Will You Write with Me for the Next 5 Days?

Let’s get real about how hard it is to find time to write. Plus, an invite to join me in a little experiment this week.

The parking lot of your kid’s high school is as good a place to write as any.

Many of us would agree that the hardest and most important element of being a writer is this: actually sitting down to write.

Writers experience plenty of other challenges, of course — writers' block, isolation, finding an audience, managing criticism — but, for me, these are smaller potatoes. As a working mom, the greatest hurdle to my writing life has always been carving out time to do the work and learning to protect it.*

When folks ask how I found time to write my memoir, I wish I could play a video montage so they could see the absurdity of that process. I typed most of Love You Hard on the couch with a baby in one hand. At the time, I was teaching third grade, parenting two young kids, and recovering from a multi-year stint as my husband's caregiver. I wrote in spurts — sometimes locking myself in a room while my family ate dinner, or eking out an overnight at a hotel and pounding the pavement for 24 hours straight. At no point did my system feel organized or relaxed. It was pure anarchy, and the anxiety made me cuckoo at times. I’m still in disbelief that I pulled it off.

But as they say, where there’s a will, there’s a way. And when people want something badly enough, they make it happen.

Now I find myself in a less demanding chapter of life, with a much reduced appetite for procrastination and burning the midnight oil. These days, I need writing to feel calm. My nervous system won’t tolerate more abuse.

The good news? I’m not up against any deadlines.

The bad news? I’m not up against any deadlines.

Which means my current challenge is carving out a true-blue practice for the thing I say I value above all else.

Making writing a daily practice.

Every time I pick up a craft book or interview about writing, I’m dying to learn about the author’s writing routine (how often, when, for how long, etc.). Maybe that’s because rituals, discipline, and daily routines do not come easily to my ADHD brain — a frequent source of shame.

Sometimes I convince myself that if I just stumble upon the right piece of wisdom, the secret to a daily writing practice will unlock itself, and BOOM, like a wormhole in the time-space continuum, a block of holy protected writing time will appear, waiting to be seized.

On the days I don’t write, I tend to feel like a failure. Instead of giving myself credit for all I did accomplish that day, I self-berate — rehashing my decisions or bemoaning that I didn’t get up at 5am, as I’d proudly insisted to my husband I would.

Unsurprisingly, this cycle does not set me up for success the next day. Instead, it creates a negative feedback loop in which expectations take on additional weight, and self-worth becomes tied to production.

Not exactly a healthy way to approach the work one loves.

Time is finite.

One of my dear friends is a full-time writer who regularly pounds out 3K words a day. As a caveat to her progress, she offers a kind reminder, “I don’t have children, Abby. And this is my full-time job.”

Unless you’re Freida McFadden (who seems to have located that wormhole in the universe), time is a very real, finite resource. There are only so many hours in a day, and this is not a reflection of anyone’s efforts — it’s just a fact!

Folks like me, with a job and a family, are pulled in a hundred different directions from the time we wake up until the time we rest our heads. Sure, many of us could be better about managing our time, but when life is life-ing (as it’s known to do), we simply don’t have the luxury of retreating into the quiet corners of our minds for hours on end. Sometimes it’s enough just to keep one’s head above water (and everyone’s lunch in their backpacks).

It’s important to acknowledge that life is demanding. I am not a bad person if I can’t write every day, nor am I less of a “writer.”

And neither are you.

Who needs accountability?

Me! (Waves hands furiously).

Who hates to admit it? Also ME!

It’s a heck of a lot easier for me to carve out writing time if someone else is counting on me to do it (let’s hear it for those people-pleasing instincts). Two years ago, I had the most lovely writing weekend with a friend during which we glued ourselves to her couch for 48 hours straight. The other’s presence was enough to keep us from straying into other work or responsibilities.

The accountability was wildly simple: I sit, you sit. And it worked.

I love a good writing retreat, but most of us can’t carve out 48 hours of writing time, let alone 60 minutes. Instead, we need daily small doses of accountability (think, “I sit, you sit,” but for 20 minutes remotely), which is why I’m eager to do a little experiment together…

Write With Me.

Here’s my goal: for the next 5 days, I want to establish a daily writing practice. And I’m inviting you to join me.

In the spirit of “Keep it simple, stupid,” here’s how it will go:

The evening before, I’ll shoot you a quick message in the chat. It will say something like, “I’m sitting down to write at 7am. Who’s with me?”

If you can carve out the time to join, shoot me a quick message or emoji. If you want to join asynchronously (perhaps your work schedule conflicts or you’re in a different time zone), that works too. Just drop me a note.

The next day, look out for the two prompts I’ll drop into the chat. There will be one for new writers and one for folks working on an existing project. But as my yoga teachers like to remind the class, feel free to do your own thing! These prompts are just suggestions.

Visibility via accountability is key here.

I want to know who’s with me, and I want to celebrate your progress. I won’t be nosey — if you want to keep your project top secret, that’s A-OK. If you want to shout it from the rooftops, let’s shout together.

In the spirit of visibility, I’m working on completing the first draft of an upmarket gothic suspense novel, which I describe as,

Haunted house + NYC modern art scene + Gaslighting spouse + History of female hysteria

(As you can see, I’m far from nailing my tagline.)

But I want to emphasize: this challenge is not just for folks interested in publishing. I know plenty of people who are working to make morning pages or journaling a daily habit, and the Write With Me experiment is a great way to get started with those goals, too.

Five days may not get us to the finish line of a big project, but it’s plenty of time to prove to ourselves that we can be daily (or near daily) writers.

Who’s in?

Looking forward to writing together tomorrow. (And, if there’s someone in your life who keeps saying they want to write, please share this post with them and invite them to join, too.)

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*Protecting one’s writing time is possibly a harder task than finding the time! Once it’s on the calendar, how do we ensure no one’s needs will encroach on that time? How do we become our own writing bodyguards? We’ll work on this together during the Write With Me experiment.