How to Find Time to Write in the Midst of Life's Routine
"The dirty dishes will always be there. Every now and then, give yourself permission to let them wait. Plant your butt in the chair and write.."
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It would be groovy to have an office. With a door to shut when it’s time to write. To have a desk—heavy, burled walnut; a stalwart thing of earnest proportions—dedicated to the serious work of writing. Its surface would be littered with holy knickknacks, relics of artistic battles fought and won. Here, in this space, I would spend long, unbroken hours arm-wrestling the Muse, wringing from her grasp a golden chain of words.
Maybe someday.
But not today.
Today, there are other things I must do. I will teach my daughter fractions. Thaw chicken for dinner. Fold the mountain of laundry residing in the corner of my bedroom. I will mourn with a despairing friend while she weeps. Mop the kitchen floor. I will hold my husband’s hand as we walk. Plant tulip bulbs. Feed the dog.
Today, I will be many things. Wife. Mother. Homemaker. Home educator. Friend. Crazy church lady. And, yes—by the mysterious workings of God—today I will also be a writer.
I will have many good thoughts today. Some are important thoughts. I have reached the place where I finally believe this about myself. I will chase those important thoughts from one end of the house to the other, to the laundry room with another load of clothes, to the kitchen sink for another round of dishes. While I scribble a grocery list on the back of an envelope, the important thoughts twiddle their thumbs as they wait for me.
Eggs. Milk. Cereal.
These are lesser words, perhaps, than what I’d prefer to be writing.
But just try to make it through the week without them.
It’s a fact of life, every day, there are things I must do. No one prepared me for the reality that I must decide what’s for dinner every night. For the rest of my life. But here I am doing it. These inevitable tasks might be different for you than they are for me. But whatever our daily tasks may be, one thing is the same. Adjacent to each of these items on our schedules, there will be moments spent waiting.
It is within these moments, these narrow, meandering cracks of time, in which I write.
Consider the laundry. Piled in bin, bag, or basket, inevitably the pile grows. I heave the basket to the laundry room, throw the clothes in the washer. Add the detergent. I set the machine for express wash. I have twenty-five minutes. With deadly earnestness, I race to my laptop and slam out as many words as my fingers can type.
The washer dings. My time is up.
It’s a pimply, gangly mess of a paragraph. But there it is, existing on what was once a blank page. Perhaps it will grow into something lovely one day. I transfer my clothes to the dryer, and go about my day.
It’s time to make dinner. Just like I did yesterday. Just like I’ll do tomorrow. My laptop is open on the kitchen counter. I measure out rice, add the water, and place the pot on the burner. I have, what, five minutes? I write a string of words as long as it takes the pot of rice to begin boiling. My laptop is splattered with all manner of God knows what, but again, there are words on the page as I sit down to eat with my family.
Writing with children in the house? I’ll pray for you. They are precious, these gifts of God, but small children are a force of resistance against creativity unlike any other. It doesn’t matter how many cheese sticks you throw at them, immature humans are incapable of giving you the one thing you need to write: uninterrupted thought. No, they can’t see that you’re working. They can’t understand that you have any volitional thought at all. You exist merely to meet their needs.
Nap time is your friend. Sometimes you must accomplish the mundane chores of life during this time. But trust me, the dirty dishes will always be there. Every now and then, give yourself permission to let them wait. Plant your butt in the chair and write until that sweet angel baby wakes.
Having children grants many moments spent waiting. Every week, I spend thirty minutes sitting in my car, waiting for my daughter to finish her drum lesson. There’s no coffee shop nearby, nowhere to go in that short amount of time. Every week, it’s just me and the same sad parking lot.
It occurred to me, finally, to bring along my laptop. Suddenly, the wait became something other; something where the reality of pavement, car, clock, and boredom vanished. Even as a garbage truck trundled by, the world was hushed. Each week I’m still sitting, waiting, but I’m expectant; anticipating goodness.
Some days, resistance is high. I must woo myself into the work. Beauty and comfort must lure me. Edith Schaeffer told me to put some flowers on the table. Robert Farrar Capon told me to always sit down to a table with cloth napkins. Give value to the space, they said, and you’ll value the work that happens therein. Taking their word for it, I brew my pour-over. I light the fancy candle. I thank Edith and Robert, and I get to work.
I know some will read of these meager efforts to write, and scoff. Scoff away. Believe me, I’ve done the same. If self-disdain were the key to being a great writer, you’d have heard of me by now. Comparison is a whack-a-mole crazy-maker. When it pops up, I must choose to beat the living daylights out of it with a metaphysical squeaky hammer.
When the inner critic—that churlish interloper—comes at me, I think of God pulling me into the bear hug of a beloved daughter. I remind myself that he’s the one dropping the breadcrumbs. My job is to pick them up as I see them. So that’s what I do, knowing that this—and only this— is the good work he wants me to do today.
These meager moments have often seemed a paltry offering. Still, that’s where I write. And as I choose to write in the narrow margins of my day, something mysterious happens. I find I am met by that same magic that transformed fur coats into fir trees; the same magic that removed the back of the wardrobe and created a space that transcended the imagination.
It’s a strange place. Often, I am beyond my capabilities. But I trust something greater than my understanding is at work. I follow God into that space. He created time; he weaves it into the tapestry of the universe, sings it into being, bends it to his will. He is outside of it; he is not bound by it. The Creator meets me in my confines and transcends my best, my brightest imaginings. What I thought was a narrow margin of time in which I would be limited is in fact a fathomless place.
While I wait for the rice to boil, before the washing machine recalls me to the mundane—in those moments, I walk in the hush of a snow-drifted wood.
An Alabama native,Kate was homeschooled before it was even remotely considered normal. She completed her undergraduate degree at Bryan College and went on to graduate school at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. For eight years, Kate worked as a PA in a trauma and burn ICU before ping-ponging across the nation for her husband’s medical training. She and her family are currently putting down roots in Nashville, Tennessee. Today, Kate enjoys homeschooling her daughter and tutoring in her local classical homeschool community. She also finds deep satisfaction in long, meandering conversations at coffee shops, oil painting, writing, and gazing pensively into the middle distance. You can read more of her work at her Substack: That Middle Distance.
Photo by Steinar Engeland on Unsplash
Ditto those comments above! And I’ll pray for you. Thank you.
So many gems that I will reference, again and again, in this essay:
“Eggs. Milk. Cereal.
These are lesser words, perhaps, than what I’d prefer to be writing.
But just try to make it through the week without them.”
“I write a string of words as long as it takes the pot of rice to begin boiling.”
“I must woo myself into the work. Beauty and comfort must lure me. Edith Schaeffer told me to put some flowers on the table. Robert Farrar Capon told me to always sit down to a table with cloth napkins. Give value to the space, they said, and you’ll value the work that happens therein.”
Such richness in these reflections. And the reminder that living a life, while writing, does not make one less of a writer — that a few sentences written as a pot of rice boils might grow, loaves-and-fish into feast. I’m no less a writer, as a home-educating mother, than the writer who is afforded 8 uninterrupted hours a day at a “heavy, burled walnut desk.”
I will reflect on your words, over and over, as I teach long division and start slow cookers and fold towels. Thank you for writing such a life-giving essay for all who are writing amid other responsibilities (which is to say, all of us).