In Time

One of the most common complaints for the writer balancing family, a job, and the writing of a book is lack of time. There are the kids, and the husband, and that meeting at 4:30, and someone’s got to make dinner for which the rice takes twenty minutes and the chicken fifteen. Our day is a pie of time, the slimmest slice of which appears to be named Writing. Yet despite the real clock on the wall whose second hand we can see with out own eyes sweeping in its tireless circle, time is entirely a product of the human imagination. Time is what we invented when our imagination discovered the past and the future and we needed to place ourselves linearly within this dreamscape. Because the past the future don’t exist. They are only thoughts. All that exists is this very moment.

It is quite obvious to say, and yet we forget it constantly as we plan and remember, plan and remember. We forget it because our imaginations are so powerful we relive our past as if it was present, and we believe our visions of the future as if they were already here. A day spent this way seems to belong to someone else – and it indeed it does. We have handed our lives to our past and future selves, ghosts with no power in the real world but to frighten or depress.

Fortunately, the imagination’s truest purpose is not to invent fictional futures or fictional pasts, but to assist in the creation of this very moment. Here is where the time every busy writer seeks can be found. Writing begins the moment you surrender to the present moment and it ends the instant you leave the present moment. The instant you give yourself over to this authentic creation, to summoning the imagination’s full power to create rather than remember or predict, you have found your true time – because, you quickly discover, you have also found yourself.

Write Within Yourself: An Author's Companion. "A book to keep nearby whenever your writer's spirit needs feeding." Deb Caletti.

Remember to catch Bill every Tuesday at 2:00 PM PST/5:00 EST on his live Blogtalk Radio program Author2Author! You can find Bill at: williamkenower.com