THE DOCTOR IS IN

If you will be in the Philadelphia/Cherry Hill area on Saturday, October 6, please check out the Collingswood Book Festival, an extravaganza of book-related activities, including readings, workshops, and general celebration of the written word. I will read and sign my book from 2-3PM, so please come by and introduce yourself--I'd love to meet you!

Dear Dr. Sue,
When my husband asked me to marry him, I said, “not until I’ve written my novel.” But I was in love with him, so I decided to go ahead and marry him without writing my novel first. Then I had to have a career, which I stopped in order to have three children, and now I work from home as a journalist. However, I am carrying this novel inside of me. I dream about my characters and the landscape they inhabit. I just can’t seem to find the space in my busy life to reach my characters out of dreamland and put them down on paper. How do I make my dreams real?

Charlotteotter

Dear Charlotteotter,

It’s wonderful that you have kept the dream of your novel alive through all these years and life-changing experiences. It does sound as though the time has come to translate the dream onto the page.

I would suggest taking a hard look at your current schedule. You don’t say how old your children are, or how much time your journalism work takes up, but it is evident that your plate is fairly full. So, it is important to be sure to use the time you do have productively.

I’m going to suggest an exercise that clients tend to resist, because it sounds obsessive-compulsive—and it is, but it often yields valuable information.

For one week, approach your daily life as an anthropologist might. Carry around a pad and pen, or a BlackBerry, and record every activity, no matter how insignificant, and the amount of time you spend on it.

At the end of the week, create an “activity chart.” Make column headings based on your four or five primary goals for your time. For example, you might pick, “Creative writing,” “Kids healthy and happy,” “Relationship time,” “Financial stability,” and “Self-care.” Add a column for “Other.” Then, under each heading, list the activities you have recorded that further that goal, and the amount of time you spent on each activity that week.

People are often surprised at the number of entries under “other.” Can any of these activities be scrapped or streamlined? If you are spending an hour every night watching TV, for example, is that important relationship or self-care time, or is it a 7-hour time suck that, if eliminated, could add an entire writing day to your schedule?

Looking into the categories that do represent your goals—are there entries that don’t justify the time you’re spending on them? Some writers find that time spent cooking or cleaning, for example, is worthwhile. They take pride in their homemaking gifts, their families are appreciative, and they find that scrubbing, polishing, chopping and so on allows them guilt-free “zoning out” time in which to plot and refine their work. Others, for whom these chores are drudgery, have found that their kids are just as happy eating nutritious, but simpler, meals, and that no one really cares whether the copper pots sparkle.

Next, move on to the tasks that do need to be performed—but not necessarily by you. Every family is different, of course, but statistically, women still perform a disproportionate share of housework, child care, and household organization, even when their outside employment hours are comparable to their husbands’. This effect is exacerbated when we work from home, because of all the “invisible” tasks we do during the day—the routine straightening up, shopping, and food preparation that takes place during our work day, and that doesn’t “count” because we’re home anyway, after all.

Double-check the equity of your household arrangements. If they’re lopsided, consider whether your husband can take over some tasks that are now considered “yours.” Can he, for example, shop on his lunch hour or on his way home from work? If your children are small, can you trade off bath and story times? If they are older, can they take on chores such as setting and clearing the table, washing dishes, or stripping the beds?

At the end of this process, you will have a list of essential tasks that it falls to you to perform. Now it is time to think about how you can consolidate them. If you are the designated shopper for the family, for example, is it possible to do a “big shop” once or twice a week, rather than running to the market every day? Can you balance your checkbook or return calls during “down time” at your daughter’s Little League game or your son’s dance class?

The purpose of this exercise is not to convert your family life into a rigid, efficiently run machine, but to streamline your schedule so that you can concentrate on what’s important—your career, your family, and your creative expression.

If you can shave off as little as four hours a week from your current schedule, you are ahead of the game. Now, consider how to make the best use those four hours. Which conditions feed your creativity? Do you think best, say, in the quiet hour between your first cup of coffee and your kids’ awakening? Or would more concentrated time—Friday mornings from 9 to 1, for example—allow you to warm up to your work and achieve momentum before the “real world” reasserts itself? When, realistically, can you work this time in, and still ensure adequate coverage for younger children? Can your husband cover early weekday awakenings, or breakfast and Monopoly on Saturday mornings?

You may need to experiment a bit, to discover the writing schedule that works for you. When you have found it, consider it sacred time, carved in stone. Explain to your family that, in order to accomplish this work you have dreamed of for years, you need absolute privacy—no interruptions, no requests, no chores. For the period you have marked out, they must pretend you are on a business trip to another country, or a surgeon performing a complex operation. If you were in Australia or the OR, they would have to find their own socks and homework. They can do it when you are on the couch with your notebook, too. Or, if they can’t, you can move to the library or a coffee shop.

Once you have established a writing pattern, you may find that ideas, phrases, or bits of dialogue occur to you while you are engaged in other tasks. Keep that pad you used for your anthropological work handy, and jot them down. If you have odd free moments during the week, use them to write, as well. In this way, your novel will become an organic part of your life, the way your children’s activities are, and your progress will be that much more rapid.

But don’t worry too much about speed at this point. You are handling a great deal, and it’s more important to keep working steadily than to engage in a race against your imaginary unfettered self. As your children grow more independent, your writing hours will increase. Right now, concentrate on immersing yourself in the world of your novel, on expressing your vision, and on rediscovering your sense of yourself as a novelist. If you can do this now, the rest will come in good time.

[Shameless plug: For a more detailed discussion of moms and writing time, check out the chapter of my book titled “The Impossible Position: Managing Motherhood and Creativity,” or, if you’re in the NYC area, sign up for my mediabistro.com seminar, “Managing Motherhood and a Writing Career.”]

Susan O'Doherty, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist with a New York City-based practice. A fiction writer herself, she specializes in issues affecting writers and other creative artists. Her book,  Getting Unstuck Without Coming Unglued: A Woman's Guide to Unblocking Creativity, is now available in bookstores. Send your questions to her at Dr.Sue at mindspring dot com.

Comments

[Katharine Weber]

This is a wonderful and nuanced answer to a question that persists well past the starting point of writing for many of us.

I would add that if finances and circumstances allow for it, getting away completely, where you have no obligations or responsibilities of any kind escept to yourself, even for one overnight, but ideally two or three, could be a useful way to jumpstart the process. By this I mean checking into a Motel 6 or something like that, with all obligations and family support in place. If Charlotteotter's husband really gets it, and he remembers the response to his marriage proposal, one hopes he would willingly and gladly do all he can to make this happen, to see you make your dreams real, perhaps even as an anniversary gift.

[Susanne Dunlap]

Time is such an important issue in writing. Carving it out, guarding it jealously, as Dr. Sue says, is essential. But even having the discipline to separate out those time periods is no guarantee that each one will be productive. I would only add that in addition to not putting too much pressure for speed on yourself, you prepare to have days when it's impossible to use your valuable time effectively. Other things creep in, whether you like it or not, but still, the discipline and the respect of your family for your time and space will pay off eventually.

[Susan O'Doherty]

Thanks, Katharine and Susanne--excellent ideas.

[Charlotte]

Dear Dr Sue
Thank you very much for taking the time to answer my question. I am working out how to carve out my "operating room" time from my busy life. What you said in your last paragraph has resonated very strongly with me - "regaining your sense of yourself as a novelist". By starting a writing group, and taking steps to make writing time, I am beginning to do that and it feels great.
Thanks too to Katharine and Susanne for their comments.
Charlotte

[Susan O'Doherty]

Thank YOU, Charlotte, for such an interesting and important question.