I love to read, I love how I can start with an inkling of a thought in my head, read two or three books, articles, or listen to a writer talk and suddenly the ideas in all three gel and I have something, incredibly profound and yes, even earth shattering…that is until I read something else and find some other articulator has already said the same thing.

Well I’m not to that place yet, so I decided to go ahead and post this. Two big famous literary writers who I follow via interviews have said they are just flat out not writing, they’re too busy performing, giving speeches, signing books, and shaking hands (listen to what Chuck Palahniuk said about the stinky hand before you start dreaming about fame and adoration). Promoting it seems is a full time job.

This thought occurred to me: Does this mean that just in this simple way I have it better than these famous writers do? Maybe they’re taking a well needed rest from the demons in their heads and in a few years they’ll be back at it again, better than ever. I hope so because these are people I love to read and the thought of not reading more from them is sad indeed…still, this got me thinking.

If I get up on time, I can get in easily 6 hours a day to work. Wow. My husband is a saint, takes kids so I have time to write. With the time in the evenings and weekends he gives me I have time to reread, rewrite, outline and all the rest that takes so much time after the words have actually been laid down. I knew not marrying a reader would pay off sooner or later.

I am at my best when I’m still half asleep, in a pretty good place a few hours later. The rest of the day is best for essay writing, blogging, outlining, and all the rest that doesn’t require the morning brain. Fortunate since this is the time when I am most apt to be disturbed by screeching, crying, or sappy children who do still need me and I still need them.

I just finished Tropic of Cancer and am partway through a biography of  Henry Miller. He also got serious about his writing at 36, like me, and went off and scrounged around in Paris so he could write and live his own version of the artists life. How romantic, warped and twisted (he left a wife and child to do it) but I see how my own life is working this way as well, without all the drama (I got that out of the way in my teens and twenties when all the rest of them were learning important craft stuff in school. Oh, the envy I nurse when I read about these types: no kids, no job, just school, writing and reading, but do they know what a gift this is when they have it?).

When old Hank got famous in his later years he didn’t have any more time to write because he was so busy entertaining all his admirers. You can take that in many different ways, but these days I look at it like this: as an unpublished, unknown writer I have an incredible advantage, a phenomenal gift, and that is this: time.

People spend tens of thousands of dollars in MFA programs with the main goal being that they are supposed to have time to write and also important, to read. With husband and kids this is still sometimes a challenge but definitely possible and I have it. Lately with my work going better than it ever has, like the Bionic man: “Better, stronger, faster.” And I am also reading some incredible books and I can’t help but feel I may be better off than Henry, than the MFA students, than the famous, the important, the adored: the prize winning authors.

I am not saying I don’t want to publish, of course I do, and I imagine it is a lot to hope for to have that many people want to read my stuff that I would ever have the problems with time management that these guys do...still…I wonder if this is the stage, like pregnancy, where you have to enjoy what you have, the still free time, the still quiet house, the still peaceful life before what you’ve been pushing so hard for comes to pass and all that time is gone, gone, gone and you finally see how good you had it and it's too late.

Now that I’m flowing and really feeling it, I am in awe every day that I have the time and all that I need to really throw myself in to this life, and this is the amazing thing: I don’t have to give up my family to do it. That would not be possible if I didn’t have the beautiful, patient, understanding and devoted husband that I do.

 After so many months, so much up and down, all the travel, angst, and all the rest of it, I see progress and I’m loving that but the most important thing is that I am spending time on MY work. While I still swap critiques with other writers, and find I get quite a bit from trying to figure out why something isn’t working for me in their work, or even better why it is; the majority of my time is spent on my work. My. Work.

I keep thinking about what Franzen said in his talk about the importance of being loyal to myself and my work and not letting guilt or anything else get in the way, even when it doesn’t look like it is going to pay off.  It may be that I have finally figured out how to set the rest of the noise aside, at least for now. What a wonderful place to be this is.  Now I get to say what I want to say, the way I want to say it and spend hours trying to get it right. Twisted and weird it may be but it’s mine.

I am still growing and perfectly fine with that, and I have been lucky in the last year to have met some wonderful writers who have encouraged me and made suggestions that have strengthened my work in so many ways.  So I have the community that is so vital for me, the small but growing skill set, and the essential ingredient- time.

Maybe the recluses of the literary world have it figured right, the thing is just to make sure you carve out a way to write, and to keep writing and then not let anything get in the way of that.

I hope I am never in a position where I don’t have time to write, and I like the notion that right now, this time in my life is maybe the best it will ever be. What a concept.