“How do you find the time to write?” is a question that I, and surely other writers, am often asked.

My answer is, “You don’t find time — you make time.”

I prefer morning — as early as 5:30, no later than 7. This started in college, when I began to think of myself as a writer, instead of someone who wanted to become a writer. I’d be up before any of my housemates and in front of my word processor (I know, I’m dating myself, but it was a fancy piece of machinery back then), banging away at my bad short stories (though I did not know they were bad, or why they were bad at that time).

I wasn’t even addicted to coffee back then, though I did have an unnatural relationship with ephedrine and guarana extract.

I had discovered early on that my personal clock and sensibility was fragile (maybe because of the ephedrine and guarana). Small things would distract and annoy me — a phone ringing, a random prattling voice — and inevitably interrupt any flow or zone I might tap into. And by sundown my brain would be filled with the refuse and miscellany of the day, making it impossible to write.

Early mornings thus afforded me a clean slate in the brain, and quiet all around. This schedule continued after college and graduate school, when I began working regular full-time jobs. Still I was most productive getting up early to write before joining the rat race. In the evening I’d be in bed by nine thirty or ten because I had to be up by 5:30 or 6.

To make sure I got a decent night’s sleep, I had a rule: no phone calls after 8pm. I caught a lot of flack from family and friends who thought I might be sneaking off to partake in illicit or clandestine activities. And let’s just say I wasn’t big on the dating scene at this time.

Regardless, I didn’t try to explain: I simply silenced my answering machine and turned the ringer off at 8pm. My family, I was pretty sure, wouldn’t abandon me. And any friends who didn’t understand or respect my request weren’t my real friends, and were expendable.

(I realize that going to bed early and waking up early is far from the classically romantic literary cliché of adventure, struggle, sacrifice, or exorbitant deprivation and/or pleasure. Sorry folks, no drug or alcohol-induced spiritual journeys, meltdowns, or resurrections; no wild parties and irresponsible escapades here.)

For me being a writer simply meant that I had to do what I had to do to make sure I was able to get my work done to the best of my abilities. I thought of myself as a literary athlete, with a set routine and traditions and superstitions.

Fortunately it worked. I wrote my first novel via this routine (3 years of writing, revising, and editing), repeated it with my second (about a year), and what I hope becomes my third (5 years and counting).

At some point I let up on 8pm call-ban (and let’s be honest, not that many people were calling anyway), but I still wake up early in the morning, when I feel purest, strongest, uncluttered, well-caffeinated.

My process has always been to write a burst — three to five pages usually — within my allotted hour or two, then rest for the day. I go back to what I’ve written the next morning and reread, edit, nitpick, delete, nip and tuck, before churning out a little more.

It is a painstaking and occasionally grueling process. Painstaking because line to line I find myself fixing typos and questioning grammar and fact checking (what did writers do before Google and the internet?) on top of just trying to write well. Occasionally grueling because it is not grueling until the tenth or fifteenth or twentieth read through the same lines, same pages, same words, and only then, when it is grueling, do I have an inclination that it might be close to done.

And all this just takes so much time. Because the hours end up being days, and days become weeks, to months, to years, etc. But this accumulation of time (which includes time off, because I don’t write every day, the way many writers claim), and what one would hope would be the simultaneous development and improvement of the work during that time would not happen without consistently sticking with and going back to the work.

Because for a writer — a real writer — it is about doing the work. Creating. Fixing. Changing. Improving. It is always about the work. Even if you’re not slaving away at the keyboard, you’re doing research, reading, taking notes, sketching out scenes or contemplating weaknesses in your narrative arc. A writer is always doing something related to the work.

So my point is, no matter where, when, and how you make that time to write, it must happen. You must make it happen. It is your obligation, your responsibility to the work, or else the work won’t happen. I tell my students all the time, no one will ever put a gun to your head and say, “Write me a short story,'” or, “If you don’t write me a poem I’ll just die.”

Almost as hard as the work that goes into the actual writing is the work you must put in to create the time and space necessary to write. Whether you have a girlfriend or boyfriend, husband, wife, family, kids, or job (and most of us have some combination of these things), you must always maintain the right to be a little selfish and crazy when it comes to defending your space and creating time so that you can do your work.

If you don’t mark and defend that time for yourself, someone or something will take it from you. But if you make the time to write, and use that time wisely, then you’re a writer — plain and simple.

I tried working on a new short story a while back, but after a week of tedious struggle, it fizzled and I let it go. But I’m not worried, even though I feel guilty; because the guilt is what lets me know that I’ll be back at it soon enough.

(And let me differentiate here that this guilt is the guilt of dissatisfaction: the guilt one feels when one has done it and then misses doing it because he/she knows it’s the right thing to do; as opposed to the guilt of fear or unknowing, which is the guilt one feels when one says, “I wish I was a writer, but…” and then feels guilty that he/she has never done what needs to be done to actually do any writing.)

Like an athlete that can’t retire, you only know you’re done when you no longer feel the guilt that soaks into your guts and brains and makes everything else around you seem dull and drab and gray; the guilt of knowing that if you were writing, the world would be sharper, more vivid and visceral — more important and worth living than when you are sitting around knowing that you’re not doing what you’re supposed to be doing.

But even beyond the guilt (if you can fathom beyond the guilt), maybe we write because the act of writing is the only thing a writer can control. Not jobs and friends and family; not the state of your favorite baseball team or the economy or who is or is not the presidential nominee.

By writing you stave off the guilt just enough to know that there is a tomorrow, and tomorrow just might be all right — if you make the time.

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