MAKING TIME TO WRITE

In this debut episode of the Time to Write podcast, Amy and Emily share mindset shifts, practical tools, and next steps for making time to write.

HIGH/LOW – .38

Amy Kelly

Hey, friends, we are so excited that you’re with us today. And Em, I am certainly excited to hear how your week and writing has gone and what your high/lows are. So why don’t you kick us off today?

Emily Roberson

Okay, so my high is that I have been revising a manuscript of a book that I’d written for sort of an absurdly long time, and I finished. And the low was a health thing. I had to go on a stupid low-iodine diet because of it. And it just was really annoying.

Amy Kelly

Yeah, you’re a superstar to do that. Like it was very restricted. So kudos, friend. Kudos.

Emily Roberson

And what about you?

Amy Kelly

So I feel like we’re just getting our footing here on the podcast. This is awesome. All right. So for this week, my high was I had a whole day with the third person in our critique group that you and I are involved in. Our friend Kelly, she and I live in the same area. And we were able to physically get together. We just had a goal-setting day where we would kind of we’d separate do our own thing then come back together. And so that was really great, just kind of thinking about the year ahead.

So I really enjoyed that. And then my low was actually, there was a virtual conference that I was signed up for, that was like three days long. And just because of life, and kind of the messiness of that and my college kids, because one of them is still home. So just kind of dealing with all of the normal, everyday stuff, I didn’t get to do as much of the conference as I wanted to, but it’s recorded, I’ll be able to go back, but I was a little disappointed because they do break out groups and stuff like that, that I didn’t get to be a part of,

Emily Roberson

But it’s good. I feel like this is something that we just really should talk about on the podcast with calling it time to write and everything. And the whole reason for including the highs and lows is how often what we think is gonna happen isn’t necessarily what actually happens. And just remembering that we’re writers and creators, but also humans,

Amy Kelly

Also humans. Right? And not just humans, but humans who are kind of, well, not even kind of I think we’re just so relationally connected to so many people, the least of you know, not the least of which is our families and kids. And I know you still have kiddos at home. Mine are both at school, but again, they were still home for the holiday break. And even when they’re at school, like I think I’ve talked to several people about I never knew what a challenge parenting young adults would be like. So that is fun, right?

Emily Roberson

It’s a whole new ballgame. I have one who’s in college and the other two are still at home. I guess I now have a middle schooler and a high schooler I have one that just started middle school.

MAKING THE TIME TO WRITE – 3:33

Amy Kelly

I think I really think that brings us to kind of what we’re talking about today on this very first episode, which is basically finding the time to write in the midst of these messy, crazy lives that we have where, you know, I think we’ve talked a lot about as creatives we can’t not write, that’s just not optional, because we’ve got to get these stories out and onto the page. But it can be scary. And it’s really easy for life to be overwhelming. And like we just said, busy. So how do we move past that? How do we step into our creativity?

Emily Roberson

Right? And I think there are really two pieces, one of which is sometimes we keep adding things so that we don’t have to write.

Amy Kelly

Absolutely.

Emily Roberson

So suddenly, because one of the things that I have found, and it’s not just having kids because when I was working, it happened all the time with work, but it definitely happens with kids. There’s never a situation where someone’s gonna be like, okay, that’s enough momming. There always needs to be a PTA president. There’s always the committee. Always something to bake. There’s always something to do. And so for me, I kept saying I wanted to write and this was even before I had kids, but yeah, I kept finding I didn’t have time and so I think sometimes you literally don’t have very much time, but sometimes you can ask yourself like, why? Right? Why can’t I find 10 minutes a day to work on this thing that is clearly so important to me. Right?

Amy Kelly

And I think this goes back to something we’ve talked about before, which is very much, it’s a fine line, I think you don’t want to shame yourself. And there are certainly those seasons where you’ve literally like, you don’t even have five minutes in the carpool line to be able to write…

Emily Roberson

Or pee! Right, exactly. You can’t even pee by yourself,

Amy Kelly

Right? And brushing your teeth feels like a luxury and all the things, but then I think you have to be really like — I like the word you use curious — you have to get really curious and honest with yourself about okay, am I filling my time up? Are there things that I can say no to? And I think that’s another really big piece of this is getting comfortable saying no to the things that aren’t your passion, aren’t moving you closer to your dream, aren’t affording you the time that you would like to write or, whatever.

