Thank you, day job.

lizshine74by lizshine74

In A Room Of Your Own, Goals, Persist, Routine.

screenshot of weekly writing plan

I’ve spent the last two-plus weeks sleeping until seven AM…and on some days, later! After such indulgence, I’d plan my writing time around all the other leisure activities and domestic chores calling for my attention. I’ve been a high school teacher on winter break, getting some rest. And it was lovely, so lovely.

I managed to re-pot a couple of plants, read several books, and try out the new Instant-Pot Chris got me. I used it as a pressure cooker for my new year black-eyed peas and as a slow cooker for some soup. I love it, and suppose now I need to find a home for the lower-tech stovetop pressure cooker that’s been my go-to for thirty years. Do you think the Instant Pot will last as long?

Speaking of pressure cookers (yeah, let’s run with that metaphor), as much as I enjoyed the break, I am deeply appreciative of the pressure that my day job puts on my creative time right now.

Before my alarm even beeped this morning at four, I was awake, out of bed, and pushing the off button just as the sound started. I fell right back into my routine. Grind the coffee. Feed the dogs. No phone or email. Plan for the writing week to come. Write down what you intend to work on each day so that when you sit at your desk at 4:15 you don’t have to ask yourself what you should work on. You’ve decided that already. Get to it.

And now here I am, at 5:15 PM, showing up for my new year commitment to leave work at the end of contract time and use whatever I have left between work and the next thing to sit at a coffee shop and write. No matter what shenanigans my ninth-grade students get up to that day, they will not grind me down. The sun just set and I’ve only got an hour. But I am here, doing this work, because it makes me happy and fulfilled.

My focus is sharper with the pressure turned up a bit, now that I’m back to work. I love work, but in a different way than I love writing. I’m not sure I’d love teaching as much without the writing. There’s a strange symbiosis there. A lot of writers talk about the dream of full-time writing. I’m not sure that’s for me. All that loose time just waiting to be squandered? Add to that the pressure that I would actually have to make money off my writing in order to feel like I had earned the right to keep doing the work, to justify myself as a writer. Writing would be my job, the thing that I needed for buying groceries and keeping the lights on. A terrifying thought, to be sure.

So, thank you, day job. Thank you for paying my bills, having clear start and end times, and keeping the pressure on just enough to heat up my creative life.

One of my goals this year is to make better use of my writing time during summer. Now that I’m thinking about that in this context, I’m worried. I’m going to need to foment some artificial pressure to make that goal. All ideas welcome! I am realizing that I am not going to be able to go into this with too much confidence. I need a routine and a plan. And I should probably test-drive it over spring break, to see how it goes.

I’ve done some research on the topic of writing routines over the years. There are for sure some interesting ones. Here’s a fun list. Here’s a more conventional one. I’d love to hear your ideas. What should I add to my breaks in the academic calendar to keep the pressure on?

I also work as a writing coach. I 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.