Your Writing Go Bag

A lot of writers complain about not having enough time in their lives to work on their writing; okay, when I say “a lot of writers” I obviously mean all writers, including myself. Time is a problem unless you’ve a) got money or b) sell enough books/stories/screenplays to make writing what you like your full-time occupation. For the rest of us, no matter how successful we might be in general, we either have to do non-writing work to get by or we wind up writing stuff that isn’t exactly our passion. And that eats up the time you might otherwise spend working on your novels, stories, plays, or experimental epic poetry told from the point of view of a gerbil.

Finding the time to write (and “time to write” is also dependent on having the energy to write; you can certainly give up sleep altogether to find those extra hours for novel-writing, but it’s doubtful you’ll do good work under those conditions) is a challenge for many. There are things you can do to steal back some time; one of the simplest is something I mention in Writing Without Rules: The Writing Go Bag.

Go Go Gadget Typewriter

A Go Bag, of course, is an emergency bag you keep stocked with the basics—the idea being that if disaster strikes and you have to flee your home without warning, you can just grab the Go Bag and you’ll at least have the fundamentals. It’s a good idea (as a person whose house flooded during a hurricane, I can tell you that suddenly having to flee your home is always a distinct possibility, and having dry underwear and some cash put aside is a great idea.

A Writing Go Bag isn’t designed for emergencies, it’s designed for opportunities. Basically, if you struggle to find time to write, think about areas of your daily life where you might steal some time back. Commuting to work, work itself, time spent standing in lines or in waiting rooms—there are a lot of dead spaces in most people’s lives, and while you might bring a book or rely on your phone or tablet to entertain yourself during these dead times, a Writing Go Bag could help you leverage those moments for writing.

So what’s in a Writing Go Bag? To an extent, you tell me. The idea would be to have whatever you need to be able to write under any conditions. Standing on the bus, maybe you can write one-handed on your phone with the right App. Stuck in a boring meeting at work, maybe a notebook and a pen makes you look like the World’s Most Dedicated Note-Taker. Maybe an old laptop dedicated to word processing always sits in there just in case you find yourself sitting in a waiting room or stuck somewhere with nothing else to do.

The basic idea is simple: Cover all possibilities. Stick everything in there—an old laptop, old tablet, paper and pen—so that wherever you find yourself you’ll be able to get some work done, even if it’s just five minutes here and there. I’d also recommend getting a clipboard—it’s small enough to fit in the bag, and can provide a smooth writing surface or an ersatz lap desk in a pinch. My own clipboard is probably the most important writing tool I own.

Maybe this won’t transform your life, but if you got five minutes back every day you’d be surprised how much writing you could get done. Whether you include a fifth of Early Times in your Writing Go Bag is entirely up to you.