Making Time to Write: 20 Insights from 20 Years
Writing in the margins—the philosophy that guides my writing practice—was born from constraints. Recently, I realized it’s been something I’ve devoted myself to for two decades. Below, some reflections of what I’ve learned so far.
Nothing was wrong with me. When I finished graduate school and shifted from working part-time to working full-time, I was unprepared for how this would impact my writing. A college schedule fed my creative flow in ways that sitting at a desk for eight hours simply didn’t. Suddenly, I was coming home from work tired and depleted. I was writing one poem a month, if I was lucky. I felt like something was deeply wrong with me. I didn’t have language for this discontent I was experiencing, and I didn’t have a plan for weaving writing into my new circumstances.
I found my margins intuitively. Years later, after starting a food blog (my second) in 2012, I had the opportunity to develop it into a cookbook. But I was working-full time and commuting, by car, up to two hours per day. I decided that if I wanted to make progress, I needed to have a plan that utilized the time I did have to my advantage. That’s when I started talking to myself on the drive to work and writing down notes when I got to the parking lot. I went to a coffee shop on my lunch break to write. I blocked off some time on the weekends to bring it all together. I still wasn’t calling this writing in the margins yet.
This actually works! To my astonishment, after a month or so of typing up a recipe here, adding a headnote there, and jotting down some poem notes, I opened up my document to see the makings of an entire, messy chapter. It was all the motivation I needed to keep going.
Writing in the margins is a method. It’s very simple: find small pockets of time in your day to write.
Writing in the margins is also a mindset. You must believe that your margins will add up to something. If you’re writing for 15 minutes on your lunch break but are low-level angry or frustrated that you don’t have more time, that’s not as supportive as turning that around and thinking, wow, if I do this every day this week, I’ll have written for more than an hour, and I’m excited to see what comes out of it.
Consider your circumstances with clarity. Do not dream up your ideal writing day, or a scenario that’s not attainable in your daily life. This isn’t about crafting the ultimate writing retreat, although you know I love the power of getting away every so often. This is about working with what you have, even if it’s 10 minutes. When I reflect on the times that I’ve been most frustrated as a writer, it often has to do with a mismatch between my desires and my reality, so I’m always trying to be honest about both of those so I can find where the overlap is.
Reflect and revise. Seasons change. Work projects take over. Kids are out of school. You have family visiting for the holidays. You go on vacation. Something else needs your attention. I like to check in once a month, ideally, but even if you plan on it every two or three months, that’s fine too. The important thing is that whatever rhythm you come up with today, you know it might need to shift in the future, and make space to notice that.
Don’t discount small pockets of time. Of course, it’s lovely when we can get whole hours to ourselves, but if I’d waited for ideal conditions, I never would have written my first two books.
We need deep work, but surface work moves the needle too. In general, I think short bursts of time work best for more surface-level parts of the process, like light editing, early drafting, writing in your notebook to see what’s there, etc. There comes a point in every project where we do need deep work time. We need several hours. We need to be alone with the door closed. But you can also think (or talk through) something about your manuscript while you’re in the car running errands, which can make a writing session more effective.
Experiment, then pay attention. If something works for you this month, wonderful. Don’t assume it will keep working forever. Check in with yourself, make adjustments, and try things. Maybe you love writing poetry during baseball practice, when you’re sitting in the stands. Maybe it’s impossible for you to type on your laptop in your car while someone else is driving. You won’t know until you try.
“There is no cultural production without financial support.” This is a quote from the book MAKING ART AND MAKING A LIVING, which goes on to describe how “it is simply not possible to become an accomplished painter or musician or novelist or poet without spending a lot of time experimenting, making false starts, starting over, starting over again, absorbing criticism, thinking, reading, talking, and moving about the house aimlessly. All this time has to be purchased, one way or another.” A day job is one of the ways we can financially support ourselves while writing.
Writers lead double lives. Day jobs are normal, but they might also make us feel like two different people. While you may be presenting yourself as a director of such and such or an assistant to so and so, you may also be leading a double life as a writer. Ideally, you’re doing something that utilizes your natural skills and that you can be proud of, while working with wonderful people.