Emily Roberson

Yeah, I think also, there’s a big piece about permission. Because I feel like, the thing about wanting to be a writer is that like, it is not a dream that everyone shares,  a lot of people would like to have written a book, for sure. But the actual work of sitting down and writing, not only did not everyone share it, but I can say, having published a novel, when my book came out in 2019, there were people that stopped me and they said, “Oh, my gosh, this is what you were doing at the baseball games.”

Yeah, that’s what I’m sitting there at the baseball game, when my kid is up to bat, I will watch my kid up to bat. But when my kid is on the, you know, sitting on the bench, I had a notebook, and I was writing down ideas. And I was writing at the ball field. And people were like, oh, this is what you were doing. But I think your apprenticeship is so long. Between when you first start with that germ of an idea, like, “oh, I would really like to write” to the point where you have something that anyone would recognize as a finished thing, that it can feel really hard to claim that time. Right? It can feel sort of selfish.

Amy Kelly

Yeah, and the whole imposter syndrome thing, too, I think is very real. And so who am I to claim time for writing and say that I’m a writer, much less an author? For some reason, and maybe this is just me, but the word author is so much scarier than to say and claim even than writer is. And so who am I to think that I can write or take time away from my family to write or to say no to the school that needs volunteers, or the church that needs volunteers or all the places that need volunteers?

Emily Roberson

I think no one’s paying you for a long time. That’s the other reason your apprenticeship is so long, like no one is paying you. So we’re also fighting against our cultures. There is a very strange cultural thing where if you’re doing something where it doesn’t lead to money, it’s like, oh, you’re wasting your time. Right? So I think for me, they’re like two pieces? Well, actually, no, we left out one of the biggest ones for me, which is that for me, books meant so much. They were so formative. It almost felt like an impossible. Like I was already wrestling with perfectionism.

So for years, I would write things, but I never finished anything. Right? Because I felt like if it wasn’t finished, it couldn’t be judged, because I knew if it was judged, it would come up wanting. And the truth is, it will. That is finally the piece that clicked for me is like, it’s not going to be good. At first. There are pieces that are good, there’ll be pieces of it that you love. But at first, the thing that I found really useful to think about it is like making shoes. If you were going to learn to make shoes, it would take a really long time. There are so many different things you have to learn before you can ever make even a bad shoe. Right? And so even to get to where someone could be like, Oh, that’s a shoe.

Amy Kelly

Right? And I think even in that example, you were separating the writing from yourself. And I think for me, the baby steps of my journey were separating my writing from myself and my identity. So somebody critiqued my work. They weren’t critiquing me, they were critiquing my shoe.

Emily Roberson

Sometimes people will talk about their work like it’s a baby. But it’s not. Because if people are assholes to our babies on the internet, you have a right to be mad. But, if you write a book out in the world, people are going to be mean to it on the internet, and I cannot come and defend it. No.

Amy Kelly

No. I would just throw in, nor do you need to read those mean comments, you could live your whole life without ever looking at those. And that’s a whole other episode, I think. But I think it’s that it’s those baby steps to get you to that place where it’s separate from you. And you can view it as its own entity and its own thing, separate from who you are, and who you are, is the writer, for sure. And so the way to do that, you have to do those beginning baby steps, which are hard and scary.

Emily Roberson

What about our listeners who are saying, I want to be a writer, I want to get started. But I have a full-time job, or I have a little kid or I have other stuff going on. So what happens now?

Amy Kelly

Well, and I think that’s the question, what do you have time for? And we were talking about this before we started recording, I think we both have the stories of when we hit that point of okay, I’m serious about this, what is this going to look like? For me, that was several years ago, and I was working with my husband helping him start a business. And it was in an area that is not a natural gift for me. And so I felt like I was losing myself in so many ways. So I wanted to do something that was all mine. And for me, that’s always been writing.

So to be able to do that I had to look at like, okay, we had two elementary-age kids, and how do I make the time and make this a priority? And really, it’s almost like you’re being pushed from all sides. And you have to just kind of throw your arms out and say, no, I’m creating space for this. For me, that was I would get up early on Saturday mornings, and I would go to the office space that we had. And I would write for about four hours.

