457. There is No Time to Write

There is no time to write! Say we accusing heaven above and the earth below. But that’s because we are looking for entire blocks of writing time, like a whole hour, morning, day, week and so on. If we look for such chunks of time in our daily schedule most of us will never find the “right” time to write. Forget it, it’s pointless deluding ourselves that there is such a thing as “the right time.” But supposing that miraculously we find that block of time, so dreamt of, we sit down pen in hand or keyboard at our fingertips and what happens? Nothing comes out. So we fiddle about, go to our email, twitter, facebook or what have you... and still nothing. So we get up, stroke the cat, pat the dog, make coffee, sit down again and... the phone rings, thank goodness! Now you have a real alibi for not writing!

But if writing is such a pain, why do it? Why not watch TV, go out, enjoy yourself? Simply because those things don’t make you happy – only writing makes you feel a “real” person. So, what’s the answer? As Shakespeare said: “The fault dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but within ourselves...” that we don’t get any damn thing down on paper- (The last part being my addition).

Yes, indeed, the answer is in having a will so strong that no doggy’s eyes, no matter how languished, can ever distract you from your intent in getting one word, then another and another down on paper, not just then but at every moment of the day where you have “one” moment, ten minutes, minute snippets of time; after lunch, before the cat needs feeding, or waiting for the news to come on... And oh yes, don’t forget, you can always take your thoughts with you as it is then when writing really starts.