The value of uninterrupted writing time

I post these updates on Words like Trees on Sundays, but I write them on Saturdays. I’m not a procrastinator. It makes me anxious to have things hanging over me. But today, it’s Sunday. My post won’t have been written yet by the time I normally would have liked it scheduled to appear.

The reason is, I’ve been on a roll with a short story! Between Easter break beginning last Thursday and a deadline to send something to my writing group by Sunday (today!), I’ve been furiously pecking away. Friday morning, I finished a first draft. Friday, Saturday, and the first part of today, I’ve been revising. I’ll send it out to the group this evening, ideally with one more readthrough, but I can breathe easier now. I’ll have something I can send.

*The photographs in this post are from a few recent hikes. We have had a string of beautiful days, as spring commences at long last.*

Normally, I feel painstakingly slow. I take months drafting a story. I take almost as long revising. I delete, rewrite, spend long hours staring into space trying to understand my characters, or just blearily contemplating why I’m as slow as I am.

Something that came as a bit of a revelation to me, then, these last several days, is the value of truly uninterrupted time. I mean full days. I mean not parceling my writing into 75-minute chunks each morning but in long, languorous, luxuriant stretches. I think it made a big difference. The on-boarding time I normally spend each day to get myself back into the frame of mind of the story became more productive. Having a deadline too kept a fire under my seat. When I finally had the brainwaves I needed to understand this story, it really poured out of me.

I took a trail near home the other day that I had only taken a couple of other times, and not for at least two years. I had forgotten where it led. I was stunned by this view. At the back of this image, just in front of the distant mountains, you can see the Dalsfjord to which our Flekkefjord connects. Normally, at the lower angle from which I see my home, the Dalsfjord is obscured by that intervening point of land. From this height, though, how near we are becomes clear.

*Another hike, down towards the fjord this time. We walked out onto the dock and, looking into the water, we could see enormous white sea urchins on the rock floor.*

The comparison I come up with feels like a stretch: it’s nature preserves. Sometimes I’m helping students with their work in the Environmental Systems and Societies course. One of the topics they study is methods for effective ecological conservation. In general, more land area set aside for conservation is a good thing for species. However, a large amount of total land area isn’t enough if that land area is divided into many small pieces. That is, a one-acre preserve here, another there, a thousand individual one-acre preserves is not as beneficial as one continuous thousand-acre area. I think it’s like that. When writing time is cut up, ideas don’t flourish.

The conundrum is, what can I do with this information? How can I give myself more access to that kind of continuous, uninterrupted time? It’s tricky. Maybe it isn’t possible. But where I can, I have a better idea now of its value.

I’m off to do a hike now with my husband. We’ll drive out to the coast and be outside for a couple of hours. That will be really good. Monday we still have off, but I’ve got lots of grading and planning to do, another thing I’ve been putting off while working on this story. Tuesday, then, is back to school.

How are you? What are you working on? What habits are helping you make the progress you want?

Best wishes, and thanks for stopping by,
Jimmy