Thread by @EmmaOtheguy

I just had a conversation with a writing student about the perpetual making-time-to-write conundrum, and I have some insights I want to share about the problem with the advice writers receive and the approaches to writing and productivity that get celebrated. A thread!
#amwriting

Think about the narratives about writing and productivity you've been taught:

I tried to remember times I had learned about writing process in high school, and the only time I remember talking about how the books we read were written was Thoreau. Life in the woods!

I know most writers live in ordinary places and have day jobs or teach writing or do school visits to supplement their book income.

But it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the writing of someone in the woods, fully immersed in writing, is somehow deeper or truer.

It’s not!

The children’s books I love were written by people who were working and parenting and who, I imagine, sometimes had to reread their manuscript because they couldn't remember where they left off when an email or an assembly or a toddler interrupted them (just me? 😂)

We have this idea that writing done without interruptions, at a beautiful location while the sun rises is somehow more magical, but it’s not. The quality of the work is not a function of the setting or the flow in which it was created. It’s okay to write in fits and starts.

The seven books I have published were all written that way, in fact.

I have read all the craft books about writing every day, not breaking the chain, getting up before the rest of the household does, building a writing routine, and guess what? It’s all terrible advice. My advice for writing in the real world would be:

Keep coming back.

I have no idea what the specifics of your days look like or how you can best organize your time and so I can't give you advice that speaks to that, but I can say this:

If you keep coming back, you will have a book someday.

Even if you spend half of the not-enough-time you have getting back into it, even if you can’t remember why you cared in the first place, even if you tried writing last week and all you did was snack and stare at the wall.

Just come back again.

Eventually, it adds up to a book. That book will be just as good as the book you would have written in the universe where you had uninterrupted time.

Better, because that book is real, and the other one is a fantasy engineered to discourage you and stop you from coming back to the real book, the one you are going to have to write in a world where you will be interrupted again and again.

That's my writing-advice thread. Keep coming back.

(NB: I am not telling you not to carve out time for writing, not to protect your writing time, not to hire childcare—these are all great strategies. But I just want you to know that if you get interrupted despite your best efforts, that’s okay too. Your work won’t suffer for it).