The Busy or The Bored: Who Makes A Better Writer?

 

I started a new job this week. I'm the new head preschool teacher at a private preschool. I'll drop my kids off at their school on my way to work three days a week, and I'll beat them home by about 45 minutes. The other two days a week, I plan to write.

Ever since I interviewed for the job, I've had a nice daydream running through my head. In that daydream, the kids put their breakfast dishes in the dishwasher and wipe the counters before we leave for school, so I come home to a nice, neat house. I get the laundry done or start dinner, or something immensely useful before they get home. Because they sense the need to be more responsible, they will stop leaving all their junk in the bathrooms, living room and foyer, and the house will stay clean. Thursdays and Fridays will be entirely devoted to writing, so my writing output will increase dramatically. (As you can imagine, that was a huge selling point as I contemplated taking a job.)

Last year, I sent my son to school full time, and I was determined that I was going to stay home and write every single day. There are dozens of excuses why I didn't, and some of them sound very good on paper. The truth of the matter though, is that all those hours stretched before me like an overwhelmingly blank canvas. I felt responsible for:

 keeping the house clean, the laundry done, frugal gourmet meals on the table, bestsellers written AND marketed successfully, exercising accomplished when it wouldn't get in anyone else's way, service rendered, friendships nourished, lawns mowed, gardens planted AND weeded, blog posts posted, bills paid, checkbooks balanced, coupons clipped, groceries shopped... you get the picture

Self-motivation has never been my strong suit unfortunately, so what it turned into was a year of me mentally berating myself for not getting more done everyday, and a bit more than my fair share of television viewing. I wasn't any more productive than I had been when I had young kids at home, and it was a lot less fun.

Getting a job fixed all that. All those other responsibilities can be accomplished while the kids are home, so I won't feel so lonely. It will be an opportunity to teach them some much needed responsibility. Exercising WITH my kids is better than exercising alone. Having a finite number of hours dedicated to writing will ensure that I keep myself planted in this chair, right?

Those of you with jobs outside the home might be wondering how that's going for me...

Tuesday was my first day, and I don't remember anything about it. Wednesday found me panicking because I needed to leave work, and there was SO much left to do before the open house on Thursday night. I had to leave though, because there were orthodontist appointments, soccer, drama, and three different important church activities for three different kids with preparations necessary for all of them. By Thursday, my house was already a disaster, and I spent half the morning getting it back into some semblance of order and putting away laundry. I had a zillion things to do before the open house, but the kids had soccer, drama, scouts and a zillion things of their own. Sophomore homework has already reached a level on insanity I would have thought impossible a few short days ago, and my husband had to cover for me at Sports Night at the junior high while I was at the Open House. We all dropped into bed exhausted at 10:30, though I am proud that all of my children went to school clean today.

So, it's Friday. Definitely my first writing day, right? Yep. You can see it here, on my list of things to do:

1. Walk

2. Write this post.

3. Grocery shop

4. Go to the bread store

5. Write lesson plans for next week, and buy supplies

6. Finish shopping for son's birthday party

7. Clean the house for the party

8. Wrap presents

9. Bake cake

10. WRITE

11. Pick up kids

12. Return phone calls I've put off all week

13. Call Ike!!!

14. Order *** from LL Bean and *** from amazon

I read this fascinating post  by Tim Kreider about how we Americans adore being busy and how we're wasting our lives on our to-do lists. I don't want to be one of those people. I want my children's lives to have lots of free time. I want lots of free time to be with them. This summer, every single idea I've had for the book I'm writing has come while I've been sitting on a boulder, staring out at the ripples on a lake, or at the blue moon, or at the sunset.

Boredom begets creativity. (See Sheena's post about this here.) On the other hand, I'm not the only one whose writing has suffered from having loads of time. Chris Baty (one of my writing heroes!) writes, 

"If you want to get something done, you should ask a busy person to do it. I've discovered this is acutely true when it comes to novel writing. Because here's the thing: However attractive the idea of a writer's retreat may sound, having all day to poke around on a novel actually hampers productivity." 

He goes on to talk about his experience with quitting his day job to write a novel. 

"This went awry almost immediately. With nothing to do all day but write, I found myself doing everything but writing. Essential errands were run. Laundry was done. The bathroom was cleaned. Less essential errands were run. The bathroom was re-cleaned. A complex rooftop Habitrail system designed to make tree-to-tree transitioning easier for the neighborhood squirrels was built and nearly installed before the county's animal services unit intervened. And so on...The experiment in nonstop writing was a total disaster. For me the moral of the story is this: A rough draft is best written in the steam-cooker of an already busy life. If you have a million things to do, adding item nummer 1,000,001 is not such a big deal. When, on the other hand, you have nothing to do, getting out of bed and washing yourself before 2:00 p.m. feels like too much work to even contemplate." (from No Plot: No Problem.)

Is there a way to have the best of both worlds? Busy enough to get things done, but empty enough to leave room for creativity and joy? What are your thoughts?