I confess to being frustrated. If I was science-clever and had a basement, I would be in a lab coat devising a complex process for human duplication. My double could go to work, and I - the original - could write full time.
Of course, being a writer means that I see all kinds of plot holes in the above. My salary would effectively halve because I would be supporting two of us. My social life would suffer (because said double would be fostering relationships whilst I would be writing), and then there's the conundrum of who sleeps where, and with who.
Clearly, I'm not going to share my partner, but would my double feel that he was in some way hers?
Okay, scratch that. I don't want a double.
What I want is more time. To do everything, to do a bit of nothing. Time to work, play and whatever. I have a full-time day job, and I write in the mornings, at lunch, and most evenings. Which can be exhausting.
If only I didn't need to sleep. If sleep was optional, and my body and mind wouldn't suffer from opting out, imagine how productive I would be. It would be awesome.
But this would only be truly beneficial to me if the rest of the world still had to catch their Zs. Otherwise, people would work longer hours, produce more, expect more - in short, I'd be in the exact same position I'm in now.
Are you starting to understand how much I overthink things?
What I'm trying to say in a circular, of-beat way, is that I am a creative prisoner. I have so many ideas, so many interests and curiosities, and only so many hours in the day. I write on a small laptop and I'm not fussy about time or place. I'll cheerfully tap away on the train, in the car (whilst parked, of course - don't imagine any stop light sentences). If I can snag fifteen minutes, I'll knock out as many words as I can.
It's a brilliant, albeit exasperating position to be in. Whilst I may wish to write all the time, and get frustrated because I can't - I would rather that than the alternative. I just can't imagine suffering writer's block. Not now. Not for a long time. I have too much to say.
And because my characters are screaming at me, I'm going to wrap up my first blog post and return to them.
If you're a writer, how to you find or make time to write? Have you trained yourself to write on command, or do you just hope the words will come when you find yourself in front of your computer?
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