For The Writer Who Doesn’t Have Time To Write

I have a secret to share with you!

These days I write most lying horizontal. My baby girl curled into the pocket of my arm—the bath, where I get twenty minutes of me time. During the naps that should be reserved for Riley’s six-month-old body, but my forty-year-old body is too tired not to join her. So, when I can, I write, even if it is only in handfuls of moments. It has to be enough, and it is.

So many of us wait until we have an hour or two before we show up to the page or some creative project, or wait until inspiration strikes (oh, the rarity). What if instead we asked our body and our nervous system what do you have capacity for? What goal is realistic and not doomed before you start?

My husband worked on his novel on twenty-minute bus commutes five days a week. A writing client wrote poems in her car while her daughter was in dance class. A friend wrote one weekly essay for a year and finished her memoir. I write horizontally daily in my Notes app and gather the scraps into something I can share with you.

Do you know what the commonality is with all these writers? They write and don’t have time, but they make the space in the crevices of their day and call it good.

If you are a writer who doesn’t have time to write, I’m here to welcome you to the club and remind you that you do—it just may exist in places you didn’t imagine and for shorter spans of time than you hope for. Still, you are there doing the thing.

As Annie Dillard writes, “How we spend our days, is of course, how we spend our lives.” So dear writer who’s not writing, what’s your plan? Horizontal, like me? Or something else? I’d truly love to hear.

Love, Megan

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