This is exactly how my sister feels. Ever since I started writing, I had to cut my time with her short. Gone were the hours-long conversations and the walks around the park.
“Are you writing a book or something?” My mom asked me a couple of days ago. “You’re always writing. All you do is sit in your room for the whole day.”
I lied and told her that I was working on some huge summer essay project for school; I hadn’t told anyone that I was invested in writing. That my newfound passion and dedication would take a lot of time away from the little social life with my family I had.
But I’m working on speeding up my writing process. When I first started, it would take me 3 days to write out an article that I would be happy with. At the end of July, it took me four hours. Now it takes me about 3 and a half to draft, edit and publish. I still want to reduce it all to an hour or so, since school starts in less than a month for me and I’ll have a lot more work to do.
I understand your fear of time being stolen from you; it is a precious, priceless thing and we become so invested in our work that we let it drink up our whole day. As a student, I can’t afford to have that happen in the midst of a demanding course load. That also doesn’t sit well with our families, but it never bothered me that much, for sometimes I worry that they wouldn’t even approve of what I was doing, thinking it a pointless waste of time.
This just increases the need for us to find more creative ways to get some writing in. I bring my phone with me to most places these days, but won’t be able to do that at school. That’s why I have a small journal to bring along with me whenever I have some down time between classes, along with rearranging my schedule to make time for homework.
