Too busy to write?

Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.

- Gertrude Stein

Believing in Ourselves: The Wisdom on Women

I recently read a blog post ‘Busy or Productive?’ from Something to Believe in (Purple Song Project Blog). It was a response to a recent post by Christina Katz asking writers to consider what ‘busy’ means. I think that this is an important to our lives and careers. If we are busy, but lack productivity, are we just spinning our wheels needlessly? If we lack direction or focus, where are we going and why?

The quote above makes me think of these blogs, and question my version of busy. I think that sometimes, especially in creative pursuits, a person needs time to meander, wander a bit and take everything in before they can produce. If we take time to take things in and contemplate we are sometimes rewarded with great creativity. It’s important to make sure we can get ourselves back on track.

This week I’m going to try something different. I’m going to let myself get off track, and relax about it. What I’ll do differently is make sure I commit the same amount of time to writing that I do to other things like daydreaming (Ha, like I have time for that!). If I take 30 minutes for web surfing and e-mails, then my writing gets the same 30 minutes. I hope that learning how much time I spend doing writing-adjacent or non-writing tasks – when what I want to do is advance my writing projects – will show me just how much time there is to do just that.