This semester, I feel as if I’m writing on someone else’s schedule. In the past, even when I’ve had other classwork and writing assignments, I’ve always felt like I was able to do them at my leisure, when I felt like writing. Somehow it seemed as if writing was my idea, rather than the professor’s.
But especially as this semester comes to a close, my writing schedule feels forced. I don’t have time to go to Starbucks in the mornings and write until lunch time, even on weekends. I find myself frantically writing and editing during meals, before bed, and even at work.
I don’t particularly like it (though that doesn’t matter, because I have to do it), but it does create a sort of discipline, which is something that I know I need.
At the moment I’m working on writing a screenplay. At the beginning of the class, it seemed doable. I’ve written hundreds of pages before, and though I’d never written a screenplay I figured it would be easy enough.
Let me just say now that I was wrong. I’m three weeks out from the due date, and I’ve got about sixty pages left. It’s hard, but what I’ve been working on is getting rid of the idea of it being on someone else’s schedule. Instead of allowing the due dates to dictate my writing, I assign times for myself to work on different projects. It’s a way of taking back power, making it easier for myself to write.
It’s still not easy, but I’m finding myself falling into a rhythm, one I don’t often have during the semester, and that part I like. I can tell that I’m going to write more in the next month than I probably ever have before, and making it seem like it was my idea is the only way to make it bearable.