writing wednesdays: on protecting your writing boundaries

For me, fall has always been a time to hunker down with whatever project I'm working on. It's when summer schedules are finally filed in the memory boxes and routines are re-established. This year, however, is different. This year I'm sharing my space with my family. But more than that, this year has an overabundance of emotional and mental drains.

Writing can be challenging enough under perfect conditions. Add a healthy dose of 2020 to the mix and it can be downright impossible. It's more important than ever to enforce boundaries to protect our creative side.

Note: I wrote a similar post about protecting writing boundaries three years ago that still holds true. This post, however, is the 2020-version. :-) 

protect your writing time

This can be hard when everyone in your family is at home, especially when you're used to having chunks of the day for yourself with only the cats (and brain squirrels) to interrupt your flow. I'm lucky that my son is older and doesn't need me to watch over him during  school hours. But his room is right next to my office and his class schedule includes downtime for homework. And even though my husband works in the basement, that's still another person who will, occasionally, ask a question.

​I've had to adjust expectations for my schedule. I no longer have the five uninterrupted hours to work plus the couple of hours in the evening while I waited at the climbing gym. I can't fiddle around the way I used to and still be able to fit in writing once I was ready to settle in. 

So I set boundaries -- for family and myself. I now get up earlier and write for an hour and half before everyone wakes up. And I write during my son's actual class time then allow for flexibility when he's on his break. The adjustment was tricky at first but I'm finding that having that set time helps my focus. Put your writing time in the family calendar so everyone knows that block of time is spoken for.

I'm also very selective about when I schedule calls or appointments. I'm most creative in the mornings so I've blocked off my calendar until 12:30 every day. I close out of social media and email and set my phone to allow messages and calls from only a couple of people (I don't want news headlines popping up for example).

protect your writing space

With everyone needing space at home, we've spent much of the last few months shuffling and reshuffling, trying to accommodate everyones needs. There was even brief discussion about whether my office should be converted to my sons study and music space. But my office is my private sanctuary. I love (almost) everything about this little room and this is where I draw the line on sharing. 

Not everyone is lucky enough to have a dedicated room though. Even if you can only carve out a comfy chair in a corner of your house or time-share on your kitchen table, set clear expectations with the people around you that during your writing time, that space is off limits.

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protect your thoughts

Story ideas and early drafts are, for me, like relationships in that beginning budding phase. I prefer not to introduce them to friends or family until I'm sure there's something there. I don't want someone else's opinion about my story or my characters clouding the initial creative process. That's not to say I don't brainstorm with friends, but I've learned to be selective about who I confide in and when.

​These days, though, I've had a harder time keeping my thoughts on track. With everything going on -- both inside and outside the home -- my brain has felt like a hamster cage with seriously over-caffeinated hamsters. No, that doesn't mean I'm cutting back on coffee (that wouldn't be good for anyone) but what it does mean, is that I don't engage in many conversations about the state-of-the-world/politics and when I do, it's with people I trust will have a constructive dialogue.

As writers, we need to leave enough breathing space for our characters and their stories. That's not to say we should be squirreling away and ignoring the world. But it does mean that you need to know yourself well enough to recognize when to keep ideas close and when to open up.

protect your energy

If you know me, then you know I'm the poster child for introverts (the whole stay-at-home directive wasn't a stretch for me). But staying put also means more time on social media, more time watching/reading news, more time to work because I'm not running around with errands or driving my boy around. All of those "mores" are draining. 

As part of protecting my writing time, I was already in the habit of closing out of email and social media for periods of time. But this weird new reality we're living had me slightly obsessed with watching news and monitoring social media. I found myself spending far too  much time focused on what everyone else was doing. 

I measured my progress, or lack of in many cases, against what others were posting and fretted over the debilitating news reports. And at the end of the day, I barely had the energy to deal with what to fix for dinner much less what to do with my writing.

Limiting the amount of time I spent on social media and news channels to the bare minimum helped the productivity (I wrote 2/3 of a manuscript and revised it twice) and it put me in a much better place mentally and emotionally. 

Early in my writing journey, my husband said: "If you don't take yourself seriously as a writer, why would anyone else?" He was right. This isn't such a stretch then ... In order to write, you have to protect your creative boundaries.