Guerrilla Writing

So, someone asked me the other day about my productivity level.  Then they said, “Well, you’re young, that helps.”  I half-jokingly responded with, “No, I have insomnia, that helps.”  They laughed.  I laughed.  We laughed.  Laughter is good.  But I thought I would take a minute to actually write out how I go about my life for people.

The first thing to know is that only two things will get me up in the morning: teaching (happily) and emergencies (not-so-happily).  Therefore, my schedule is a little weird to most people.  I’ll write out an average day with not teaching and one with teaching.

Average Day Without Teaching:

• Get up @ 10:30am and do the whole check the emails, check the blogs, wake up thing.
• 11am: help out my family with computer stuff (my mother’s taking an online course at the moment so help is needed pretty regularly.)
• 12pm: take my shower and get ready to go.
• *1-4pm: Writing Class/Group (depends on the day)
• *4:30-8/10pm: Japanese (end time depends on the day.  If this goes until 10, obviously the next bit doesn’t happen)
• 8:30-10: Do homework, eat dinner, talk to friends, do work for Katie’s College Counseling prep for the next day
• 10-12am: Gym time (when possible)
• 12:15-?: Write, reading for critiques, talk to friends, do homework, do work for Katie’s College Counseling, watch TV on my laptop, etc.

*Time that is also spent tutoring kids about half of the time.

Average Day With Teaching

• Get up @ 6 and take a shower, grab my things, hopefully remember to bring both lunch and dinner, get out the door.
• 7-2:30pm: Teach
• 3-8/10 pm: Classes or tutoring kids
• 8:30-10pm: Do homework, eat dinner, talk to friends, do work for Katie’s College Counseling prep for the next day
• 10-12am: Gym time (when possible)
• 12:15-?: Write, reading for critiques, talk to friends, do homework, do work for Katie’s College Counseling, watch TV on my laptop, etc.

Yes, if you look at my schedule you see that there is no set time for writing really, and on the weekends my schedule is even nuttier.  That’s because I do something I call “Guerrilla Writing”.  In-between doing the nursery at my church, tutoring students, subbing, working for Katie’s College Counseling as an essay and tech specialist, and taking classes I manage to squeeze in talking to my friends, doing homework, eating meals, and writing for both this blog and working on my novels.

And this, my dear readers, is how I do it.  It requires being a bit organized and having an extra bag some days, but it’s well worth it.  I bring both my laptop and a notebook with appropriate writing instruments with me everywhere I go.  If I’m early to something, I write.  If a client cancels tutoring or tech support, I find a place and I write.  If a friend is late, I write.  I don’t care if it’s 5 minutes or 25 minutes.  It’s time that I’ve got to do what needs doing.  Some days, I get 3, 000 words done.  Some days, I only edit half a page.  Bottom line is, I get something done.

Many people will say to set aside time, but having so many part time jobs where I get called in at a moment’s notice, my schedule doesn’t work like that.  I have to multitask.  It’s not that I wouldn’t want to set aside time to write.  I would.  I would love a schedule that allowed that.  I think it would be fabulous.  I think it would make me more productive.  Unfortunately, my life doesn’t allow for that.  I would have to be a full-time writer to do that and unless I win the lotto (which I don’t play), write the Next Big Thing (which is doubtful because I don’t even have a proper agent lined up at the moment), or marry someone independently wealthy (which also doesn’t seem so likely), I will never be able to be a full-time writer and my life will always have a million other things going on.

I’m lucky that I have insomnia in one sense because it allows me to have 20-22 productive hours some days.  Other days, insomnia is a special sort of torture because I haven’t slept at all and I spend the whole day trying to figure out where I am and what I’m doing.  Either way, there’s always some time each night/early morning where the world feels like it’s sleeping because my friends on this side of the world are sleeping and my friends on the other side of the world are working.  This quiet time is the only real block of time  have to write–when my brain is functional, that is.