In a box; With a fox

lizshine74by lizshine74

In A Room Of Your Own, On writing, Persist.

We landed from our summer travels and pretty much started moving toward the start of a new school year. Being a writer and a teacher in September feels impossible at times, but I am determined. I took the summer off from writing fiction with the intention of starting back now. So, I am doing this work even though I’m just a few lessons ahead in planning and my learning management system tells me I have sixty-seven ungraded assignments already. In one class.

I’ve been getting up at four in the morning to write. This has worked for me for a number of years, a fact that my younger self would marvel at. I don’t sleep lightly, and aside from the occasional sleepless night, I fall asleep easily. Somehow, I’ve learned to pull myself up out of bed in the dark hours of the morning to do this thing, to make this time. Why? Because I love it. Because I have these words that want to get out, these ideas and images that want to live on the page.

After my break, I’ve been so hungry to write that the early mornings have felt inadequate. So I’ve been trying to make time on the edges, opening my mind to writing in more contexts. I’ve gotten accustomed to working at my writing desk while the moon still reigns over the sky. Coffee shops are pretty easy to slip into. It’s a bit harder to find time at the end of the day, but if I sit in my new recliner, let the seat back tip back, and take it all a little more casually, I might get something going.

I’m adding Saturdays, too. I’ve put it on my calendar as “an hour, an hour, and an hour”, a play on the Atwood quote on the power of the written word. This is time that I’ll break up for the various threads I’ve got going on: an hour for poetry, an hour on my novel, and hour working in short fiction.

I’m also working to think about writing more. I’ve read a bit about our default mode network. My crude understanding is that our minds trend toward the type of thinking they’ve practiced. I trend toward worry, but I am trying to change that up by consciously thinking about writing more. About my characters. About form and structure and choices in perspective. The worry track hasn’t really gotten me anywhere and certainly isn’t helping with my blood pressure. So, if I can’t write, maybe I can just think about writing. Doesn’t that time count, too?

Adding time on the edges has become a mantra in my head: in a box; with a fox. This reminds me that there are no rules about when and where to write. Any amount of time is valuable, and there is real joy to be had in this work. The reference to the popular children’s book keeps the quest to make this time playful, which is deeply important to me.

Readers, I’d love to hear the things you are doing to make time for your art. Maybe it’s writing. Maybe not. Or perhaps it’s cooking a really good meal or painting or learning a new dance style. How are you finding the time to make art simply for the joy of it?  

Rosie the Artist by Michael Smith https://www.flickr.com/photos/mbransons/6129203378

I also work as a writing coach and love helping writers gain confidence, set goals, and develop their work. For more information on coaching, email me at eatyourwords.lizshine@gmail.com.

lizshine74

lizshine74

Liz Shine teaches high school English, writes, edits, and coaches other writers from her home in Olympia, WA. When she begins to feel overwhelmed by it all, she simply looks up at Mount Rainier in the distance and gets back to work. If that fails, she heads to the ocean. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press. Her Substack Make Time is her gift to writers, like her, trying to magic time in this crazy, busy world. All of those posts are cross-posted on the blog here. You can see more of her writing at lizshine.com and find her on Instagram {@lizshine.writer} cooking, traveling, and in other ways seeking moments of awe. She has been an active participant in communities of writers since the early 1990s. She’s learned that two things feel truly purpose-driven in life: writing and coaching other writers. In the in between (because one cannot be driving for a purpose every moment), she enjoys looking for wonder and connection. She is a lifelong yoga student, an enthusiastic walker along streets and trails, and an amateur gardener and vegetarian cook. She lives in Olympia, WA. She believes in the power of practice and has been practicing writing since some time in the early 90s when she became an adult in the rain-soaked city of Aberdeen. Writing began with journaling, as a way to understand a confusing, sometimes violent coming-of-age. She writes mostly fiction, some nonfiction, and poetry, and holds an MFA from Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writers Workshop. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press.