Welcome to the website of writer Erin Boatkicker

Erin Boatkicker is a young writer with grand fantasies of using a handful of words to change someone’s life. She’s constantly busy and sometimes even surprises herself by how much time she can find to write. She’s a university student majoring, unsurprisingly, in creative writing, as well as working two jobs, learning to drive a car, planning a wedding, and dealing with her crazy but mostly lovable family. Right now, she's put all her other writing projects on hold and is focusing entirely on Only Make Believe, a novel she started for NaNoWriMo 2010. She hopes to have the first draft finished before November 2011.

Friday, March 18, 2011

Finding the time to write (I'm looking for tips)

I sometimes wonder whether I'm repeating myself.... I have this vague sense of having written this post at one point in the past. Have I? I have no idea.

Writing comes in a cycle for me. I get ideas, LOTS of them, and I don't have time to put them all on paper. I jot down some notes here and there, and that's it. I'm overrun. Then, I stop having ideas, and all I want to do is write. I can write for hours and hours and hours and days at a time, with no breaks for anything but food and the bathroom. Then, I get into a dry spell, which I know for sure I've written about on this blog before.

For once, I'm writing about this when I'm not in the middle of a dry spell. I'm in the "write-write-write-write-write" period of my cycle. (No, no, not that period, not that cycle) But I've hit an unusual road block.

I do not, and have not recently, had the TIME to write. What? How does that happen? It happens when you have 5 classes, and two jobs.

I've never had this problem before. When I was a little kid, I had plenty of time to write. When I was in jr. high and high school, I had a lot of responsibility at home, and lots of homework, but school didn't matter to me, so I just wrote instead of doing my homework. I didn't want to do the homework anyways, and if I wasn't writing, I was on Myspace (remember when myspace was cool? haha) or some other website, wasting time. It didn't matter if I kept taking breaks from cleaning in order to write. As long as I got the housework done, it didn't matter.

Now, the things I do outside writing actually matter to me. I need my jobs to pay my rent, buy my food, and pay my tuition. I wanted so badly to be back in school, and now I'm here, I'm going to make the most of it. I'm not going to fail my classes.

But then, what do I do? I've never had to make time for writing before, and I'm a little at a loss as to how to do it. As things are right now, I'm squeezing writing in one sentence at a time, in between tasks at work, I'm scribbling on note cards when I'm in the car (Don't panic! I don't drive.) and I type little phrases here and there while I'm waiting on web-pages to load for school stuff.

I'm fitting it in, little by little, but it's really not doing it for me. I'm looking for tips on fitting writing into my schedule, without sacrificing my grades or one of my jobs.

Starting a few hours ago, it's spring break for me, so I should have some time to write during this. I'm hoping to have a plan for writing, after the break is over.

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