel one bit guilty about taking that time for myself.

So, why can’t I apply the same philosophy to my writing: ten minutes, no guilt?

Just a few weeks into summer, I posted about how I was taking all my extra time, before my kids got out of school, to write. Before time got swept up in travel to and from baseball and gymnastics and swimming and Up North. And, never mind the grocery shopping and the laundry and Who’s planning on weeding the garden anyway? I swore, early on, I wouldn’t have a minute to spare for writing once summer heated up.

Funny enough, though, I didn’t worry about when I might find time for checking emails or updating my Facebook status or shooting off a tweet or two. Or that nap.

EggTimer1Cue Joanne Tombrakos‘ book, It Takes an Egg Timer: A Guide to Creating the Time for Your Life

You do have enough time–for everything you have to and want to, and then some. It’s just a question of what you are letting get in the way.

I bought Tombrakos’ book ages ago but hadn’t cracked it open. Then, shortly after I wrote my “don’t bother me I’ll be writing” post, I rediscovered it. I was flipping through source material to use at my monthly writing gig with the Seniors, and I saw the Egg Timer book. I thought it might have some good tips, maybe a writing prompt or two.

I don’t remember bookmarking any prompts necessarily, but I do remember reading.
And nodding.
And taking A LOT of notes.

Old-school technology, exactly what I need.

Trombrakos’ concept is simple (and cheap): get yourself a regular egg timer and use it as THE tool to help you focus and to be wise with your time. Spend a good 20 minutes or 60 minutes on writing-related projects, be it social media or novelizing…or blog posts.

Sure, there are a million ways to time yourself, including the iPhone (which I have and have used). But Tombrakos makes a good point when she talks about her history with egg timers, how it’s not just about the simplicity of the mechanism but the meditative (and non-disctracting) qualities of it:

The gentle, unobtrusive tick, tick, ticking of an egg timer fell on my ears like the sound of the ocean. Soothing and calming, I grew to understand it as a set amount of time in which something could be created. In the kitchen it was food. On my desk it would be something else.

My iPhone pulls me away from writing with its easy access to all things online. If I really want to focus my time and attention, I have to put that piece of technology away.

How It Works

The point of using an egg timer is to busy ourselves with what engages us, not what distracts us from our purpose and our path.

MAKE A TO-DO LIST. Simple enough, you say, but don’t overlook the value of a list. It’s precisely when I’m overwhelmed that a such a list becomes my life-saver (or sanity-preserver). I write down the next several writing projects I have to do/want to do, even if I think, “There’s no way.” Just write it down.

SET YOUR PARAMETERS. Tombrakos suggests 20-minute or 60-minute windows of time. I set mine at 10, 30, 0r 60, depending. The numbers aren’t as important as how you use them. Look at your list and figure out which projects warrant more or less time. If you’re having trouble deciding, consider a couple of questions from the book:

How is this task helping to manifest my bigger intentions?
Is is worth setting the egg timer for?

For example, Twitter and Facebook are both a part of my writer’s platform, so I can’t ignore them completely. But I can limit the time I spend fiddling around with them. As Tombrakos says, “Social media never gets a sixty-minute window. NEVER.”

START THE TIMER. Really. Get going. I had to tell myself that the other night when, after settling my kids into bed, I felt beat tired. Beat. It was already close to ten o’clock, and I thought, Surely sleep is the better option. But, my egg timer–this little guy

sergeant

–was sitting on my desk, looking all cute and what-not but ready to give me the fish-eye if I didn’t get moving.

So I did. For just 30 minutes. And, man, did I feel good afterward.

I don’t use the egg timer every time I sit down to write, and I’m not always as productive with the timer when I do. But, as Tombrakos says, “The egg timer alone is not your answer, but it sure helps.” Especially on those days when writing is the last thing I want to do or the one thing I think I can’t possibly squeeze into my schedule.

What would you do with ten minutes? Or twenty?

New is a Relative Term: On Writing Memoir & a Prompt

image: ConceptionSomewhere in the last two weeks (I’ve been on vacation, and I can’t remember who said what when), a friend and I were talking writing and new ideas and wondering, are there really any “new” ideas? Even the story of creation, while it varies among religions, carries the same theme and many of the same elements.

When talking memoir, we all have our stories about when we left home for college or when we first fell in love or the moment we first realized we were “old.”

So, rarely is a story told that is completely new. Still, similar experiences, told to each other or written to share, can be flooded with individuality. Audre Lorde recognized this when she said:

There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.

We see the world through our eyes only, and the world we view is shaped by interior and exterior forces–by our personalities, sure, but also by the people and places that have taken up station throughout our journey. Christine Hauser highlights this in her post, “Who Are Your People?” on Flash Memoirs:

Your mix of cultures is a powerful factor that shapes the uniqueness of who you are and your one-of-a-kind voice.”

For Hauser, her “cultures” are what others might call “labels.” She lists her cultures as Artist, Writer, IT Worker, Ex-Pat, and American, to name a few. And, she explains that each culture has impacted the person–and the writer–she has become.

I get that.

That’s what makes each of our stories original, even if they aren’t straight, out-of-the-box new ideas.

If you made a list, what would it look like? Would one culture stand out to you more than the others?

The Prompt

DSC04770Who are your people? List them, choose one, and tell us a story.

As a warm up, read Rosalie Sanara Petrouske’s essay, “Nature Lessons,” at Lunchticket (a great literary journal online).

My View from Here

This week, I am vacationing off the beaten path, traveling the slow road with the family through lower Michigan and across the bridge and finally ending up here:

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I’m not entirely disconnected from technology, but distanced enough to keep me grounded in the moment, not caught up in what I’m missing. With that in mind, I doubt much writing will get done this week. It seems natural (and necessary) to let deadlines go, to rest a bit, to just be.

If the itch strikes, write. If not? Well, then….

For me, writing has always come out of living a fairly to-the-bone kind of life…being present to a lot of life. The writing has been really a byproduct of that. ~Alice Walker