"I Never Have Time to Write": A Rebuttal

Aka "If you don't write something great, it's your own damn fault!"
(Source)

I am writing this post at 8:30 am on train, which is carrying me towards the city of Chicago. I'm actually writing it, pencil to paper, no keyboards and electronics involved, because my deadline is in two days and I have so many other things to do. To read: three articles and fifty pages of workshop responses. To write: a final project. To grade: thirty-five student essays. Paradoxically, getting an MFA has given me very little time to sit down, calmly, and write.

And there's the first big lie that writers tell ourselves. We do not have to sit down or be calm to write. For a large part of history, "serious" writers were the privileged folk. The rich people with nothing to do but think, study and write. Today, there are more diverse voices writing than ever before. And in order to keep those voices writing, we need to get rid of old visions of the writer having to clear space (literally and metaphorically), breathe and get into the right frame of mind in order to produce anything of value. We can write on the subway, as we're waiting for our lunch, at the laundromat...
"But," you might say, "that's so difficult. It won't produce any good material. It'll be too fragmented."

Well, you won't know until you try. Sure, writing in a restaurant for five minutes may not be your favorite way to produce new material, but the more you push yourself, the more you'll learn about your abilities and the more spaces you'll discover where you can write. Maybe a restaurant is too much for you, but the thirty-minute wash cycle at the laundromat (in spite of all the swooshing and clanking) is perfect.

"Before I know it," you might say, "I'll be writing everyday!"
You know what? "You have to write everyday" is a bunch of bullshit. There are going to be a lot of days when you could only write poetry if there were twenty-six hours in the day. That's okay. Anne Boyer wrote this great essay about how, even when we're not writing, we're constantly thinking, processing and developing new material to write. So try to write poetry everyday. Write as often as you can. Keep pushing yourself to write in new places. But if it's just not possible for a day or two, don't fret.

Still, odds are that you actually do write something everyday. Emails for work, memos, spreadsheets, social media posts. I wouldn't go quite as far as the cliche that there's art in grocery lists, but if you want to write haikus about broccoli, be my guest. You could throw a great image into an email, make a joke in an academic essay, write a really eloquent statement about anything in 140 characters or less. You could even write a really well-crafted comment below!
So, go forth!

1. Write somewhere new today–on your commute, in the break room at lunch. Write somewhere that isn't your desk or dining table or couch or bed.
2. Put some extra "writerly skill" into something you always write–a comment on a blog post, a Facebook post, an email for work.

Before you know it, your train will be pulling into the station and you too will have written something shareable by 9:30 am. If so, Floodmark can help you with that too!

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