Tip No. 3: Becoming Your Own Hall Monitor (No Running in My Zone)

This is probably the most difficult issue this series of “writing tips” will consider. That’s because it requires all of us as writers to become protective of our process. What that means is that we consider our writing to be as important as the other parts of our life, and treat it accordingly. We decide when and how we want to do it and make it clear to those around us that this decision is as worthy of respect by them as any other household priority and that we expect them to support us in our endeavors as we support them in theirs.

Easier Said Than Done
This sounds very fair and straightforward, and in theory it is. Practice, however, almost invariably turns out to be quite different, at least for many women.

An Easier Route for Men?
When men write for as much of 24/7 as their stamina will allow, this schedule is viewed as normal and the men themselves are generally seen as conscientious and terribly creative. Perhaps this is because it is assumed that a man would not be working at something other than a career pursuit intended to bring in income for the family at some point. Perhaps enough male writers over time have made it so clear that writing is paramount in their scheme of things that their families have simply accepted this is the way it is going to be, thus setting an example for the families of other male writers. Perhaps many men have traditionally treated the writing life with greater respect themselves than have their female counterparts. Perhaps men are simply more temperamental and demanding.

Whatever the reason, most male writers seem to have less difficulty gaining support within their households and among their friends for the demands that writing makes upon their time. For that reason, this tip is directed more to women than to men.

Resistance to Priorities When It’s A Woman Doing the Writing
From what I’ve seen and heard, when female writers finally give in to the demands of contractual agreements and impatient phone calls and lock their office doors for a few hours a day, their children have been known to view them as indifferent, their husbands to see them as selfish, their friends to consider them self-absorbed, and their neighbors to contend that they lack community spirit.

Women like me, in marriages where what we do is considered as important as what our husbands do, seem to be viewed as something of an anomaly, and even we can have conflicts – mothers who refuse to understand why we can’t drop everything and join them in a shopping trip; neighbors who want us to volunteer to raise money for charity; and friends who resent our not being willing to listen to them for hours on end as they dissect (for the tenth time) the reasons why they’re better off without the love object who recently dumped them.

Rationale for Household Resistance to a Woman’s Writing Schedule
It is not so much that others would deliberately and with malice aforethought deny women a chance to write, but rather that they are not willing for the writing to interfere with anything they want the women to do. Since it is normally the wife and/or mother in a household who is the glue connecting not only family members with one another, but also (in a social sense) the family with the broader community, any second that she is not available for family usage, as it were, tends to generate a household disruption.

Because most women willingly take on the role of “chief enabler” in their households and perform it well and without complaint, they surprise their families when they finally call dibs on some time for themselves and their pursuits. The family has never dreamed that anything could be more important to the woman of the house than taking little Amber to dance class, baking cookies for Bryan’s Scout meeting, or attending the firm picnic with her husband. In fact, many families view a woman’s insistence on taking even a small amount of time apart as tantamount to saying that she no longer loves them and instead has become this totally self-absorbed creature interested only in her own selfish concerns.

I know of one recently married woman, in fact, whose busy, successful husband gave her an alternative: give up the book on which she was working or consent to marriage counseling. He couldn’t understand why what she was doing was as important to her as was his career to him, and he viewed her commitment to her writing as inimical to their marriage. It should have come as no surprise to him when she elected, instead, to end the marriage. (It did surprise him, of course.)

I know several other women who want to write but who have given up the attempt for the time being because they are unable to decide how to create the time required without upsetting their families.

Even famous writers sometimes find it difficult to squeeze time from what little is left after they’ve done what others expect of them. And it isn’t just family that can be a problem. Check out Vera Brittain’s (1893-1970) Testament of Youth and Testament of Experience for her observations on the special challenges faced by women who write.

A Hobby, Not A Job?
Ironically, the same households who would think nothing of a woman leaving at the same time every morning to work at a job, employed by a company or institution, can be just as resistant to “writing time” as those where the woman never worked outside the home. The “job” is viewed as a necessity and something almost beyond the mother / wife’s control and so something for which she cannot be faulted. Writing, on the other hand, appears to be seen as something of a hobby in many households.

The Only Thing That Can Engender Family Support for a Practical Writing Schedule
Only the writer’s respect for her own process will have any influence on a resistant family.

Be serious in your approach. Set your schedule, and don’t deviate. When you are scheduled to be writing, write. Don’t let anything other than a genuine emergency or truly significant event interfere. Set aside an “official” work area and keep it businesslike in appearance and arrangement. Be persistent in completing what you set out to do. Post notice of your progress. Celebrate benchmarks. Thank the family for being supportive.

Allow those who can and will to help with tasks such as proofing, running errands, doing research, etc. Reward those who are specifically helpful in these and other ways. This definitely does happen, incidentally – I have met at least one writer who swears that it was her children who kept her on the straight and narrow with her writing schedule. In other words, when it comes to your writing, treat your family as colleagues.

A Hard Choice if Significant Resistance Continues
If family members continue to be resistant, then you may have to accept that it is they who are selfish and decide whether keeping peace in the household by catering to their selfishness is more important to you than your writing. This requires great psychological strength, whether you elect to continue writing and put up with their complaints or abandon writing to obey the wishes of family members.

When It’s Writers Themselves Who Are The Enemy of the Writing Process
We’ve considered several of the other groups who may be negative influences on the writer’s process. This is where we consider the most serious threat to an effective writing process, and to do that we need only a mirror, for we are usually our own worst enemies.

There are several reasons for this, including:

• We have responsibilities unrelated to writing that provide us with a continuous opportunity for distraction from the task at hand.
• There are sometimes things we’d rather be doing than writing, things that are a lot more fun than searching for the right phrase or the missing piece of information.
• We get discouraged when the project isn’t working out as we thought it would. Maybe we hit a sticking point of some kind or realize our deadline is imperiled. Maybe the project simply isn’t flowing as intended. Whatever the reason, this is a time of great danger, for it is now that we suddenly remember all those nonwriting responsibilities we’ve been neglecting, the people whose texts or phone calls we’ve blown off, how long it’s been since we tweeted, etc., etc., etc. After all, if the writing isn’t going to go well, we are – we feel – perfectly justified in turning to something else, at least for a while.
• Writers tend to be natural procrastinators, even when there’s no particular reason. When we’re in a certain kind of mood, it’s as if starting to work feels premature. If nothing else occurs to us as a reason to delay, we’ll wander aimlessly around the room, staring at imperfections in the plaster, rather than put our derriere into the chair, boot up the computer, and get to it.

All these factors make it possible to justify not adhering to the schedule, not working our plan, not following through as we should on the writing project at hand.

Only the Writer
Only the writer can decide how critical writing is to his or her well-being. Only the writer can decide the minimum required for her / him to write. Only the writer can enforce that decision.

Is It Worth It?
Is it worth it to you to be your own hall monitor, especially when the unruly subject you’re likely to be disciplining is at times yourself? Maybe, maybe not. Only you know the answer to that because this is a highly personal issue. It’s your call to make.

© 2009, Gail Hewitt. All rights reserved.

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