Where’s My TARDIS?

Has there ever been something for you that can drown out the rest of the world? That can suddenly make deadlines and responsibilities seem unimportant? If you have, then you know how I feel about writing. When I get on a roll, nothing else seems to matter. This writing high is how I survived NaNo last year and how I plan on surviving it again. Okay. The writing high and a judicious application of coffee.

There are many hard things about writing, finding the right words, editing, keeping it from becoming a cliché or something that’s already been written. But the hardest thing is to find time to write.

It’s not that I can’t sit down and write in five minute spurts here and there. I can. But to truly become absorbed in the work I need hours, and that’s hard to plan time for. Squeezing in five minute spurts works… right up until that five minutes turned into thirty and I’m suddenly late for work. I would kill for a time turner or a TARDIS.

Writing while still having to have a job to support myself is all a balancing act. And you can ask anyone that knows me, balancing is not my forte. So, I make do. I employ a judicious use of alarms. I get my grown-up responsibilities out of the way in advance—yes mom, I paid all my bills—and then I schedule in time for fun that doesn’t revolve around writing. Well, not anything that I’ve written at least.

Sometimes juggling all these responsibilities and desires can be tiring. Sometimes it makes me want to crawl into a cave and hibernate with the bears—but only if it’s a warm cave, I get cold easily. But whenever I want to give up, I remember the satisfaction I felt last November when I held the printed off manuscript of my first ever completed novel. I want to feel that again.

So now you know what I find most difficult about writing—and life in general—so you’re probably wondering about what’s easiest. Ever since I took a playwriting course in college, I’ve found that dialogue came naturally to me. I enrolled myself in the class because—well, I needed the credits—it was an area I was struggling with. I left the class feeling very confident in my ability to write dialogue. I need to focus more on making each character’s voice distinctive, but I rarely ever have a problem of coming up with something snarky for them to say. Though I do frequently find that I can’t get them to shut up when it’s time to insert some descriptions.

But hey, that’ll help up the word count next month! Yammer away characters, just know that anything superfluous will get cut in the editing round.

Eliza Jaquays

At the age of six, Eliza was certain of two things. The first was that she had stories to tell. The second was that she had no talent for illustrating them herself. Talent or no, she still wrote and illustrated her first book, one that should be located and locked away if only to prevent her parents from embarrassing her terribly by showing it off alongside baby pictures. Now she spends her days writing stories that she isn't embarrassed to show off after a little bit of polishing.