With February and our daily prompts about to arrive the question of where and how to write raises its head. For many this is a huge problem with things like work, caring duties, illness and life in general getting in the way. For a start, we do not all have the same access to time and space to write so the trick is to look at what your typical day looks like and see where and how to fit in the writing. For some people there is no typical day and if that is the case then it is important to acknowlege that – there are still things you can do including laying foundations for writing later on when life calms down a bit, and experience life as building a mental library of things to write about later on – it is not wasted time just because you can not currently put words on a page.

One of our poets found themselves with a few years of hell, being a parent, a carer, recovering from illness themself and trying to work full time from home so they could interrupt their work day for various medical visits and for the parent craft days at school and so on. Social and creative stuff by necessity got shunted to the side. It seemed like a long long time, it was about three years, during that time they didn’t really get to write but what they did do was have a little recording device that wasn’t their phone but could have its files uploaded easily. This digital dictaphone went everywhere with them and when ever there was a moment and they thought of something they could just whisk it out and record their thoughts where ever they were – bed at 4 am, in the hospital waiting room, waiting for the kids after a school play.

Now that life is a little easier they have time to sit and write and have allocated one evening a week where an easy dinner is had and writing is the priority, it is the night with no kids’ clubs and the kids are encouraged to do their homework or something creative in the time period too. They are steadily working through a mix of new ideas and the bits they had recorded aided by speech to text software which, though still far from perfect, does mean they can correct rather a big chunk of text rather than having to spend hours typing it all up and listening to their own voice a half dozen times to get each recording down in a written form.

They intially struggled to get writing again but the notes helped them not feel overwhemled by the blank page and apparent lack of ideas and interest – stressed brains can shut down so one of the things they had found was during the stressful period they were generating fewer and fewer ideas, and if they had not had their recorded bank of ideas they feel they would have really struggled to get going again, as it was building the wanting to write and space and time to write took a good year after the major stressors and grief were dealt with – again sometimes you just shouldn’t “push through” but it is definately not wasted time. Ideas and concepts for writing are pushed down but not gone; they are, as a song writer friend puts it, “mulching” – they are fermenting and turning into something else that isn’t quiet ready yet.

There are many ways to write – start by looking at what space and time you have. Also experiment – what works for one person may not work for others, some can write on the bus, some need quiet, some dictate whilst doing their daily exercise. Maybe look at others’ writing habits to get some ideas.

Good luck everyone.