Sacred writing time & space

Writers need to make their writing time and space sacred. I’ve heard this time and time again, from a variety of sources. And that’s fine and dandy (to use one of my grandmother’s phrases) if you can manage it, but there are many writers, myself included, who find that permanently claiming time and space for writing is extremely difficult. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t use at least the spirit of this idea when we write.

TIME

It’s ironic that I began writing on this topic five days ago, meant to sit down and finish it later that day, and have instead come back to it, first three days later, and then today, having written nothing in the meantime. I think that making time (as opposed to “finding time”) is the key, setting aside time in which I’m not doing laundry, or homework with the boys, or editing, or answering email, or marking papers, or the myriad other things that manage to creep into my so-called writing time. I’d love to be able to be one of those writers who can just schedule their writing time, and keep it scheduled. But that’s just not feasible for me at the moment. Work, family, school, and kids’ activities all have their impact on my schedule, which can change at a moment’s notice, and that’s just the way it is, at least for the near future.

For those writers, like myself, who are crazy busy, I think it’s more quality than quantity that counts. Taking those small, still moments when they come, embracing them, and just writing. That’s the key, as you never know when the next one might come. So if you can set aside a sacred time, by all means do so, but if you can’t, make sacred the few moments that you can carve out in which to write, whenever and wherever those moments might come.

SPACE

In our house, claiming space is very much like staking a territorial claim of sorts. If you don’t keep your territory defended, others will surely invade and overrun it. My writing space, the small doorless room off the back door of our elderly house, is a prime example. It’s the only convenient place to put things when people walk in the door, which means that it rapidly becomes home to sparring gear, hockey equipment, onion bags of soccer balls, school papers, and other random stuff. If I don’t keep my desk clean, the rest of the family rapidly takes it over, which makes it rather difficult to have a clean working space. So I do what I can to keep things tidy, and to at least have enough space in which I can physically write. It’s a constant battle, but one that I maintain for fear of completely losing my space.

Which leads me to wonder if that sacredness of space applies to the act of even temporarily laying claim to a space. It might be transient, like a camping spot, but it’s yours, at least for the time being. While I’d love to be able to have a space of my own that has an actual, physical door with which to keep everything else out, that’s not in the cards at the moment, as space is very much at a premium in our house. So, for the time being, I’ll continue to defend my small space, which may not have the sacredness of some writers’ inner sanctums, but at least it’s mine!

Fear and Possibility

Writing holds possibility, but there’s fear there, too. Some writers can admit it easily, and others can’t. I’m a firm believer in the idea that you need to name your demons before you can exorcise them. Inherent in the fear of possibility is the idea that we somehow won’t manage to show up on the page, that we won’t have any ideas, that what we’ve got to say is utter tripe, that no one will ever want to read what we’ve written, and that we’ll be ridiculed for what we have managed to write. I think a lot of my fear, the primary source of my road block to writing, is making time (not finding time). Making that time requires that I assign writing a higher priority than I normally would, making space for it in my life … not always easy when others don’t always see its value. During the busy winter months, making time to write is difficult, but I’m beginning to see it for what it is, an investment that must be made, and not something to put on the back burner for the elusive day when I “have more time.”

But it’s words on the page that matter most. That’s what I keep telling my students when I teach writing. Even if all I write is “I can’t think of anything to write,” that’s enough. And I’m always amazed, looking back, at what I’ve been able to write when I’ve squeezed in a few minutes, somewhere, somehow. As a primary example, I had a poem published last fall, a poem I literally scribbled on the back of a boarding pass in the Denver airport last year while my youngest son was in surgery in Phoenix and while I was trying to get there for when he woke up (which didn’t quite happen, but that’s another story).

Rambling aside, that blank page (or blank screen, if you write on a tablet or computer) can be a scary thing. There’s always the possibility that my brain’s empty, that everything idea in it has somehow managed to dribble out my ears in a macabre stream, leaving me a hollow shell. When the boys were wee, there were days that’s literally what I felt like, as if I’d been hollowed out, made empty, capable only of changing diapers and endlessly rocking our colicky eldest to sleep that never came. Deprivation, on so many levels, not just sleep, ruled my life, and paradoxically brought me joy at the same time. All of my writing from this period shows that paradox, in a variety of forms. In A Year of Writing Dangerously, Barbara Abercrombie mentions that there’s no way to hide who we are in our writing. That’s certainly true for my own writing. I can’t keep myself out of it, even if I wanted to, and I’m not sure that I do want to, as there’s value in those experiences, in the trials, tribulations, struggles, and outright battles that have taken place, both physically and mentally, over the years.

There is no safe journey to writing, to getting words onto the page. There’s introspection, memory, and lived experience, and there’s imagination, inspiration, hope, and love, all melted together into a chimeric muse that both torments and inspires. Writing isn’t easy, and I don’t necessarily think it should be, but it’s a necessity, as essential to who I am as my kids or breathing. Writing isn’t something I choose to do. It’s something I have to do, almost as if it’s an itch that’s just begging to be scratched. The only cure is to write.