TIME

Time is fleeting.
Time for fun.
Never enough time.
Too much time on your hands.

There are plenty of time slogans. Some of them work with us. Some of them feel like the enemy breathing down on our necks. For many of us, time feels out of control. There has to be time to wash the clothes and feed the kids and work our jobs. There’s time for soccer and time for homework. The only time we have left over for ourselves is time sleeping in front of the television!

People always ask me; where do you find the time to do everything? I don't have an answer for anyone but myself for that question.

There is no magic formula that can make time your friend. The only slogan that really applies to us as writers is that you can make enough time for anything that’s really important to you.

How important is your writing to you?

Important enough to give up the new season of TV shows? Important enough to make changes in your life to work on your craft? An hour a night. One TV drama or two sitcoms. One hour of news that you already heard that day. If you’re a morning person, one hour of lost sleep to sit down and actually write those ideas that are fluttering around in your head.

Time is your commitment to your writing goals. Your writing can only mature and grow if it’s exercised. Thinking about it won’t work. Talking about it won’t put a book with your name on the spine in the stores. Only putting your butt in the chair and facing the computer or word processor, typewriter or pen and paper, can make the difference. No one succeeds at a dream until it takes up some of their most valuable resource. Time.

What are you doing with your time today?

Joyce Lavene
Wicked Weaves
Berkley Prime Crime
September 2008
www.joyceandjimlavene.com