Fellow Read and Trust members, Chris Bowler and Ian Hines this week wrote about their decision to sacrifice sleep and create time to get things done.
I’m no stranger to this tactic. You can only write a novel while working full-time if you’re prepared to give up more than a few hours kip. At the most frantic stages of the novel writing process, I would find myself writing until two in the morning then getting up bright and early for work the next day. Not fun, but necessary.
Anyway, choosing to sleep less is a sacrifice. It’s a choice based on how important we consider our work. It’s not a long term solution, but it’s the most obvious route to running a successful side project.
This week I could have slept just two hours a night and still not found the time to write effectively. I’m getting married, you see. And soon, too. There’s so much to organise and arrange at the moment, that sacrificing sleep simply won’t make up the time I need to write fiction, or for Write for Your Life.
My point is this. Sometimes, when you’re a writer, life gets in the way and there’s nothing you can do about it. Unless your writing is your living, you just have to suck it up and place whatever you’re working on, whatever it is you’re passionate about, on that list of sacrifices. Something has to give.
It’s annoying. Really annoying. But inevitably part of the deal.
