Or do you insist you need a longer amount of time than you have to give your subject matter the attention it needs. “I can’t write a un cours en miracles unless I have two or three hours a day, five days a week to devote to it.”
Right. That’s a surefire road to book writing failure. Would you force yourself to run a two hour marathon when you haven’t even jogged 1/2 a mile yet? Setting writing expectations that are too high is the same kind of recipe for disaster.
Not many with busy work, family and social life schedules have the time, energy, motivation or persistence to make that kind of commitment to write a book — or starting any new writing project. Even those of you who are professional, disciplined writers can have issues around creating enough time for writing the books you are most called to write.
Here is the first secret I have found about writing a book. If you wait until you have “time” to write that book, chances are, you won’t. The same goes for “enough time.” You will never have “time” to write a book.
Look at “time” as one of the “guardians at the gate” so to speak – whether you are a beginning writer or a well-published one. You and any writer on a journey to write a book face the “time to write” issue each time you take the first step of saying yes to your writer self–and for every book you write thereafter.
Myself included. Even after 25 years of writing books, articles and a blog, when I begin a new project or book or take a hiatus from writing and return to it, I am back at square one. I, too, need to reclaim the time for creating. I need to be like a wily coyote and gently trick it, entice it, ease it into being.
But then the miracle happens. The more I write, even if I only write 10 to 15 minutes at a time, the more I keep those appointments to write even for short time periods, the more actual time for writing opens, bends, flexes and stretches for me. And that pesky time guardian lets me pass–for the moment.
You can claim that time to write your book, too. And find yourself writing things you never thought possible–regardless of how much “time” for creating books you have or don’t have.
