Last weekend on a panel at a writer’s conference in Eugene, Karen Karbo, a terrifically funny writer and person, recommended that writers examine “the number of things we do that don’t need to be done.” The laundry and dishes don’t need to be done right away; the floor and patio can wait to be swept; we needn’t really sort the mail, or check our bank statements, or schedule dental appointments, certainly not during the hours when we are alert enough for writing. So many minor activities suck up energetic prime time that could be writing time. We think they’re important, but the reality is, if we don’t do them we usually don’t suffer ill consequences, and we do free up lots of time for writing.
I agree with Karen very strongly. She was addressing a fundamental truth of time management and of creativity. For anyone to be productive it is essential to be selfish about time, and this is particularly true of creative people, because the world does not necessarily need the work of most creative people, at least not unless they are successful in the marketplace and their work has become commodified. Since the world will not (usually) hand you the time to do your work—you must, if you are committed to your writing or art, aggressively carve out that time for yourself. Which means not only not doing the laundry or dishes when you could be writing or composing or painting (or whatever), but also making more difficult choices: forgoing the haircut perhaps, or declining coffee with a good friend, or deciding not to go to the gym for a few days.
Here is a wonderful blog post by writer Kevin Ashton on this subject. (It was posted on Facebook by my good friend and wonderful encaustic painter Andrea Schwartz-Feit.)
There is one more thing to be said. The concern of most writers is human behavior and human nature, so to be a complete hermit can be self-defeating, cutting us off from the source and inspiration for our work. For that reason it seems advisable to occasionally, judiciously, venture forth from the cave!
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