Time

by Marsha Ward

It seems like time is rushing by so fast I can barely keep track of the days.

I noticed two days ago that I had a calendar stuck on October. As I regretfully flipped past November, I wondered where all that time had gone.

Had I used it wisely?
Had the hours been spent doing something good and/or worthwhile?

I think so. Two weeks of October were spent traveling to and from and attending a week-long workshop on the coast of Oregon. The over-arching theme of the workshop was "Time," and how authors--especially indie authors--don't have enough of it to do everything they want to accomplish. I came away dazed, and with my head so full of information that I thought it would explode.

In November, I finished working on a piece of fiction that I wrote over the span of three years, mostly because the main character wasn't ready to move on. I can't force characters to reveal their secrets until they are ready. However, I managed to publish Mended by Moonlight on the last day of the month.

I also traveled to attend a family Thanksgiving celebration. That was very nice. I may spend Christmas Eve with that side of the family again.

Now I'm starting a new story. The challenge there is to break away from everything else I do and make time for writing it.

I have so many plans for things to do in the new year: cover re-dos for better branding, writing, marketing, learning. I have to focus hard and pick the most worthwhile projects and endeavors.

What do you do with your time?

BIC-HOK-TAM

By Marsha Ward @MarshaWard

BIC-HOK-TAM?*

What? Is she kidding? Isn’t that HoHoKam for “go to sleep right now or the evil raiders will get you”?

Not really. BIC-HOK-TAM stands for “Butt in chair-hands on keyboard-typing away madly”. It’s what every writer needs to learn to do—every writing day.

Notice I said every writing day. This also might be “every writing moment.” I know some of us can’t write seven days a week like some full-time novelists do. As a women writer, I do have other commitments. Some women writers have families who need some measure of care. However, I encourage all writers to write in what time you can make available for writing.

Writers find the time to write in a variety of ways. We cut out watching that favorite television program. We vacuum twice a week instead of five times (or teach our children to do that job). We stop going to every baby shower or lunch date. Maybe we use comforters on the beds instead of making tight hospital corners each morning (again, why aren’t the kiddos making their own beds?). Perhaps we eat Cheerios for dinner a few nights a week instead of cooking gourmet meals.

Whatever sacrifice we (and our families) make gains us a few more minutes to write. A few more minutes to practice BIC-HOK-TAM!

Okay, we have a few minutes before we have to pick up Tabitha from kindergarten. How do we do BIC-HOK-TAM?

We sit down (BIC), put our hands on the computer keyboard (HOK), and start typing whatever comes into our minds, if we don’t have anything already flowing (TAM). Okay, so it’s a letter to our Aunt Katie on how fun it was to play in the snow at her house on Thanksgiving Day, 1983, or a grocery list, or a journal entry that can touch our family members many years down the road.

Maybe it’s just pure hoop-di-doo and garbage, but we’re WRITING, and soon, our minds will open up and we’ll start to write something we need to share, maybe a poem, an essay, a short story, a character sketch or a novel chapter. Maybe we’ll write a magazine article entitled “10 Ways to Make Time for Writing,” or another chapter in our non-fiction book. The point is to begin, and that’s where BIC-HOK-TAM comes in handy.

Use BIC-HOK-TAM as often as you can, to write and get closer to your writing goal.
~~~

*This blog post first appeared on The Ink Ladies Blog on July 26, 2007.