Last night, I sat down on the weight bench so exhausted I could hardly lift the plates to put them on the ends of the barbell. I thought about just skipping the workout. To hell with it. Crash out and get some much-needed sleep.
Not as heavy as the soul-crushing weight of defeat
Then I got pissed.
I don’t have time for this shit. When do I make up a workout? When I’m at work? When I’m writing? When I’m in karate class? During my next workout?
No, I made the time for this workout, and I needed to use it. I got under the bar and started pushing. I kept moving and watched the clock during my rest periods to make sure I didn’t waste any of that precious time. An hour later, my sets were done and I felt great.
The same attitude applies to creative tasks.
When I’m writing, I don’t have time to screw around. The fingers need to be flying on the keyboard if I’m going to get anywhere. If I’m tired and the words come out in long streams of crap, I can clean them up later.
It’s about time I remembered that.
About Mike Oliveri
Mike Oliveri is a writer, martial artist, cigar aficionado, motorcyclist, and family man, but not necessarily in that order. His Bram Stoker Award-winning first novel, Deadliest of the Species, was just reprinted by Evileye Books.
There’s always something to get in the way of what we want to accomplish. It could be the day job, it could be family obligations. It could be surprises like your kid picking a fight with the rabid badger in the back yard or your brother calling because he woke up in the middle of Tijuana with a hangover and no pants. Hell, sometimes it’s just tough to do anything but sit your fat ass on the couch and watch shitty reruns on TV.
This is why you have to make time your bitch.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: This is reality. If you climb in that souped-up DeLorean with your mad scientist neighbor, a lot of strange and uncomfortable things are going to happen, and time travel is not going to be one of them. If a mad Englishman whisks you away in a magical phone booth, it means you’ve been partying just a little bit too hard and you’re going to wake up stranded in Tijuana with no pants.
So no, you can’t time travel. Instead you have to make time your bitch by viciously protecting the time that does belong to you.
Making time is not enough. Nobody respects your time but you, and if you’re really honest with yourself, you don’t respect that time nearly as much as you think you do. Time is your bitch and you’re her pimp, dealing out pain and punishment to all who threaten your territory. Curbstomp those shitty reruns (I did)! Tell your brother to stand on the nearest corner and earn his own damned bus fare home!
Point being: prioritize, and make sure you—and those around you—respect those priorities. If that makes you an asshole, so be it. They’ll either get over it or you’ll realize you weren’t near as close to those people as you thought.
This may even mean re-evaluating your sleep pattern. Getting six hours of sleep a night is one of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s six secrets to success:
I can function on six hours of sleep, easy. If I wake up at 6:30am, I don’t need to be in bed until 12:30am. Given the time my family goes to bed, this gives me an average of about two hours a night of quiet time to write. If I stop dicking around on the Internet—in other words, I give my own priorities the respect they’re due—that’s a lot of time. Ten hours during the work week alone adds up fast.
If I’m still having trouble, then there’s Arnold’s top secret seventh secret to success:
That’s right, the evac plan. The Exit Strategy. Got a boss who demands sixty-hour work weeks? It may be time to seek alternatives.
No, that’s not going to be easy. You’ve got bills to pay and mouths to feed, and if you listen to the media, the job market is a barren, radioactive wasteland populated by ravenous cannibals.
Suck it up, Sally. Touch up the resumé, put on your hazmat fighting trousers and make time your bitch.
About Mike Oliveri
Mike Oliveri is a writer, martial artist, cigar aficionado, motorcyclist, and family man, but not necessarily in that order. His Bram Stoker Award-winning first novel, Deadliest of the Species, was just reprinted by Evileye Books.
Apparently everyone decided to call me this weekend while I was at hockey, karate, and the motorcycle show, and because I was unable to return calls they worried I finally snapped and killed somebody, or maybe my children were eaten by bears.
On the up side, it was a killer weekend. On the down side, I didn’t get shit done. I felt it was high time to revisit this video featuring a Floyd Mayweather motivational speech:
To be a full-time writer, that is. I spent all day letting Microsoft bend me over a desk and ram it home. Eight hours wrestling with two different PCs. Eight wasted hours which probably cost more in both hourly wage and lost productivity than the dollar value of both PCs together.
This is how I learned you can’t schedule writing.
See, I expected a quiet day today. I thought I’d wrap up a few loose ends before my wisdom tooth extraction surgery tomorrow morning. I thought I’d even be able to sneak in a little bit of writing-related work at my desk, including posts to both this blog and my professional edtech blog. Instead I got the phone call five minutes after I walked into my office: “My computer doesn’t work!”
Those of us with families, let’s reflect: how many times have we planned to sit down and write at a given time, only to get hijacked by something else? More than I can count.
The habit shouldn’t be planning, the habit should be doing. Write every day before or after work. Write every day before the kids get up or after they go to bed. Write every day at lunch. Write during your coffee/smoke break. Write on the train or bus. Write while your meals are cooking or before they arrive at the table.
