SMART goals, part 5

The last letter in SMART goals, T, stands for time-bound. Since the whole scope of my current writing project—the process, not the WIP—is to find small amounts of time to write, this one applies pretty obviously. I just need to find a few minutes, whether five or ten or twenty, to work on my novel. After all, if I have zero time, I end up with zero output; remembering the T in SMART goals means I need enough time to write. But there’s another aspect of time to examine during the writing process: whether I’m getting too much time.

That sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? Too much writing time sounds like a blessing, not a curse. But, as with exercise, our aspirations can convince us that more is always better even when it’s time to rest or do something else.

I’ve heard from several people with plenty of time, mostly beginning writers in high school or college who don’t have children or careers or other large obligations, who regularly face writer’s block and end up staring at a blank screen for an hour before giving up on the rest of their writing time and watching TV instead. They generally end up feeling guilty, knowing that other writers are working in less available time and getting more done. The next time they return to the screen isn’t any better. Now they know they’ve been blocked before, and they’re not surprised by feeling blocked again.

Contrast this with the opposite end of the spectrum, which is probably much less populous but is incredibly admirable: the writer with small children, aging parents, a full-time career, or all of the above who wakes up fifteen minutes before a storm of obligations hits, writing the entire time. I know one writer and mother of two small children who had half an hour a day for her writing (unfortunately her name escapes me) and found that she ended up writing more under these conditions than she did when she had several hours! The compressed amount of time acted as a crucible for her, forcing her to write more because she knew she couldn’t say, “It’s okay; I still have another couple hours for something to come.”

If you’re struggling with writer’s block, which I think is a good topic to delve into more fully at a later time, try writing during ten minutes of free time. Writer’s block is a very psychological phenomenon; its strength lies in getting you to doubt and turn against yourself. So if you commit to just ten minutes, you’ll feel less guilty if you write nothing or if you’re convinced everything you wrote was garbage. Similarly, if you have the mentality from “The Tortoise and the Hare” that you have plenty of time and then suddenly have no more time that day, try reducing your writing time so you know you don’t have plenty. Later, once you’ve built up your writing stamina, you can go back to writing in long stretches if your schedule allows. But temporarily allowing yourself to focus on just a few minutes at a time can help you get back in the game and improve your writing over the long haul.