Learning to Prioritize Our Writing

I used to have trouble prioritizing my desire to write and making time to do it on any kind of regular basis.

That used to be understandable when I was raising young children, commuting to a full-time job, and looking after my Mom who had Alzheimer’s.

But my life is simpler now and I still feel like everything else always comes first: work, cooking and cleaning, walking the dog, worrying about the state of the world, and, of course, grabbing every minute that my teen is willing to spend with me. 

So, how I recently asked myself, can I kickstart myself into a second act in which I truly prioritize my writing—while also continuing to meet my real-world responsibilities? 

Here’s what I came up with that inspired me.

Virginia Woolf once wrote in her diary:

“The way to rock oneself back into writing is this. First gentle exercise in the air. Second, the reading of good literature. It is a mistake to think that literature can be produced from the raw. One must get out of life...one must become externalised; very, very concentrated, all at one point, not having to draw upon the scattered parts of one's character, living in the brain.”

I first read that quote many years ago and, over time, distilled and distorted her advice to something else in my mind—remembering it as an invocation to “rock gently” into writing.

I see now that while movement and reading matters, my conflation of “rock gently” resonates most deeply with me because of the spirit of approach to creative endeavors it inspires.

Rock gently is what we do with babies. It’s how we nurture a fledgling life. And, all acts of creativity are acts of bringing some new life into being. 

“Rock gently” also works for me because it provides a helpful balance to the force of all the usual messages about success and productivity.

Messages about working hard, being disciplined, having high expectations, knowing exactly where one is headed, and so on. Hard work and the rest matter, of course; and, there is a time and place for all of them. 

But I am not at all sure that those are the qualities to call on—to expect of ourselves—when we are trying to honor and release our own creativity. We don’t need the disciplinarian’s inner voice; we need a nurturing one: one the Jungian psychotherapist Barbara Platek has spoken of as:

Mothering your creativity.

And, if it happens you are a mother, the good news.

Author and University of California, Irvine, Associate Professor Erika Hayasaki wrote in The Atlantic in 2017, is that:

“Cultural messages tell women that making art and having children are incompatible pursuits. But science suggests that women may be more creative after having kids.”

Those same qualities that we develop as mothers—being inventive, dauntless, and resourceful—are all essential ingredients for creativity, she writes. 

So, to enter a second act that properly honors our desire to write, I suspect we should rock gently. It is the surest way to gain a footing we can count on.