My presence here has been sketchy at best these days. What can I say - real life happens, sometimes in the most inconvenient of ways. But not being here doesn't mean I'm not writing. I'm involved in writing related activities every day - revising, critiquing, drafting, or working on background material. When I don't write, I feel it, and not in a good way. A lot of that comes from cultivating a habit of writing daily, but some of it comes from knowing time to write doesn't just happen. Writing isn't something I "find" time to do. Writing time is created.

Every day we make decisions concerning our time. What will I have for breakfast - a microwaved egg and sausage sandwich or a bowl of cereal? Which route will I take to work? What will I do on my break? What will I do, if anything, while watching TV tonight? These decisions don't just affect health and life style; they affect our time. A lot of our "time wasters" are necessary things - refilling prescriptions, time stuck on the freeway getting to where we need to go, and so on. Others, however, are merely choices. How much TV do you watch each week? Spend "just surfing" on the net? Wander around the grocery store trying to remember what you need because you didn't write a list?

I often hear writers say they couldn't find the time to write recently, but they'll "do better" this week or next or when the current spate of busyness is done. The problem is "finding time" in our busy lives - as significant others, employees, students, parents, and whatever other roles we fill - doesn't speak of a commitment to our writing. More importantly, "finding time" isn't any more likely to happen next week than it did the last. If writing isn't important to you, then that's fine. But if writing is important to you, particularly as a career goal, then "finding time" won't cut it. We have to make the time by carving it out of our busy days and committing to it. Ask any full time (or over loading!) student who also has a job how they keep their grades up and they'll tell you - they make the time. If it means staying up until 2 or 3 in the morning to write that B+ or better paper, then they do it. We all make time for the things we consider important.

And so it should be with our writing. Get up early or stay up late. Trim a little here, cut a little there. Use your free moments even if all you have is a 15 minute break. Multitask - write while watching TV, write while riding the bus, write while standing in line or waiting for the prescription to be filled. Use your writing as a means to unwind, unload, and to take a break from the rest of your day. Grab every extra moment and fill it with words. I'm a substitute teacher who does more than just baby sit her classes. I often have to plan, hunt down resources, and teach, and I always leave detailed notes for my teachers. Sometimes I even have to take work home with me. But I always take a chapter or a story to work with me and use whatever free moments I have to write, revise, or critique. If I don't find time during my day, then I write to unwind when I get home. I'm almost always revising or critiquing while watching TV - and some days that's the only time I can carve out of my day to do so.

Every writer can create time for writing. It starts with a commitment - deciding you will spend time writing every day. Meeting that commitment may be as simple as taking one of your current works in progress to work with you. Some of us, however, have more complicated lives and may need to trim a little here, carve a little there, or learn a whole new level of multitasking. Still, if writing is important to us, and we can "find" the time to play on the PS2 or watch TV, then we can create time to write. Commit, create, do. If we do that, we'll waste less time looking for what's hard to find, and spend more time doing what we want to be doing: writing.