By Brenda Kezar
Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.
~Auguste Rodin
The phone rings, and I check the Caller ID. For a split second, I consider letting the machine get it: It's Amanda, and a mutual friend has already warned me she needs a babysitter for her dog while she and her new beau go away for the weekend.
I answer it anyway, and after a few pleasantries, she gets right to the point: "I need you to watch Brutus for me."
"I'm sorry," I say. "There's just no way I can."
"Aw, come on. You're the only one who can. Everybody else works."
I clench my jaw, and I'm sure I hear a tooth crack. I work, too: I'm a writer. Just because I work at home and don't punch a clock doesn't mean I don't have a job.
"I have a deadline," I say.
"What kind of a deadline?" she scoffs.
"There's an anthology," I mumble. "I'm halfway through a story for it."
"Oh, so it's not like a real deadline. And you probably won't even make it in, anyway. What's the statistic? Only one percent of stories sent in are accepted, or something like that?"
I sigh. I wish I hadn't shared the cruel realities of the writing life so liberally with my non-writing friends. "Yeah, but the statistic is zero if I don't at least try."
"Come on. I really need you."
I swallow my guilt. "I'm sorry. I just can't."
"What, is the world going to end if you don't get this story done?"
"No, but I really need to do this. I set this goal, and I need to follow through."
"Fine," she says icily, and hangs up.
I hang up and turn on my computer, shaking my head. I shouldn't feel so guilty; I know I have to stick to my guns. My writing career is never going to take off if I keep letting other things get in the way. It's hard enough to find time to write with all my normal day-to-day tasks, I certainly don't need to take on more!
As it is, I practically live in my car: carting the kids to school, to their jobs, and to their extracurricular activities. And let's not forget the endless housework. The laundry hamper magically refills overnight, and my cats seem to be in perpetual shedding season. If I don't vacuum twice a day, the carpet looks like it has been doused in Rogaine.
A glance out the window reminds me that I have outdoor work waiting for me, too. In a moment of utter insanity, I started a garden to save on our food budget. Instead, I've got a small patch of pitiful plants that wilt if I'm not out there watering them every two hours. I should have known better: Inside, I've got a bay window full of stems that were once lovely houseplants.
And once I've taken care of all that, there's still the dishwasher, the mopping, the dusting, the windows... Exactly when am I supposed to find the time to write?
Just thinking about it all is exhausting. What I need is a minute to clear my head. I only have twenty minutes before I need to pick up my daughter from work, so how much could I accomplish right now, anyway?
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I surf to the website of one of my favorite diversions, an online jigsaw puzzle, and spend the next fifteen minutes piecing together a moose. After I complete the puzzle, the "congratulations" screen appears, and the statistics catch my eye: Over the past year, I've played 1,564 games.
"That can't be right," I mutter. "How did I find time to play 1,564 games?"
"What?" my husband asks, coming into the room.
"This thing says I've played 1,500 games."
He leans down and looks at the screen, then turns and arches an eyebrow at me. "Wow. Think of how many words that would be."
I shoot him a look, but he's right.
I average four jigsaws every day, ten to fifteen minutes each, between errands or household tasks. That's 15,640 minutes, give or take a few, or almost 261 hours.
When I get on a roll, I can write 3,000 words per hour. A slow day is 1,000 words an hour. So, even if they were all slow days, that's 261,000 words, or almost three novels, just in those "jigsaw" moments over the course of a year!
So who doesn't have time to write?
"Oh, my," I say, staring at the screen. "I have wasted so much writing time."
My husband gives me a look.
After I throw a pencil at him, and he deftly ducks, I tell him, "Call me in twenty minutes. I'm going to write."
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