Making Time: A Guest Blog by Janice Elsheimer

Routines for Writers is pleased to welcome Janice Elsheimer as our special guest every Tuesday in November. While we’re all busily writing away, Janice will give us tips and ideas for increasing our creativity. Please join us in welcoming Janice!

How did life get so…well, lively? Do you remember when a month into summer vacation, you’d complain about being “bored”? Can you imagine feeling that way now?

Surprisingly, I know adults who still whine about being bored when they have too much time to themselves.

These people are not writers, that’s for sure.

When we talk about our lives with other writers, the main thing I/we bemoan is the lack of time to do our writing life. Now because I’m working on a deadline here, and I need a nap after a full day of teaching fifth grade gifted kids, and I have a meeting in a couple of hours that I have to attend, this blog will be on Making Time, and I promise not to waste either yours or mine.

Ways to find time to write:

• Unplug your TV and get rid of cable. No matter how hard you think that will be, I absolutely promise you that after a month you will wonder how you ever had time to watch it before. Ever wake up in the morning and not remember what you even watched the night before? Or if you do remember, you have to strain for the plot line? Trust me, you may have to plug it back in to watch something special from time to time (or go over to a friend’s house and make it a party), but you will buy HOURS every day that you can devote to creative pursuits like your writing.
• Turn off the ringer on your phone and don’t listen to the messages coming over your voice mail except once or twice a day. Return calls when you feel like it (or better yet learn to text message and send short notes that won’t get you involved in hour-long conversations.
• Set a time to check your email. Turn off the alarm that lets you know when you have a new message.
• Treat your writing time the way you would (or do) treat time at a job away from home. When you start putting out to family and friends that you take your writing seriously enough to protect it from well-meaning but invasive distractions, the people who used to impose on your writing time will get the message.
• Learn to say “no.”
• Quit your day job.
• (Just kidding.)

There was a pastor in one of my Creative Call workshops who said, concerning my suggestion that we not answer our phones every time they ring, “But I’m a pastor. I have to answer my parishioner’s calls when they come in.”

“Really?” I asked. “What about when you’re at the pulpit delivering a message to your congregation? Do you stop and answer your cell phone then?”

He got the message. You are the gatekeeper of your time. Carl Sandburg wrote, “Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.”

In The Creative Call, I wrote, “Serving our gift is not self-serving; it is God-serving. As we become servants to our talents we become more fulfilled. We stop trying to please others at the expense of nurturing the artist within us. We become happier, more at peace, less resentful, and more fun to be around. Saying no to other people is saying yes to God’s desire for us to develop the gifts he gave us.”

Until next week, may the Spirit who guides us when we make the time to listen give you the strength to say no to those things that are eating up your writing time.

Author and speaker Janice Elsheimer delivers the message that creativity is a pathway to personal and spiritual growth. Writers, visual artists, musicians, actors–folks who want to start exercising their artistic muscles fill her workshops, seminars and classes. They leave with a new sense of what is possible: a conviction that they can enrich their lives by developing God-given talents.