I’d like to tell you that my writing life is precise and planned, that it goes off like clockwork, each day resulting in sure-fire productivity. I’d like to prattle on about how my craft is a steady source of personal satisfaction, and how I’ve permanently reserved, ordered, and designed the necessary mental space and energy for my creative work to thrive.

But this is not true. 

This is not true at all.

Getting creative work done is a constant and enduring challenge. Our culture, for all its delights, has been engineered on a construct of interruptions and distractions. This, coupled with fitting writing in among life’s many true and varied demands results in a war of art.*

My creative work—like yours—is a daily effort. It’s an effort to not only do the work, but to push back the many encroaching demands and challenges of life and make momentary room to write. Contemplative, deep work*—that which engenders focus, is fueled by time, and elevates the value of experimentation—is not native to modern life. Yet this is precisely the nature of creative work.

I often write with the concerns of corporate life clouding my head. I often write with a sense of being rushed, or in extreme fatigue from not enough sleep. I often write as if the writing is simply another item on my task list. This is how most of us do our creative work—tucked into our hectic and hurried lives.

So what to do? 

First, keep writing. A lot of days, if not all, it’ll be challenging. Write anyway. You CAN be productive under such conditions. Second, enjoy those days now and then (mine usually fall on weekends and holidays) when the pressures of life seem to abate and you enjoy an hour or two of focus solely on your craft. Finally, know this creative squeeze is a fact of modern life. And in practicing our craft we fulfill our created purpose.

*I’ve slipped into this post the titles of two important books: Deep Work, by Cal Newport; and The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield.

I am well into the throes of writing my second novel. I’ve heard that many writers don’t get the first novel they write published. The first one is often practice, the novel they learned on. The one that sits forever in the desk drawer. I recently heard the non-fiction writer Eula Biss state that a friend’s debut novel—at age 52—was the fifth he’d written. This hasn’t been my experience. In my case, the first one done is the first one out the door.

But none of this matters—which novel, how many, when.

What matters is that there is a next. A now. A work-in-progress. The writing is the thing. In the writing is where the work begins and ends. There is a current project that has captured me. If it is fit for readers at some point then so be it. If not, another next awaits.

What matters is the writing.