Writing all day long is a myth. I believed this until accumulating enough lived experience to prove me otherwise, but most of us cannot sustain this kind of effort. In a 2013 blog post called “The Myth of 9-to-5 Writing,” Nikki Stern writes: “Most authors I know are besieged by other obligations that rob them of time to think, let alone work: children, parents, “regular” jobs, life in all its glory and banality. So, if by chance they do get the gift of unfettered time, what happens? Does spending every day with your butt in the chair, as many gung-ho producers like Stephen King have advised, get you to the promised land of creativity and, perhaps, publication? Here’s what my experience was on my first day of full-time writing: I stared at the screen, got up to do a little gardening, went back, edited some of my older pieces, stood up frequently to stretch, raided the refrigerator, looked at the clock, made a couple of calls, answered some emails, wrote a few words, and spent an undocumented amount of time staring out the window. That pattern repeated itself over and over again in the first week. I wasn’t getting anything done—even though, in the years leading up to my new career, I’d nearly completed a book in my “spare” time. Eight years, two books, and hundreds of op-ed pieces later, I no longer believe that authors must work an eight-hour day in order to be considered—or to consider themselves—real writers. Of course, all authors will wrestle in their own fashion with notions of time invested and output created, but I’m convinced that a 9-to-5 schedule doesn’t work for most of us.”
We should normalize this more. Writing in the margins, as an idea, isn’t an outlier. It’s how writers through the ages have managed to prioritize their work while also being adults with responsibilities. As I’ve learned, there are pros and cons to working within and outside the field of writing. When I worked as a copywriter, I often felt the benefit of using my writing muscles regularly, but sometimes I felt more depleted for my own work, or like I had to switch voices. I didn’t have that same issue when I was a program manager for a nonprofit, for example. Basically, we should make it clear to young kids who are interested in writing that there are so many different ways to do it.
Tinker like Wallace Stevens. Stevens—whose secretary typed up the lines he wrote on the backs of envelopes—kept his printed pages in a file drawer at his desk. In the same book I mentioned above, Richard Sunbury, who worked in the mail room of Stevens’ insurance company, said Stevens “always filed his poetry notes in his lower right corner of his desk, which was open most of the time to a degree. It seemed to me there were sheaves and sheaves. And sometimes he would reach down, and he’d shuffle through three or four. He’d scratch out something or put something in. Or he might take the top one and just add a line or two.”
Or tinker like Maggie Smith. The poet has mentioned how this rearranging and changing a word here or there is a huge part of the process. I do this all the time. It counts.
We can’t wait for ideal conditions. Another myth I once believed is that if I could figure out how to fit writing into my schedule effectively, it would solve the question of when for all of time. But circumstances change, so while margins always exist, they too must shift at regular intervals. I think what you gain, ultimately, by adopting this mindset is you’re practiced enough that when you need to pivot, it doesn’t come as a surprise. Even though I have more time to write than ever before, I still have constraints. I wake up according to my son’s academic calendar and his school schedule. I stop my day around 2:30, when I go pick him up from school. I work (or don’t work) around his time off. We’re always negotiating something.
Communicate. One of the secrets to writing in the margins, especially if you share a life or a space with other people, is to tell them about your writing. Get them on board. Let them help protect your writing time.
Make appointments for yourself. I didn’t start adding writing to my calendar like an appointment until a few years ago, but it’s made a huge difference. It’s like going to the dentist, meeting with your therapist, or taking your kid to practice. And yes, you can always delete it or move it around, but there’s something about seeing it on the calendar that also communicates to your subconscious that you’re taking this seriously and want to show up for yourself and your writing.
Depth over output. Post-grad school, I was used to measuring the worth of my creative practice by output. I wrote eight poems a month for two years, so when I wasn’t able to do this after starting to work full-time, I thought it was a problem with me, not the system I was trying to create in. Now I measure depth, connection, aliveness.
A few questions to go deeper, if you’d like to ponder or journal…
Who taught you to be a writer? What examples did you have growing up, or not? There might be space here to compare the romanticized version of a writing life with the lived experience version.
What beliefs do you have, or did you inherit, about art and money?
What do you wish your younger self knew about writing that you know now?
