Time to write

I spent about four hours working on "Hack" on Sunday. That was good. But it was the first sustained length of time that I'd devoted to it since returning to work a week and a half ago. That's not so good.

I am still having trouble finding a good rhythm to writing time. ("Rhythm"--good word for online Scrabble! OK, that's only one of my obstacles.)

I love big writing projects. I love having something I can immerse myself in, something that consumes me for weeks or months. After I realized this about myself, I went from writing a book, to writing big magazine pieces, to eventually editing big projects. Writing "Hack" is like that, too. The difference is, it's not my main job. I want to immerse myself in it, but I don't have time. I am at work all day, learning a new job, immersing myself in that.

I have to carve out pieces of time from the rest of my life, and that's where I'm having trouble.

Mornings? I get up and we read the papers and talk about last night's ballgame and walk the dogs and get ready for work.

Noon? I take a long walk to unkink my neck and shoulders and get some fresh air.

After work? I'm exhausted. I don't get home until 6:30 or 7 most nights. I decompress on the back porch with Doug, and then walk the dogs and eat dinner and go to bed.

Weekends? Yes, weekends? Well, there are Saturday chores, and exercising with Mr. Darcy, and extra-long dog walks, and naps, and Sunday visits to aging mothers: mine, or his.

Where do you fit in writing a book?

Writing a blog is easy. They're short pieces. They take no time at all. They require little effort. If they're not top-drawer quality, it's not a crisis. You don't have to get your head back into the whole blog experience to write another one. But working on Hack on Sunday, I found I had to spend a good hour looking at old clips and re-reading what I'd already written before I could really get back into it.

I think I have to view the book more like a blog; piecemeal. I think then I could work on it in odd bits of time, too.

Many years ago, I attended a writing conference in Connecticut. Richard Bausch and David Slavitt were two of the speakers, and they talked about this very thing.

Bausch said that it's up to writers to carve out time to write that does not take away from their jobs or their families. When he first started writing novels, he had a wife and kids and a full-time teaching job. He wrote in the middle of the night, while his family was sleeping.

The people at the conference did not like this. They objected to this plan. "I need my sleep!" one woman called out.

Bausch looked at Slavitt, who shrugged. They had no magic solution. "If you don't want to write, then don't write!" Slavitt said. "Nobody cares."

This, as you can imagine, infuriated the crowd even more. But the thing is, Slavitt was right. So was Bausch. I still need to walk my dogs. I still need to talk to my husband. I still need to visit my aging mother, and his.

But I also need to finish my book. I'm thinking: five a.m.

A note on the photos: Top is my writing space. I chose the basement, to keep my clutter of notes and old clips out of the main part of the house, and also to give myself quiet and privacy.

If you enlarge the picture, you will see (left to right): an old picture of Duluth guys hanging out at the Coney Island back in the 1970s; a picture of Helmer Aakvik (he who wanted a Viking funeral), and, on the wall at far right, a picture of me on my last day at the paper.

Below, Richard Bausch. A Google image.