Monday, February 6, 2012

The Things We Do For Love (Of Writing)

As many of us here in the blogosphere are unpublished and/or unagented writers, I know you often feel the way I do: like we have to beg, steal, cheat, and borrow time just to get any writing done.

For example, I spent almost my whole Sunday cooking. Not because I love to cook - in fact, I freaking hate it. But the only thing worse than spending one day of my weekend turning out chicken and pizza is coming home at night from my full time job and having to do it then - five days a week.

Having a full time job is a huge time-suck in itself. I readily admit that I'll critique or write in my downtime at work, but lately that downtime has been scarce. So, by turbo-cooking this weekend, I hoped to make up for those lost minutes when I get home instead.

I've also been known:

To let my furniture go un-dusted and my family room go un-vacuumed for weeks at a time so I can squeeze in writing-related things on the weekend

To completely tune out my husband to the point where he accuses me of not loving him (yeah, he's dramatic) when I'm really into writing a scene or reading something amazing my CP's have sent me

To stop everything, whatever it is I'm doing, to tweet on of my CP's about a song that reminded me of one of their ms's

To avoid hanging out with real people in order to spend time with the ones in my head and on my computer. Yes, I'm serious

And why do I do all this? Because until I figure out a way to get paid for doing what I love, this is the way it has to be - or I'll be miserable.

What about you, peeps? What crazy things do you do for your love of writing?

5 comments:

  1. For my birthday, my husband got me noise-cancelling headphones, just so I can concentrate better when the children are playing games on the Wii with annoying repetitive music.

    It IS hard sneaking in the writing with a family and a full time job. I also, would some day like to get paid enough for my writing so I could retire from teaching. But that's not happening yet ... not even with an agent and 1 book published. This is not a field where buckets of money come pouring in.

    And I guess that shows our love for it. We keep pursuing the dream anyway!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I thought becoming a stay at home wife would give me loads more time to rite, but I'm usually running errands or cleaning the house most of the day. I do have a little more opportunities to write, but I use the time less efficiently than when I had a full time job and had a set hour in the evening before bed to write.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Here's the thing. If you really want to write, you'll WRITE. And you do. Because you're amazing.

    My kids eat lots of PB&J, my house is a wreck, and I don't sleep as much as I'd like...but I'm proud of my little hobby, and it makes me happy. Most of the time. Except when I'm revising. Or querying. Or drafting. Or....

    Well, it's *some* form of happy. :D

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ha, I definitely avoid people in order to keep writing. Luckily, most of them understand. And having a clean house is overrated. :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. I'm guilty of some of those things. Thankfully my son likes to help with housework or it wouldn't get done at all!

    ReplyDelete