A Time To Write

This week I explored some notions about time and writing and what follows are a compendium of my thoughts:

• We all have 168 hours each week to work with.
• Time spent at the office during the work week including hour allocated for lunch is 45 hours.
• Allocating 8 hours a day for sleep eats up another 56 hours.

Those are pretty much fixed expenditures of time. I could be a little more precise by throwing in travel time to and from work but leaving this as it is, the leaves 67 hours for all that other stuff,  [family time, travel, recreation, doctor appointments, grocery shopping, cleaning, shopping, lawn care, writing and so on...

There is a lot of stuff to eat up that remaining 67 hours. As a writer I have to figure out how and when to carve out time and then to make sure that allocated time is optimally used.  I've thought about the amount of remaining time and decided that I should schedule about 10% (rounding up to 7 hours)  of the remaining time for writing. It seems like a lot on one hand and yet it really not quite so much on the other. For example, I I am accustomed to writing often in 30 minute segments then I can think of it as a hour a day for seven days and it them seems like a lot. Now there are plenty of times that I buckle down and write for more then an hour at a time, working on new stuff and rewrites.  But that is not a daily occurrence and more likely then not to happen on a weekend. So a full hour every day then seems like a lot. On the other hand, if you think of your writing as a career/avocation then it hardly seems like much - 7 hours a week.

Another consideration is are we talking about writing or everything including writing related. If I start adding in the latter then we suddenly are talking about a lot of other things that could encroach upon that 7 hours. For example:

• Submitting work
• Organizing material in a retrievable fashion / backing up, etc.
• Reading (all writers need to be reading)
• Researching topics
• Researching markets
• Networking
• Attending events for peers and giving readings of your own work.

All of the above things are what I tend to refer to as administrative functions of a writer. They are not writing but they are ever bit a part of the process unless you just plan to write and stash your work in that third drawer of your dresser that you don't use for anything else because you have to stoop down to use it.

For now I have decided to embrace the 7 hour plan for a while and see how it works for me. I have yet to decide how much of that I will allow to allocate for writing related tasks. Realizing anything that comes out of time not a part of the 7 hours is essentially reducing the remaining 60 hours left after sleep and work.  These things have to be done but perhaps with a balance of not taking away too much from writing or remaining unallocated time.

I've decided that I need to do my best to elimination of distractions from the specific periods that I write. Some of those I can control and some are less easily effectuated but I need to try none the less.
For example - I can't stop to check my email or post on face book. I should park my cell during this time. TV off. Maybe add one of my writing play lists to the room to help reinforce what I am doing and as a way others entering may realize what I am doing at that specific time.

Getting 7 hours in would allow for example to take a night off to do something else and adding that extra hour to the weekend so I don't end up staying up late one night to get in an hour if we've been out for the evening. It allows for some flexibility with the weekend hours.

This is what my approach will be for the immediate future and I will address how is is or isn't working at 2 weeks and 4 weeks and make adjustments if necessary.

So how do you spend and allocate your writing time?

Amy Leigh Davis Reading September 16

Friday, September 16, 2011 ~  7:00 PM at  THE WRITERS PLACE

Amy Leigh Davis, author of The Alter Ego of the Universe   recently published by Finishing Line Press will read from her book as well as new work.  I've had the pleasure of knowing Amy and experiencing her writing over a period of several years now.  Her works always seems fresh and active. This is a reading I  especially looking forward to.

Two other poets with whom I am not presently familiar  will also be reading. The are Susan Rieke, Mary Rogers-Grantham.  Rieke has  two books of poetry are Small Indulgences and From the Tower. She is Professor of English at the University of Saint Mary in Leavenworth.  Mary Rogers-Grantham’s collection is titled Clear Velvet.


Mark your calender for this event  at The Writers Place ~  3607 Pennsylvania
Kansas City, MO 64111-2820

Confession Tuesday - Do The Math

My body keeps telling me it’s Monday but it isn’t. No, it has been a week since my last confession even though being off yesterday for Labor Day makes it feel a lot like a Monday work day. So join me if you will…

Dear Reader: 

I confess that 3 day weekends make me wish they were all that way. Actually they make me wish they were longer still. Give a guy a day off and he wants two. I confess that I get greedy that way.  

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Over the weekend I tried to utilize some of the extra time doing what I call the administrative things a writer does. I’m not fond of these things but unless you are going to take the Emily Dickinson career path and stash your writing away in a dresser drawer and hope someone comes along and gets it published for you after death then the proactive approach seems to be necessary.  So sending out your work becomes the dreaded necessity.

I confess that I was not fond of math in school. Algebra was in my view something I needn’t concern myself with and I recall that my grades in the subject would testify to that fact.

Strange as it may seem, my post school days poring over and processing detailed election poll data, strategizing over ward and precinct numbers, margins of error, voter turnout, and then there was my fascination with baseball statistic.  My wife likes to remind me these are the very uses that I swore I’d never need such complexities of math for.

But over the weekend I noted that on Duotrope – my submission tracker tells me that I have sent out 56 submissions in the past 12 months and that I have an 8.89% acceptance rate and that is higher then normal (though I haven’t a clue as to what normal is).  So I confess that I am again dragging numbers into my life – my poetic life at that!  I confess it feels sleazy talking about it.  

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Shamefully I confess that I also check my blog analytics from time to time. I suppose it is a good thing that I don’t yet have a book published or I’d be checking that sales ranking daily like it were the Dow Jones or something.