So I would do that Saturday mornings, and then there would be one weeknight that I would take. And I’m a night owl. So I think that worked in my favor for this type of schedule. But I would stay up at the office and write until like one or two in the morning, and just let my husband you know, do dinner and, you know, parent the kids at home while I did all my work, and it fed my soul. It was exactly what I needed. And it moved me forward in these baby steps that we’ve talked about.

Emily Roberson

And I think for me, it’s not quite that linear, because I had a lot of different starting points. I was writing when I was working full time I would write on the train while we lived in Boston. So I was taking a train to and from work, I would write in the scraps of time. You knew that 10 minutes here, 15 minutes there, an hour here. Like, is there something you could do that would leapfrog your story forward just a little bit? Is there a question you could answer? Is there a scene you could write? A seed of something that you could build from?

Also, I think for both Amy and I, we share this is that like, if I’m not writing somewhat, I’m not really okay. Like it’s a problem. I remember I hadn’t been pursuing publication for very long, I wasn’t even 30 yet. I was in my 20s. But it felt like a long time at that point probably had been two or three years. And I had this moment of thinking like, what if I just give up on this dream? What if I just let it go? I’ll return to it when I’m 50, which felt impossibly old at that age.

And when I really thought about that, it was as though I dropped a screen over the whole world. It was like everything went to black and white. And I was like, oh, okay, I don’t actually get to make this decision. Because I could feel a cloud of depression coming towards me like a mist. You know, it was like, no, no, never mind, forget it.

Amy Kelly

Right. Well, and I think that goes back to what, and this is my whole motto for the work that I do, which is stories save lives. And I think going back to what you said about how profound books have been in your life, and it’s the same for me, like books saved me as a kid, I would say and helped move me to where I am now, obviously, but also the stories that are in me, save my life. And I think you would say the same thing as far as keeping me centered and grounded and being in me. That’s the best version of me.

Emily Roberson

Right? And I think that being able to see that writing those stories and communicating those stories with other people, for me is part of it. I know it’s not for everyone, but for me. And so I think the question like both Amy and I are asking is, is there a way that you could ask yourself, what do I really have time for, not in a shameful way?

For years, people would say, hey, did you see that show? No, I probably didn’t. Because I didn’t watch very much TV for a really long time, I still don’t watch very much TV. And I love TV. I’m not one of those people who was like, snobby about TV, like, I love TV. But for many years, that time that like after dinner time when people are watching TV, that was when I was writing, because I just didn’t have that much childcare. So really, that couple hours after they went to sleep, and before I went to sleep, that sort of seven to nine, that was really when I was writing mostly.

Amy Kelly

That’s really awesome. I am a huge TV fan. And that’s something that my husband and I do together, we’ll find shows and binge-watch them over the course of a week or two. But that reminds me of a question. I don’t know if I heard it on a podcast or read it in a book or whatever, that really kind of punched me in the gut.

I was very careful to make sure that it was I was not asking myself in a shameful way, but in a curious way, and they said instead of saying “I don’t have time,” say “that’s not a priority for me right now.” When you put things that way, if it kicks you in the gut like it did me, that really motivated me to say, okay, wait, writing is a priority. So again, like we’re saying, what do I have time for? What can I do? What little bitty tiny steps can I take towards making this happen?

HOW TO GET STARTED MAKING THE TIME TO WRITE – 16:48

Emily Roberson

So let’s move on to thinking about how to get started. So you figure it out, you’ve got 30 minutes a day, I will say, I have one really big piece of advice, which is when you first get started, do not get stuck on ideas about word count. Because sometimes, I’m speaking from experience here, you can roll forward stuck on word count, when you actually haven’t figured out your characters, and you can write a whole novel and then realize it doesn’t have a protagonist.

Amy Kelly

That sounds like something you’ve experienced, maybe?

Emily Roberson

Something I’ve experienced with a lovely novel that I love that has many great pieces to it that and sometimes I really do think your first novel is like the first piece of spaghetti, like it’s just the first pancake and you’re just not you’re gonna be able to use pieces of it. That seems pretty common when you hear and I think that’s why some people really love fanfiction because you can really write and figure out stories and everything. And you don’t actually have to figure out the characters because you already know them. As you figure out how to get started, don’t get tethered to like what other people say is their productivity metric.

