The real enemy

       It might seem that the enemy of my writing is other books. Tad Williams, one of my favorite fantasy writers (I like him so much that I have all his books in hardcover), just released a new book. Shadowmarch comes in at 656 pages. They will be exciting, good pages, but it takes a time to read a book of that size. Also waiting on my shelves is Jack McDevitt's Polaris. McDevitt writes the best space opera out there. Of course, it's only 370 pages, but that takes a few hours, too. And let's not forget Stephen R. Donaldson's The Runes of the Earth. Sigh. So many good books, so little time.
      Writing takes time. This is only a surprise to those people who watch Jessica Fletcher cross the nation, solving murders right and left, and who believe she still manages to write a bestseller every two months. (Most people don't realize that Jessica is actually a serial killer. No, seriously think about it. Isn't it suspicious that at least one person dies everywhere she goes? I sure wouldn't invite her to my house for the holidays.) In real life, what with all the trials and traveling, she'd have no time to write.
      I have a goal of 500 keepable words a day. That takes me on a good day about an hour or so. On a hard day like today, two or three hours. Oh, the words aren't hard, but getting them right is. I realize that 500 words doesn't sound like much, but try it sometime. It's harder than you think. But 500 words a day will add up to 182,500 words a year. That's two books or about seven plays.
      Naturally if I didn't have my day job, I could write more. For a while. Until I starved.
      So the real enemy of writing is anything that takes time away from it. Oh, I'm not saying you shouldn't read good books (because you need to if you're going to learn) or that you should write and ignore everything else in your life (because you end up lonely and sad) or that writing should be the most important thing in your life (because it shouldn't be if you're going to make it through this world with love and some sort of grace), but it should be high on your list of priorities. If it's not, you're not going to write. Because we all have a limited amount of time to spend. And how we spend it will determine what we accomplish. Nothing else will.
      That's daunting, but also encouraging. Daunting in the realization that time is all we have, but encouraging in that we get to decide how we want to spend it. I want to spend as much as I can of mine writing. What about you?