And then there was no time to write...

No time! No time! Ugh! It is frustrating, just how tight my schedule has been. Here I am, going to school to advance my writing career, but the irony is that my school schedule is so demanding that is leaves me literally no time to write. I haven't written a thing in either of my manuscripts in close to a month. A month! My poor blog has so much dust accumulating in it that it fairly resembles an old abandoned western town complete with tumbleweed. This is not for lack of desire to write. I miss it so much I could cry - and just might - at any minute.

I know, I know... I did this to myself. It wasn't demanding enough to go to school full-time throughout the year, no, I had to go an enroll in a mind-numbing SIX classes during the six week summer semesters. At least I am thankful that I had the presence of mind to include two literature classes in that mix. I'm taking English lit and American lit currently, so the quickie semester is not without its rewards. However, the pace of the reading and work output is some where between break-neck speed and warp-speed, depending on the day and the course requirement.

So, what is a writer to do when she can't write? You, know I have tried throwing a hissy fit but all it did was exasperate me. Obviously that didn't help. I didn't even have time to write about it afterward, it was too time consuming. I've taken to writing character motivations and plot ideas in the margins of my notebooks while I sit through a lecture or when I'm studying, but since I am not then going into my manuscripts to actually write, all those ideas are stagnating.

I can't stay up any later to write. I'm already studying till the wee hours every night. There is no way I am waking up any earlier either. I think the only possible solution is to pick one evening a week - probably Friday nights - and give myself a four hour window to do nothing else but work in my manuscripts. I gotta do something or I'm gonna wind up slamming myself upside the head with one of my massive lit books. I just hope that I don't get caught up in procrastination and use the four hours to watch television or clean my house.

This boggles me. I haven't gone this long without actively writing in I can't even recall how many years. I've always been the writer who found the time, made the time, created the time, and put the world on hold (inasmuch as I could) to ensure the time. This is alien territory for me. This really not having two minutes to rub together to write creatively is like a heavy weight that threatens to suffocate me if I do not find a way to lift it.

I've heard other writers lament about a lack of time so very often through the years, but I never really empathized until now. I used to think there was no way they really didn't have time. That they must be procrastinating, and I am still convinced that in many cases they were putting off their writing. But now I see how a person can literally box themselves into a corner with their schedule until they've worked their fingers to the bone, and then there was no time to write.

That prospect is so disconcerting that I am determined to rail against it until I've eked out enough time to write every week. I feel like such a poser. If I allow myself to become a writer who doesn't write - what will that make me? An antiwriter, a wannabe. No. I need to reign in my schedule before it consumes all of my creativity to the point that I have forgotten why I started writing in the first place. I started because I had to. Because the muse wouldn't sleep. Because I love it.

But then I started back to school, because I wanted to become a better writer, and then there was no time to write.