Times a'Wastin

I continually amaze myself at the way in which my work ethic evolves and the bizarre mental machinations that I go through in order to be A Writer. 

For the past several years I had tons of time to write if I wanted to.  The first year after Icebergs was finished I took the whole year off, lazily spending afternoons at the coffee house over-polishing the hell out of the beginning of a book that wouldn't seem to get off the ground and obsessing over my Amazon numbers.  I rewrote the endings to a couple of short stories that I'd been working on before Icebergs, but they died, too, and I ended up cutting most of that work.  Eventually, last winter, I finished something I liked and sent it out, but by now I've decided I don't like it either and most of the last five pages needs to go.   

I have no time to write anymore.  I have a full-time job and nearly full-time baby duty with a five-month-old who's teething and getting up three times a night.  I have babysitting only fifteen hours a week.  And yet I've done more writing in the past three months than I have in years.

Now that I have almost no time whatsoever to write, having to either pay for babysitters or abuse my husband's desire for Libby Time on the weekends, I have the beginnings of THREE full novels, a screenplay, and a book of short stories, not to mention the Big, Massive Book Doctoring Project my agent set me up with.

And you want to know the really crazy part?  I'm actually getting stuff done.  I've finished two stories this fall, wrote thirty pages for the Big, Massive Book Doctoring Project, and have the first chapters done of two of the three novels and most of the research reading done for the third.

Apparently I'm one of those nut jobs who is only productive when I have no time to waste. (Paula, I'm looking at you!)  I look back on those months and years of free time with something akin to lust.  All those days I could spend researching in the library!  All those days spent surfing the 'net or Googling my friends!  The truth is, it was always too easy to say I didn't have to get my work done, that there would be plenty of time tomorrow.  So I didn't get anything of substance done.

There is no tomorrow any more.  There's only now, and the page in front of me.  Guess that's what I needed after all.

Comments

[the other beck]

still livin' vicariously out here in bakeryland...

[churlita]

It's like how fast you can wash dishes when your baby is napping now, where it took twice as long to do them when you were childless.

[TLB]

True, C. You should see me whip through the vacuuming too.

Beckster, I'm still impressed that you have three kids and manage to be sane.

[the other beck]

I keep thinking about your recent burst of creative productivity ... do you think maybe it could be that, finally, everything is right in your world?

[TLB]

Maybe a little, but I still think most of it is that I have to manage my time better, because I don't have the option of putting it off. I'm really just kind of a head case like that.

[Jane]

I'm right there with ya, sister! Managed to do a 400-page novel revision in the first 18 months of my girls' life AND update a blog regularly, AND be busier at work than I ever had before. I think it's common among ambitious and overachieving types to be more productive when there's more going on. (To a point, of course....)