Uninterrupted Time
Lesson Learned & Shared
This year I am taking on the #100dayproject by sharing one lesson a day from my Stop Writing Alone journey. I am looking specifically for the lessons I not only learned myself, but the ones I find myself repeating to writers and creatives in my community over and over again.
Uninterrupted Time
In Joyce Carol Oates's Masterclass she reminded us that we don't need more writing time, we need more UNINTERRUPTED time. When I first started the Stop Writing Alone podcast, I interviewed the 10 Minute Novelist, Katharine Grubb who made the most of this idea ten minutes at at time. She wrote multiple books while homeschooling multiple children all by keeping her writing time sacred.
Whether it is a closed door, a sign, a shut off phone, an app to keep you away from all of your digital distraction, you need to carve out those sacred uninterrupted slots of writing time. For me, it often takes a quick conversation with the family, a relocation of my phone and, a surprising tool: a physical hourglass to serve as a visual reminder for my very forgetful loved ones I live with. As soon as they come near my desk and see the sand still falling, they leave without saying a word!
How do you find your uninterrupted writing time?
My #100DayProject for 2024
Introducing my #100dayproject for 2024:
To know me is to know I have a teacher soul. At the end of the day, my passion is learning and sharing that learning with anyone willing to listen. So, when it came time to think of a project that I could realistically take on for 100 days straight, it had to come back to that passion.
For the next 100 days, I will share one lesson learned each day that I find myself continually sharing with writers and creatives in my community. There are plenty of things that come up again and again (in fact, I'm kind of betting that there are at least 100 of them!) and it's about time I wrote them all down somewhere. Let's see how far we get with these mini lessons, let's see how many you remember me chanting before, and how many you needed to be reminded of!
I recently discovered the Focus feature on my phone, which is basically a do-not-disturb. I’ve been using Sleep Focus for months, but didn’t realize I could use it in other situations too.
So true! To get back to fiction, I now dedicate an hour and a half every Saturday morning to creative writing while my husband takes our kids to jiujitsu class. That time is incredible. Now I'm troubleshooting character, plot, and craft in my head all week and looking forward to my uninterrupted time on Saturday.