Amy Kelly

I think this goes back to something that I’m just firmly entrenched in right now, which is you really have to trust yourself. So regardless of what resources you look at, to help you get started, just keep in mind that not one size fits all, even what we’re saying. Like, as we were talking about how you would write in like five minutes spurts, you know, that is not something that would work for me.

I need time to kind of settle in and process and I need at least a half hour to an hour. And I’ve tried the other way. So I’m not saying don’t try those things. Don’t assume they don’t work for you until you’ve tried it. But trust yourself and what your process is because my process looks way different than Em’s does. And her process looks way different than our third critique group partner does. I mean, it’s so individualized. It’s so personal.

Emily Roberson

Yeah. And in the same way, you know how Amy was just talking about writing in an empty office? I can’t do that. But I can absolutely write in a coffee shop. I love to write in a coffee shop. It’s my favorite thing. But an empty office. My, my anxiety is so high, I hear every creak every drawer and it feels like lonely to be, but like a coffee shop. I love it. Yeah, and other people can’t concentrate at all.

Amy Kelly

Yeah, you’ve got to find what works. You’ve got to find what works for you. I just wanted to say one more quick thing on the word count, because I find that I’m one of those people that can very easily get obsessed with the word count thing. But what I do to kind of get around that is any words that I write, whether it’s directly from my story, or outlining or character sketches, or whatever it is, if the word is on the page, it counts.

Emily Roberson

Yeah, I think that’s a great way around it. And also, I will say, I really struggled with perfectionism. Like just getting back to what we’re talking about, so sometimes what I need to sit there and write, assuming I actually do get a half an hour block. I may be writing by hand, “This sucks This sucks. This sucks.” And then something blips, and I can write. Also, I’m always thinking “what do they want?” What do they want? For me just the act having my hands on the page writing the words, the characters start talking, and then you’re off to the races. So some other people that might not work for them at all. So just, you know, be open.

MAKING TIME TO WRITE RESOURCES – 20:26 

Amy Kelly

Well, and that actually reminds me of another resource. I know we were going to mention here, which is The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, and she talks about doing your morning pages. That’s what that whole, like, “this sucks, this sucks, this sucks” reminds me of. Part of her process is to just sit down, put a pen or pencil to paper, and write three pages without stopping. Total stream of consciousness. Like if you don’t know what to write, you put, I don’t know what to write. I’m just making this up as I go along. Just to get all of that initial junk out of your head and get your thoughts and words flowing. So that’s a great resource.

Emily Roberson

21:00

And don’t read it! That’s the most important thing about your morning pages. Oh, this is the most important thing that I have just learned. But I feel like I’ve been listening to a lot of The Screenwriting Life Podcast because I’m learning screen writing. The ideas that are the ones that are gonna stick, you’ll remember them. Ideas that are going to make a book, they’re not going to slip away from you, you will remember them. When you start, you have so few words, it feels like every one of them is precious, but to realize like, you’re not going to run out of words on the page, any more than you’re going to run out of words to say when you’re talking to someone, and your story is going to be like a snowball, it’s going to start picking stuff up.

So if you write something in your morning pages, and it is really hits what I like to call the tuning fork of your soul (which I know sounds completely cheeseball. But it totally works for me). If it hits the tuning fork of your soul, it’ll come back. It will. I love that. Don’t go back and read your morning pages because they’re not for that. Right. Right. Well, I think we should we talk about some of the resources that we have.

Amy Kelly

22:14

So yeah, that’s what I was gonna say, because I feel like to me morning pages are kind of a prewriting exercise. And the other, the other resource of  that brings to mind is something that I’m actually working through right now.

That is, if you’re watching this on YouTube, you can see me holding it up with all of my post it notes. And that is Story Genius by Lisa Crone.  I am really loving it. There is a lot of prewriting for it. I actually have a first draft a finished manuscript that I finished several years ago that I’m kind of going back and reworking and the prewriting work that I’m doing on it right now is, I mean it is life changing. Or at least book changing. So it’s super fun.

Emily Roberson

22:58

So I have two more. Okay, this one, this is my favorite writing book. And a lot of people don’t know about it. A lot of people know about Bird by Bird and some of those, but it’s called Making a Literary Life: Advice for writers and other dreamers. It’s by Carolyn See. Also this one. I love this book. I love this book.

