“Bryon, how do you write a short story — and a haiku — every week? How do you find the time for such creativity?”
I get asked this question a lot. Every time I daydream about being a Famous Author standing in front of an auditorium filled to overflowing with fans, someone at one of the microphones set up for questions asks me this.
The answer is simple. I have decided that I will commit this sort of creativity on a weekly basis. That means there are other things I will not do because they would take up the time I require for thinking and dreaming and observing and writing.
I keep a sparse social calendar. I don’t play musical instruments anymore (and I used to be quite good at several). I don’t watch more than an hour or two of TV each week (The Big Bang Theory and a little PBS). I don’t go to movies. This frees up loads of time, in a normal week, for writing.
It means there are fun things I’m not doing. I miss playing music, but I am more interested in using my limited time in this life to write the best stories I can. It’s nothing more than setting priorities.
Writer John Scalzi addresses the question at his blog. He lays it straight out for everyone’s easy comprehension.
I get asked lots of other interesting questions in that daydream, and I’m wonderfully erudite and witty in answering them. Maybe we’ll visit some of the others someday. Until then, I’ll see you — vaguely, back in row HH — in the auditorium.
So I’m going to suggest my Creative Writing students read this, with the caveat that if they follow the link to Scalzi’s essay and read it through they’ll encounter increasing indignation, one profanity, and one obscenity. They can handle it. This is college.