Happy Friday!
Summer is fast approaching, and readers in online book groups are already posting ambitious summer TBR (To Be Read) lists while filling their schedules with vacations and warm-weather activities. Even in a season once associated with slowing down, the world still moves quickly. While I hope to enjoy a few good books myself, my main focus this summer is writing.
Like many of you, I have to intentionally carve out writing time and, even more importantly, use the small pockets of time I do have wisely. This week’s blog explores how writers like Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, and Patricia Highsmith created the conditions that allowed creativity to flourish, even in the middle of busy lives.
And if finding the time and the mental space to write feels challenging right now, the upcoming webinar, Start Writing Now, continues this conversation in a practical and encouraging way. Make plans to join us on May 18!
Here’s to your personal success,
Professor Marilyn Horowitz
How to Find Time to Write
What Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, and Patricia Highsmith Can Teach Us About Getting the Work Done
People say they can’t find time to write. Of course, they can’t. Time isn’t usually lying around the house waiting to be discovered under a pile of mail. Life takes it. Work takes it. Children take it. Money worries take it. The phone takes it and gives back almost nothing, except a stiff neck and a vague sense that civilization has declined while you were checking one message.
Most writers don’t find time. They make it. They invent it. They protect it. They sneak it into the day before the day knows what happened. They create a little doorway between ordinary life and writing life, then they go through it. That’s the real trick. Writers aren’t just creative on the page. They’re creative before they get to the page. They create the conditions that let the writing happen.
Three writers show us how this works: Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, and Patricia Highsmith. Each found a different way to create time for writing. Morrison used the early morning. Angelou used a separate room. Highsmith used an evening reset. None of them waited for perfect conditions, which is wise, since perfect conditions are fictional and usually badly paced.
Toni Morrison created writing time by using the hour before anyone needed her. In her Paris Review interview, she said writing before dawn began as a necessity because she had small children and needed the time before they said “Mama,” which was around five in the morning. She got up before dawn, before the children woke, before the household began, before the day could turn her into a responder. She used the dark, quiet edge of the morning as writing time.
This wasn’t romantic. It was practical. Morrison didn’t wait until everyone was settled. She didn’t wait until the house was quiet later. Later is often a trap, wearing comfortable shoes. By later, the day has already made claims. The phone has rung. The work has started. The mind has been scattered. The writer has been pushed to the back of the line. Morrison moved the writer to the front.
Now this is what you can do. Take the first protected piece of the day, even if it’s only ten or fifteen minutes. Before the phone, before email, before news, before anyone else’s agenda, open the notebook. Write the date. Choose one Word of the Day. Cluster for three minutes. Write one paragraph. Then enter the rest of the day knowing the writer has already been given time.
Maya Angelou created writing time by changing place. She famously rented a plain hotel room where she could write away from the interruptions and identities of home. The room didn’t have to be beautiful. In fact, plain was better. There was less to manage. Less to answer. Less to clean. A hotel room doesn’t ask why the laundry’s still in the dryer. At home, Angelou was a person in a life. In the hotel room, she was a writer at work. That’s the point.
Most people underestimate the power of place. They try to write in the same room where they pay bills, answer messages, fold laundry, supervise meals, and wonder why the refrigerator suddenly seems so emotionally available. Then they blame themselves for being distracted. But distraction is often built into the room. Angelou solved the problem by leaving. She created a physical boundary between ordinary life and writing life. The hotel room became a container. Once she entered it, the job was clear: write.
You may not be able to rent a hotel room. Fine. Most of us have budgets, and hotels remain stubborn on the subject of payment. But you can use the principle. Choose a place that helps you become the writer. A library table. A café corner. A parked car. A chair in another room. A bench. Even a notebook can become a portable room if you treat it that way. The key is repetition. Same place. Same tools. Same opening gesture. The body starts to understand: this is where we write.
So this is what you can do. Pick one place that isn’t your work zone. Bring only what you need: notebook, pen, timer, tea or water, and your Word of the Day. Sit down. Open the notebook. Write the date. Write the word. Cluster. Begin. Don’t make the place impressive. Make it useful.
Patricia Highsmith created writing time by transforming the evening. This may be the most useful example for anyone who works all day and feels finished by dinner. Highsmith didn’t simply come home tired and demand that her imagination perform like a trained seal. She created a transition. After a day of work, she would come home, take a bath or shower, change her clothes, and then settle down to write in the evening.
That’s not a charming detail. That’s the method. She washed off the workday. She changed clothes. She marked the end of one identity and the beginning of another. Then she wrote. Her solution was simple: if the day has used you up, create a second beginning.
Most people lose the evening because they treat it as the leftover part of the day. Highsmith treated it as a new start. A second morning. A private shift from worker to writer. A little theatrical? Yes. Good. Writing is partly theater. You have to set the stage so the right part of you knows when to enter.
So this is what you can do. After work, don’t go straight to the manuscript. First, make a visible break. Take a shower. Wash your face. Change your shirt. Make tea. Move to a different chair. Open the notebook. Tell yourself: that day is over enough. This is the writing day. The clock may say evening. Ignore it. The clock has no imagination.
Morrison, Angelou, and Highsmith each found a way to create writing time by changing the conditions around the work. Morrison changed the order of the day. Angelou changed the place. Highsmith changed the state. That’s the lesson. Don’t wait for time. Create an entrance. Write before the world gets you. Or leave the house. Or wash off the day and begin again. The method doesn’t have to be grand. It has to work.
Whichever time you choose, Morrison’s early morning, Angelou’s separate room, or Highsmith’s evening reset, you can give yourself an additional edge those writers didn’t have: the Self-Acknowledgment Hug. Before you write, stop and hold yourself. Say the words. Come back into your own body before you ask the mind to make something. Then choose the Word of the Day and cluster. The hug settles you. The word opens the door. The cluster changes your state.
You’re no longer just the worker trying to squeeze out a page at the end of a day. You’re the actual writer, entering the work on purpose.
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I was sitting in the podiatrist’s office, minding my own business, when life decided to improve the curriculum. On the wall was an advertisement for bunion surgery. It showed a picture of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The point of the ad was clear enough: the tower leans, your foot leans, the tower is a problem, your foot is a problem, and therefore you should see the nice doctor before civilization collapses into your shoe. {READ for FREE here}
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