If I apply the same dedication to my writing as I do to my karate, I could have as many books available as Brian Keene does right now.
I’m going to start sleeping with my Bram Stoker Award statue close by. I’ll see it before I go to sleep and after I wake up. It will remind me of what I’m capable of.
If nothing else, it will be at hand to beat a burglar to death with.
About Mike Oliveri
Mike Oliveri is a writer, martial artist, cigar aficionado, motorcyclist, and family man, but not necessarily in that order. His Bram Stoker Award-winning first novel, Deadliest of the Species, was just reprinted by Evileye Books.
A friend of mine sent this to me just as I was finishing the day’s weight lifting, and right before I sucked down supper on the way to karate class. I showed up at the dojo pumped up and ready to go.
Someone once told me I was too old for martial arts, and later that weight lifting is a young man’s game. Bullshit. Bring it on.
Back to writing and other stuff soon, I just had to share this. Too much running around the last couple days and tomorrow.
About Mike Oliveri
Mike Oliveri is a writer, martial artist, cigar aficionado, motorcyclist, and family man, but not necessarily in that order. His Bram Stoker Award-winning first novel, Deadliest of the Species, was just reprinted by Evileye Books.
I haven’t done my weight lifting yet this week. My Fitocracy account mocks me.
Friday and Monday I was on airplanes. Over the weekend, I had hoped to at least get a dumbbell or treadmill workout in, but I was too busy catching up with friends. Yesterday I rested. Today, I didn’t have time to lift after work and had a special night of karate class. It pisses me off, but I’m going to swap my Wed/Fri lifts to Thurs/Sat and get back on track next week.
I beat myself up over workouts the same way I beat myself up about writing. I need to regroup and remember my motivation, and just get back to work as soon as possible.
Funny thing is, there is no shortage of motivational videos out there for weight lifting or body building.
Writing doesn’t quite work the same. Beyond opening a box of books hot off the press, there’s not a lot to get writers pumped up to spend hours behind the keyboard. Yes, we do it because we have to, or want to, but it’s still hard work, and motivation can, at times, be hard to come by.
Until you visit something like Sundance.
It’s not so much being part of the scene or the promise of big Hollywood bucks as it is the simple energy and excitement of it all. It’s contagious. I would be more than content to make a living off writing. Yet even if I never see a movie made, I can still push forward and build upon what I’ve written. I can expand my fan base and, ideally, increase sales to earn a steady wage.
Now we come back to my lifting, where my goal is similar. I don’t want to big as Jay Cutler. I have no aspirations to be Mr Olympia, or even to get on a local stage (I’m not especially interested in the fake spray tan and shaved chest, either). I just want to build upon what I have, get into better shape. I want to increase my strength and endurance and feel better.
We should aim high, but not call it defeat if we land in the middle. Day jobs and family and life in general is going to get in the way. It’s inevitable. Just take care of the disruption and then get back into the rhythm.
Push forward.
Onward and upward.
About Mike Oliveri
Mike Oliveri is a writer, martial artist, cigar aficionado, motorcyclist, and family man, but not necessarily in that order. His Bram Stoker Award-winning first novel, Deadliest of the Species, was just reprinted by Evileye Books.
Mike Oliveri is a writer, martial artist, cigar aficionado, motorcyclist, and family man, but not necessarily in that order. His Bram Stoker Award-winning first novel, Deadliest of the Species, was just reprinted by Evileye Books.
It’s amusing when people think I’m sitting on a secret fortune after they find out I do a little writing on the side. Or they think someone like Brian Keene or Tom Piccirilli are making money hand over fist because they’ve got several novels available. The reality is most writers don’t make a lot of money. Sure, some luck into Hollywood cash or a mega-hit series like Twilight, but even bestsellers are far from guaranteed riches.
Now one writer has proven that by posting her royalty statements. She sold over 47,000 copies, which sounds exciting. However, for all that, she’s made a little over $30,000. Sounds like a lot, but if that was the only book she put out that year, she’s earning the equivalent of about $15.00 an hour (and she still needs to pay her own taxes on that $30k). Even worse, she hasn’t earned out her $50k advance at that point, which means she faces the possibility her publisher will dump her. It’s more like being fired than getting laid off, as the next publisher may look at her numbers and not want to take the risk on her.
The inevitable next question is “Then why do you do it?”
The easy answer is because we like it. Some writers like to tell you they have to, but I’m not going to get all metaphysical on you. The plain truth is I enjoy the process of writing, I enjoy the business of it, and call it ego, but I like the idea of people being entertained by something I’ve written. Yes, the financial realities make it impossible to go full time at the moment, but I’d love to be at that point sometime. I don’t need to get rich doing it, but I’d be content to do it as a job.
It sure beats solving others’ computer headaches all day every day.
About Mike Oliveri
Mike Oliveri is a writer, martial artist, cigar aficionado, motorcyclist, and family man, but not necessarily in that order. His Bram Stoker Award-winning first novel, Deadliest of the Species, was just reprinted by Evileye Books.
