Write in the Stolen Hours

I have stories to tell. Put in other words, I have a lot of hard work ahead of me. It’s a jolt into the real world of writing when you realise that each story, each book, is going to be a huge amount of work – blood, sweat and tears. Even though I have been quoted as saying, “The Barn Chronicles just about wrote themselves”, the truth of it is they didn’t. I still had to fight to find the time to shut myself away, re-read all my diary entries (that part is always a delight), sort through what I’ll use, write it all down, edit, edit, edit, and then there’s all the illustrations! Boy, it makes me tired just thinking about it. 🙂

I’ve just been reading a book that I bought at the N.Z Christian Writer’s Guild weekend. In The Little Handbook to Perfecting the Art of Christian Writing by L.G Goss and Don M. Aycock  Shakespeare is quoted from King Lear, “Nothing will come of nothing.” How true!

Yesterday I read an interview with Alive Communication’s President Rick Christian. They asked him whether a writer should keep his daytime job. (A resounding yes!) 

“The reality is that most authors have regular jobs and write in the stolen hours–when everybody else is sleeping or watching TV or going to dinner or the mall, etc. They conceive books while they’re ironing or showering or driving, and then carry the book in their heads until they have time to get it on paper. It’s not an easy life. And so, if you can not write, don’t. If you can’t not write, then yes, start looking for a job, do what you need to do to get by financially, and steal the writing hours wherever and however you can. Somehow in its own time the book(s) will get done. What you don’t want is to compound the pressure of being broke atop the already difficult and emotionally draining job of writing.”

I love that bit about the stolen hours. My books have all been written in the stolen hours – when babies are asleep; when I should be ironing; when the others are watching a movie (that’s hard for me!) etc etc. But… I’m going to steal a few more hours and keep writing, because I still have stories to tell.