SIN Can Be A Good Thing

                So how does one exactly find time to write a book? I have heard this question, or variations of it, many times over the years. I wrote my first book over the span of nearly three years (1999-2002), and while I never had the book released it is still a pride of joy and mine. It proved to me that this was a true possibility.

          I started the Harriett Truelove book, that I am selling on my website—www.horatioblack.com—in November of 2012 and finished the last edits in March of this year. During this time, I had a couple of months where my daughter and grandkids lived with me. I worked a job where the hours were never the same from one week to the next. I was up at all hours of the night for work. Plus I moved from southeast Missouri back to Chicagoland. All that time, I was either writing, editing or planning out parts of the book.

          So how did I find the time to do it? How does someone who has so much going on in real life find time to create a fictional one? Well I have two answers.

          I like to ask people “How do you eat an elephant?” Then I give them the answer “One bite at a time.” Basically it is like anything else, you take writing a book one step at a time. If you look at the idea of writing 350 pages, a 30 chapter book, it is hard to imagine how to do it. If you decide you want to write a 10 page chapter, just to get the juices going, that is much more manageable. Think of every page you write, as another bite at eating the elephant. If you are persistent and keep going soon you will see more and more of the elephant is gone, and more and more of the book has been written.

          Now then, how do you find time to do it? That answer is simple. Everyone has a ‘someday event.’ Someday I am going to learn to play a musical instrument. Someday I am going to get into better shape. Someday I am going to learn to paint. Someday I am going to write a book. Well time to take all those somedays and turn them into what I like to call, SIN.

          SIN, is an easy way of saying Someday Is Now. Just find a 30-minute window, at least 5 days a week and do whatever you’re someday event is. If you commute from Elmhurst to the city on the Metra, you are on the train around 35 minutes one way. What if you put away the DVD player, the magazine or the smart phone, and pull out the notebook and write for one train ride a day? I did, and I got most of my first book written on the train from Naperville to Chicago in about six months.

          I know it seems like a lot of work and all. But sometimes the chance to concentrate on something like writing, or drawing or whatever your someday moment is, can help you unwind and relax. Because just like going out for a good run or—if you are like me long walks—can help energize and loosen up the body, taking the same time to write can free your mind.

          Do yourself a favor find something you want to do and just do it, with SIN.