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I confess that my San Francisco Giants are torturing me with their play these past few weeks.

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I confess I need to pay my library file and check out some books

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I confess I watched like three old episodes of Friends last night and felt like it was the good old times again.

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I confess I’m loving the weather today because it is so San Francisco!   And I confess that when I’m resorting to confessions about weather it must be time to stop.  Have a great week everyone!

Thought on Waste and Enjoyment

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. ~ Bertrand Russell

Will I Ever Write a 9-11 Poem and Other Thoughts on America Since that Fateful Day

I recall once before blogging about 9-11 and remarking that I had never been compelled to write a 9-11 poem. Given that we are approaching the 10th year anniversary of that tragic event I thought it was worth addressing this again in my own mind and explore some other post 9-11 impacts of  my own.

While it has been nearly 10 years I think 9-11 remains pretty fresh in our minds and the feelings most Americans have remain pretty raw. I think there are several reasons for this.

• Any child of say 10 up into the teens was old enough to realize what happened on that day and ten years later these people are young adults. They have grown up with nearly half there life under the specter of 9-11 and therefor for many of these people it is a singularly defining moment.
• The events of 9-11 prompted an American war response that has continued to this day, at considerable expense to the American economy and loss of life and quality of life for many American servicemen and families.
• Since 9-11 we have all seen dramatic changes in security that have eroded some personal liberty and freedoms for which Americans have long held themselves different from other world citizens.

In spite of how fresh in our minds 9-11 remains for us I have continued distance from it poetically.  I recall one draft of work that has some vaguely distant reference to 9-11 but certainly is not a poem about 9-11.

Immediately after the attack everyone and their pet dog was writing poems about the event. I totally get this because poetry tends to be a terrific release of emotional energy. But doing so, releasing such energy onto a page does not necessarily make for the best poems. There were in the days and weeks immediately thereafter some horrible poetry written on the subject.  Not all of course was bad, I've read some remarkable ones, but I decided long ago that any poem I would write on the subject would need to be quite remarkable.

To me the 9-11 tragedies lives on daily. It is as if the loss of innocent lives that day were somehow not enough. It lives on in many ways and the least of which I'll summarize here:

• Fear!  Not a new word to us for we've been warned about the cost of fear on our lives decades ago, but to be frank, fear now touches us every time we travel, it has reached our economic stability, and it courts families daily that have sons, daughters, husbands, wives, etc. overseas in war zones.
• Civil liberties... in the years following 9-11 the individual civil rights and privacy of Americans have been in a watershed of erosion.
• National stature...  So many things from the breach of rules we have lived under for such a long time with respect to treatment of prisoners in detainment  to the very ill-conceived reasons for preemptive war in Iraq have led others to question our stature as a leader of the free world.
• Military readiness - our ability to defend ourselves from real threats has been severely compromised by the misguided long term military engagements that continued today as a result of 9-11, and to what end? Have they made us any safer?

For my generation, 9-11 although certainly tragic represents not a singular defining moment in our lives. We have had many of them. Much the same way generations before us have.  Perhaps my problem is that quite frankly my generation has had way too many tragic events.  The 1960's alone were littered with the losses of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy and the Vietnam War. And let me say at this point I am not going to engage in debate over which is worse, the murder of one man or that of some 3,000. The deaths of JFK, MLK and RFK were not singular losses but the loss of hope and dreams for millions. They were no better or worse then they deaths on 9-11 as all were tragedies of a national level.

I suppose the one thing about the lack a poetic response to 9-11 on my own that mystifies me is that I am not at all adverse to poetry of witness. I actually am a pretty big advocate of/defender of it. Carolyn Forché is just one of many poets I admire, with a reputation for very such very work. But 10 years later, I still have nothing to add.

8th Anniversary!

A couple of weeks ago I was aware that the anniversary of my blogging at stickpoet was nearing an then I got busy and plum forgot about it until I read a comment from a reader this morning wishing me a happy blogaversity.  There is a small countdown tab at the lower sidebar that alerts readers the number of days till the next one.  It is obscure enough that it only catches my attention every so often.

It is true... this is the 8th anniversary and the 2,922 post and I look back and realize that anyone who blogs for any length of time invests a lot of themselves into the process.

Over these eight years poetry has not only been a passion but become a part of my daily fabric.  I am a true believer in the concept of a poetry lifestyle. I means you are constantly aware of things about you in a way others aren't. It means you are always looking for the language in pictures. Always trying to simplify the complex and sometimes look for more then there appears on the surface. I think there is a certain spirituality between the poet and the universe that just doesn't exist otherwise.

To those who stop by on occasion to read stickpoet or those who subscribe to a feed, a big thank you.  I especially appreciate those who leave comments & become part of a dialogue. Non-spam comments are always welcome. Spamers however, don't waste your time, due your existance the comments are moderated and those posts never see the light of day.

I have a few ideas for some posts and topics for the very near future that I hope many of you will find interesting. So thanks again and keep coming back!

Magpie Tales 80 / Poem: Promises

An hour clocked

in the wet footprints

cast upon past

each fleeting step

measures an instant

a crack     a mother’s back

a broken promise

I will do well in school

I will not stray

trouble will not

be my downpour

raining in some dark alley

hunkered under red

umbrella from showers

there are no guarantees

otherwise

Michael A. Wells

Magpie Tales 80