Page One

Good morning, afternoon, evening, night; whatever time of day you’re reading this. Since my last post was written I’ve done approximately 300 words of writing, so massively off target. Which saddens me greatly, but I’m still trying to find the time to fit writing into my schedule. It battles with work, which I basically have to do, going to the gym, which I don’t have to do but it certainly helps my dieting, and having a social life, which is again not absolutely necessary but still important to me. Previously I would have done it in the time I now spend at the gym but since I can’t spare that I have had to find other times to do it.

So this entry is about making time! This is an area of scientific study that has not been wholly explored yet, so really what I mean is budgeting time. If we suppose you get seven days a week and twenty-four hours in each day, this gives you one hundred and sixty-eight hours a week to budget. In my case I work nine hours for five days a week and sleep an average of seven hours a day for seven days a week, which leaves me with a paltry seventy-four hours a week spare. Working into that an hours travel time for each work day to cover the journey there and back, my free time is whittled down even further to sixty-nine hours a week.

While this could be seen as an auspicious number, it is less than half of my weekly hour amount. I then spend an hour and a half in the gym four times a week, for a total of six hours which lowers my total to sixty-three. So I spend over one hundred hours a week on things I cannot really avoid. On the flip side, this leaves me with sixty-three hours a week in which I can do anything I want! And that is quite a long time, realistically – to put it into context, I could feasibly have another full time job, or double the length of time I spend asleep, and still have time left over. So what eats away at this considerable amount of free time?

Firstly, everyone needs time to themselves. Relaxation is a very important element of a person’s day-to-day wellbeing; if you don’t make time for yourself you’re not really living for you. So some of it is spent on that – an amount I cannot specify, unfortunately, since it can and will vary. I could do some writing in this time but I stand by my belief that if it feels like I’m forcing myself to write then I won’t enjoy it and, worse, the quality of my writing will suffer. Don’t let this stop you; write anyway. I have a friend who made himself write something, anything, on a Saturday morning between nine and eleven just so he was doing some. It didn’t matter what he wrote, whether it was for a main piece or not – it just mattered that he wrote.  Writing is like exercise – you might not want to do it to begin with but once you’re into the flow of the script you’ll find it pretty easy to continue.

Secondly, nearly everyone has friends and like any relationship friends need maintenance. Some less than others but the other fact to consider here is that nearly everyone enjoys spending time with their friends. Could this be included in relaxation time? Quite possibly, but as a self-confessed introvert I sometimes find it difficult to recharge and recuperate while in social situations. Either way it is fairly rude to begin writing while meeting up with friends unless that is what you’ve met up to do. Writing is usually an insular activity especially when you have a brilliant idea in mind and other people don’t accept the sheer amazing power of your vision – which sounds grand, but I think everyone has come up with an idea they think is absolutely perfect and any suggestion that it is less than that is both gutting and bitterness-inducing. After a particular experience like this I call these jellyfish-moments, which helps me diffuse my frustration with them. At some stage I will give examples of them to demonstrate.

                So, for the sake of the maths I’ve used here, I will slash my remaining free time by two thirds. This leaves me with twenty-one unassigned hours. Let’s put that in perspective: I write at fifty-two words a minute when I know what I’m writing. We’ll lower that to forty for the sake of bio-breaks and pauses for thought. Sixty minutes in an hour means that at three-thousand, one hundred and twenty words per hour without breaks or two-thousand four hundred words with breaks. So in my twenty-one unassigned hours a week, I could potential write a massive fifty-thousand, four hundred words a week – or, if I really pushed myself, a stupendous sixty-five thousand five hundred and twenty. That’s a whole book! Or the better part of a novel! And all it would require would be three hours a night spent writing.

                Obviously, this is sounds too good to be true – and, sadly, it is. If I enforced this regime it would make me a recluse, which is not something I want to be. Despite being an introvert I still like going out and seeing people; not all of us eschew human contact simple because we are not extroverted. So the above equation and plan is a bit of a jellyfish (BAM! Already an example). But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have merit as a theory. Could I not give one hour a day over for writing? Easily. I could even do some while I eat.

                This is because writing as an activity is not simply throwing words out on a page in a vaguely prose format. It can include brainstorming, note making, editing, doodling or even throwing out ideas and/or pages. It’s all part of the creative process and it all progresses you towards your ultimate goal: Fame and fortune through brilliant literary feats.

                So I am going to start today spending an hour a day focusing on my writing. It doesn’t even have to be all at once – snatches of time you get free at work can be used to scribble down some notes furiously while you’re manager isn’t looking and then a half hour once you have some time to yourself to collate them and make sure they are actually all helpful and remove anything that is too jellyfish like. I urge you to do the same, if you want to keep writing, start writing or even just dabble in it. It doesn’t have to be linked, it doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to be written.