Last evening, I spoke with a client about her writing, and she said, “Oh, I have absolutely NO TIME, and then she gave me the litany of all she has to do. So, I said, “Don’t give your life away.”
While I love working with people and opening them up to possibilities with their writing, I cannot make a person write. But I felt sad.
Writing is such a simple way to tap into our own soul, and yet we often wish to bypass it because it feels too hard, or because we fear what might come onto the page. Like when I was anxious about writing from my inner child: I didn’t want to know how mad at me she was for ignoring her, and how upset she was with some of her childhood experiences.
So, I understood a person ignoring their writing, being “too busy for it, ” puffing up with such importance that they have “no time for that.” After all, what might they write?
However, in not making time to write, whether it is that book you’re trying to lift off the ground, well, it’s just too bad. After all, you are the only one who can do it. If you don’t sit at your computer, or put pen to page, that book will never get done. You will talk about it as you sit in your rocking chair with your false teeth in the glass and your shawl around your shoulders, and you will bemoan it. You will have let yourself down.
Imagine how you’re going to feel when you’re 90. Will you be proud of yourself and for the body of work you’ve left here?
Will you be like my dear friend, Fred Cogswell, (former publisher of Fiddlehead Press) who on his last trip to the hospital, carried with him his 50th manuscript and asked his daughter, Kathleen, to first stop at the post office to mail it to his publisher? He passed away just a few weeks later, but he said that he was “finished” and had nothing more to write. He was 86. I still read his poetry books and ‘hear’ his words. He took the TIME to write those poems.
Several years ago, I met Diana Gabaldon at the Surrey Writer’s Conference. Outlander series is based on her books, and they are wonderful to watch. Way back then, she said that she wrote from midnight till 3 in the morning, because when she was starting out, she had three children to raise, a husband to tend to, and a job teaching at a university. But her books are now out in the world. She made the time to honor her ideas!
Will you do the same? Will you feel finished when your time is up? Will you know you’ve made the time to do your work? Will you leave this world the legacy of your poems, stories, and books?
Or… will you say, “I just don’t have the time.”
It is up to you — and only you.
I hope you make the time to write!
Sincerely,
Dr. Melba Burns