Emily Roberson

23:20

Also this one: It’s called Banish Your Inner Critic. It’s by Denise Jacobs. And it has some really great exercises for if you have started this process, and you find that you just cannot write. Because here’s the thing, so hard to understand the beginning is we actually do need our critic later. It’s the editor and, we all need an editor.

If you publish a book, traditionally, you will have an editor and then you’ll have another editor and then there will be a copy editor and other editor. They are necessary to the process. But not for this part. Your editor is paralyzing for this part. But for some of us, especially if you are used to doing a good job at things, our inner critic is very loud. And this book has some really excellent exercises for just bringing that voice down to size.

Amy Kelly

and letting yourself be messy. I think that’s the thing. I think the way we were taught to write in school like that whole getting a grade for it. And that kind of thing is just so unhelpful as we start this process. Those resources will be something that will help you get started. We would really love to hear from you guys to know what have you made time for and what have you used to get started? or what’s keeping you from doing those things? We would love to just know any of the above.

Emily Roberson

Absolutely. And one more thing is I would love I’m going to ask me a question that I did not tell her. I was going to ask her. Oh, boy, okay, I’m bracing Amy and I are. But we have talked a bunch about the fact that stories save lives in general. But for both of us, they really did save our lives as kids. Stories in the library saved my life in a really tangible way. And so I’d love to know for today, what book saving your life right now, or what is the standout from when you were a kid.

Amy Kelly

25:33

I’ll pick stand out from when I was a kid Alex for 2000. That would be Madeline L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time, really her whole body of work. Just the fact that she wrote as if the kids she was writing for were poets and scholars, and I could feel that in her work. And so that paired with the way that she really grappled with science and faith and hard questions and death and really existential serious things, really spoke to me at a time when I needed to be taken seriously and respected and listened to and all those things. And I felt like she did that for me. How about you?

Emily Roberson

Forever, and always Little Women, it was Jo’s ambition. You think about the fact that we almost never see female ambition portrayed on the page and Jo’s ambition. It’s the engine that fires that book, so I can remember reading it. I can remember that is when I was like, I want to be a writer. I’m sure it would have come to that without Jo March. But just Jo March is like, and it’s so funny because Meg Murry is the same, they’re both fighters.

Amy Kelly

27:05  Yeah, that’s interesting. You say that because I think of A Wrinkle in Time during those kind of really hard middle school years that I had. But it’s interesting. There was a series of books that I read that took the character all the way from when she was a kindergartener to when she got married. And it was set in the early 1900s. It’s the Betsy Tacy series by Maud Hart Lovelace. Betsy, the main character in that series with Jo, it was the same thing.

It was at a time when not many women had that kind of ambition. She fought to be a writer. That was her calling. And that was how she arranged her life and move forward. And yeah, life changing. Life changing influences. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. So hopefully you’ll join us next time. Yes. And in the meantime, we would love to see you taking time to write. Take the time to write. Oh, one more thing.

Emily Roberson

If you liked this episode, and you want to tell people about us, use the hashtag time to write (#timetowrite).

Amy Kelly

Yes, for sure do that. I know we’ll probably have this kind of on our exit logo or exit audio logo, but Em, let everybody know where they can find you. And then I will do the same.

Emily Roberson

I’m on Tik Tok as @robersonemily⁠ and Instagram as ⁠@robersonemilym⁠ and which is just like a super unfortunate thing didn’t happen. And my website is www.emilyrobersonbooks.com⁠

Amy Kelly

My branding is The Ish Girl. And that’s someone who has humorous grace with herself when discovering she’s messed up or flaked out again. So my website is theishgirl.com. And there you’ll find a link to my work with middle school parents and children and my podcast In The Middle of It. Then you’ll also find links to Accomplished Authors, which is my social media for authors business. And on Instagram. I’m @amykellytheishgirl⁠, and I’m also @accomplishedauthors. Yeah, yeah.

Emily Roberson

Oh, and I guess I’m on Twitter as @RobersonEmily, find me there.

Amy Kelly

Let’s just say you’re, you’re flitting in and out of twittering. All right, friends. Thanks so much for hanging out today. And we’ll see you next week. Thanks so much for being with us today.