Inner Wisdom Wayfinding

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Are You Struggling to Make Time for Writing?

Shifting your mindset can reignite your writing and help you establish a consistent practice

Recently, I was talking to a colleague remembering how fraught my relationship with my writing used to be. I told her how I regularly used to start out a new year, or a new quarter or new month with a pretty, new notebook and a substantial pen, and I would commit to writing every day.

I’d start with gusto! I’ve got this!! But after a week or maybe two, I’d slip to only writing every other day.

After a month or six weeks, I’d often be back to where I was before — knowing I wanted to write yet fighting to make time do so, writing as infrequently as only a time or two a month.

Dejected and disappointed

When I’d realized I’d let myself down yet again, a whole chorus of critics showed up. The Doubter: I don’t think you can do this. The Doomsayer: How many years ago did you say you wanted to be a writer? You’ll never be one. The Dictator: If you want to be a writer, you have to stop being lazy and make time for writing. Now!

My turning point was a conversation I had with someone who would later become an important teacher of mine. When I told her how much I’d been struggling for such a long time to make time to write, she suggested if I got quiet and admitted how much I loved writing (really loved it,) then perhaps I could approach making time for it not out of obligation, but out of love.

She likened it to caring for a baby; putting her down for a nap when she needs to sleep is an act of love, not dogma. The very idea of doing something out of love for writing felt like switching out a sturdy thick flannel shirt for a silk one — different, soft, luxurious.

Writing as love

So, the next day, I picked up a pen and a 59¢ spiral notebook and started, tentatively, to write. I could sense the shift. Writing felt delicious, yes. It often did, but it no longer felt like a chore, an item on the to-do or the I-should list.

I was doing this thing because I loved this thing.

I wrote without a plan, without a project, without any idea on most days what would come out on the page. I found myself writing again just because. And I wrote every day, even if on some days it was just for a handful of minutes.

What happened in those few minutes of writing was infused with magic.

So I kept coming back for more. Day after day. Week after week.

In time, I learned that creating a relationship with our writing is much like nurturing any relationship. If you love your friend and want a good friendship, you spend time with her, not because you have to, but because you want to.

You enjoy it.

It was such a simple and peaceful concept. And it worked.

I was writing.

Why not take a few minutes now?

I invite you feel into your own writing relationship. What’s it like?

Grab your pen, sit down and write. You can use these questions as doorways, invitations to consider:

  • What kind of relationship do you have with your writing?

  • What kind of relationship would you like to have?

  • What things are working in your relationship with your writing? And what things aren’t?

Even if you don’t struggle to make time to write, it pays to take a fresh look at your writing relationship. There are all kinds of ways writing relationships can be working and all kinds of ways they might now be.

Spend a few minutes free writing about this and see what comes up. I guarantee it’ll be a whole lot more loving than hauling out your monthly goals and putting a red slash through them.

In fact, this could be your best writing month yet.

Photo by Erik-Jan Leusink on Unsplash