jo_graham (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} jo_graham) wrote,@ 2008-05-07 06:55:00 |
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How Did You Find Time to Write?
A friend asks, "How in the world did you find time to write Black Ships while working full time and having a family?"
I stopped cleaning my house.
I only stopped cleaning my house half the time! It's like Betty Friedan says in The Feminine Mystique -- having sparkling countertops and windows is something of a fetish. Housework expands to fill all available time. Are my windows perfect? OMG you can still see the sticky from the adhesive tape that held up the Christmas lights! I am a bad, bad person! I have clutter on my countertops and I just took out the recycling because the bin was overflowing! There are toys all over the living room!
Mind you, I'm not saying that houses ought to be scuzzy, or that you should never clean. But if you vaccumed half as often and stopped worrying about the windows, how much time would that free up? How much time is spent every day doing cosmetic things that are never seen by anyone but the family, because That's How It Ought To Be Done? And then tomorrow they need doing again.
Another place I got my time is that I almost never watch tv. My friends laugh at me because half the time I don't even know what the hot shows are. But when my daughter was small I lost track of my shows in the uncertainty and general bleariness of baby schedules, and I've never gotten back in the tv habit. I got an hour to two hours a day right there by writing instead of watching.
The third big time thing was my driving time. By taking public transportation to work instead of driving, I could work on my laptop on the way. That gave me another five hours a week, and it was wonderful to leave work and go straight to the Aegean, from commuter bustle to black ships cutting through blue waters!
A friend asks, "How in the world did you find time to write Black Ships while working full time and having a family?"
I stopped cleaning my house.
I only stopped cleaning my house half the time! It's like Betty Friedan says in The Feminine Mystique -- having sparkling countertops and windows is something of a fetish. Housework expands to fill all available time. Are my windows perfect? OMG you can still see the sticky from the adhesive tape that held up the Christmas lights! I am a bad, bad person! I have clutter on my countertops and I just took out the recycling because the bin was overflowing! There are toys all over the living room!
Mind you, I'm not saying that houses ought to be scuzzy, or that you should never clean. But if you vaccumed half as often and stopped worrying about the windows, how much time would that free up? How much time is spent every day doing cosmetic things that are never seen by anyone but the family, because That's How It Ought To Be Done? And then tomorrow they need doing again.
Another place I got my time is that I almost never watch tv. My friends laugh at me because half the time I don't even know what the hot shows are. But when my daughter was small I lost track of my shows in the uncertainty and general bleariness of baby schedules, and I've never gotten back in the tv habit. I got an hour to two hours a day right there by writing instead of watching.
The third big time thing was my driving time. By taking public transportation to work instead of driving, I could work on my laptop on the way. That gave me another five hours a week, and it was wonderful to leave work and go straight to the Aegean, from commuter bustle to black ships cutting through blue waters!
