“How did you manage to write a book while working full time in a fricking law-firm?” It is probably the most oft-asked question I have had to answer ever since I announced my publishing deal with Leadstart. The struggle for work-muse balance is an eternal war that has been waged on by storytellers for a long time. I am sure even Kafka (insurance clerk) and Carroll (maths teacher) must have had their own deadlines at work to dance around, while churning out their dreams on paper.
But a caveat before I set out my tricks-none of them will help you type away night after night, weekend to weekend, if you are not burning alive in the fire of your story. Writing is an end in itself. If you are looking to write to achieve fame or money, I wouldn’t know how to help you. And it is probably, a bad idea. You should want to write because you desperately want people to know the glorious tale your messy mind has come up with. And if that is the case, then you are ready to begin, and do not need any external assistance.
That being said, I did and do employ a few tools to put me in the zone so that I could consistently churn out my chapters even after a tough day at work. Writing is a personal thing, and every person needs a different hack to find time. Some people like waking up early to do their writing. And that is fantastic. I like waking up early as well but like the poets of Paris, my muse visits me after sunset i.e. after I get back home post a 1 hour cab-ride from Nariman Point. So, what I have set out below is a non-exhaustive, secret-ingredient list of the noodles that works for me *intoned will full-blown Master Shifu wisdom vibes*. Hope it helps you in your adventure.
1. BUILD WRITING INTO YOUR MUSCLE MEMORY
You should not write when you find the time. You should carve a time out in stone for your writing. Make it into an unviolable routine. Think of it like brushing, taking a shower, eating-writing should become a morning/night pill without which you can’t complete your day. It slowly seeps into your muscle memory, and becomes a part of you. I know there are all-nighters in office, and parties to attend to. Personally, I love partying, and unfortunately, I have had my fair share of long nights in office.
But as I said, if writing drives you, you will find thirty minutes in a day to spare for your craft. Work-muse balance does not, however, mean always typing out chapters in these 30 minutes. You could just think of the journey your character is taking, proof read some old chapters, research into something you need for making the chapter seem realistic or perhaps doodle a map for the battle or for your world.
Just factor in a schedule for writing. If you can fit thirty minutes three days a week, that is a great start. Just nail the schedule. 10 pm-11pm, or 7AM-8AM, or whatever fits your routine better. This is a sacred hour, an inviolable hour, set out only for writing. Once you have a routine, your elementary gains over a course of time will turn into a best-selling manuscript.
2. REDUCE BINGING
Emphasize fulfilment over entertainment. This is a universal rule to reduce procrastination, and is kind of duh, obvious, right? But to implement it requires the dreaded word-discipline. I don’t keep a TV in my room. I only watch shows when I eat to economise time. And I will only watch a 20-minute show or half of a 1 hour episode so as to not drag myself into a cesspool of binging that leave me too mentally tired to sit in front of the laptop again. Having put this into practice for so long, it is now part of my muscle memory. If I watch Netflix or surf Youtube for way too long, I develop cabin fever, and get angsty. A gift.
Try it. It is worth a shot. And it absolutely works.
3. MAKE NOTES IN OFFICE
I note down whatever ideas I get during the day while I am working in the office. This way, when I get back to write at night, I already have a collection of ideas to work with. I try and visualise what I will write on my way back to my house or in the post-office shower, so that when I sit on my table, all I have to do is write on MS Word what I have already written in my mind.
4. TREAT WRITING LIKE A DREAM WALKER IN INCEPTION
If you are an aspiring writer, there will be a time when you sit before the laptop, and just stare at a blank screen, and the words will not flow out of your fingertips in the way you had imagined it. With the limited time you have outside of work, a bad blank-day can be really demoralizing. When this happens to me, I just let go. I don’t obsess over the structure, the beginning and the end of a chapter. I just write the scenes I wanted to write about, and soon enough, like a jigsaw puzzle, it materialises into a coherent narrative. Obsessing over the perfect start will end in frustrating moments that can dismantle your writing efforts before the foundation stone is even laid down. Sometimes, the lift is constructed first on the 23rd floor instead of the ground floor.
In the same vein, prefer quality over quantity. Even if you just write a paragraph in a day, that is cool. Think of it this way. A paragraph daily, and you have 10 pages by the end of the month, and voila! Work-muse balance achieved!
5. HAVE A SYSTEM OF VALIDATION
Writing is a self-rewarding job but validation from others helps a long way in toeing the rope of work-muse balance. For me, I have been fortunate enough to enjoy the strongest support structure of two friends, who read through my chapters, even when they were shit, and kept me well fed with healthy criticisms, suggestions and most of all, applause. If you don’t have friends who have the time (or the inclination) to do this, you can find plenty of beta readers on reddit writing groups. Honestly, without the monthly validation I received on my chapters, I would have given up writing Sons of Darkness ages ago.
So, there you go.
Writing started out an escape for me, a necessary escape from the doldrums of what constitutes life in a law firm. So yes, I enjoyed the world I could travel to while managing timesheets and deadlines, and it felt good that this world was one that I had created for myself. But as I mentioned earlier, don’t write with an objective that you want to be a bestseller author. Just think what a bestseller author would do with his time, and do it already. This is the best way to achieve work-muse balance.
Happy Writing 😊
