“I always wanted to write a book, but I just don’t have the time!”
We’ve all heard that one before. Some of us may have even said it once or twice in the past. It’s the go-to response when the subject of writing comes up among the aspirants and the admirers, marking the line between what we consider reality and what looks like an impossible dream. It can even be said in jealousy—the unspoken subtitle reading something like: “It’s nice that you have time to write, but some of us are too busy!”
But is that necessarily true?
The easy answer is: Of course it can be true.
The more complicated answer is: It can be true—but it doesn’t have to stay that way.
The bills need paying, the kids need feeding, the car is making that noise again, and the in-laws are coming to stay. Write a book? When?!
Harper Lee’s closest friends gifted her a year’s salary so that she could quit her job and focus on her manuscript. She rewarded the world with To Kill a Mockingbird. Toni Morrison didn’t have a gang of generous buddies, but she did have “dawn discipline”: waking up early each morning to write for a few hours before heading to her demanding New York City job. She would go on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Sylvia Plath was a single mother with two children under three, but she got up at 4am every morning to write by literal candlelight—helping to define what we now call “confessional poetry”.
While we each face a unique set of demands, the one thing all writers (famous or otherwise, indie or trad, even real or imagined) have in common is the passion to find a way. If you dream of writing your own book, why not set your alarm an hour earlier every morning? Or bring your notepad with you on your lunchbreak. Or tell your in-laws the visit has to wait. (For the sake of marital peace, maybe avoid that last one!) Since the dawn of literature, finding the time to write has required commitment and creative solutions. But just as it was back then, the sun still rises, it still sets, and the clock ticks ever onward. There are twenty-four hours in a day. Which one will you set aside for your dreams?
