Stealing Time
By Margaret Dilloway | January 8, 2016 |
Please welcome Margaret Dilloway as our newest WU contributor! Margaret is the author of three published novels (How to Be an American Housewife, The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns, Sisters of Heart and Snow) and an upcoming middle grade fiction book (Momotaro Xander and the Lost Island of Monsters), and can often be found giving helpful advice in WU’s Facebook group. We’re thrilled to have her join us!
Sometimes everything we do seems to take on equal importance, like spotlights trained on every prop onstage when the lights should only be on the actors. And then some invisible hand wrests away control.
Last spring, I published my third women’s fiction novel. I was also working under contract on the second book of Momotaro, my middle grade fantasy series, the first of which publishes this year. Thus my days from spring on into summer were spent writing and obsessing about writing, and numbers and obsessing about numbers, and generally bemoaning all the writing things and fretting about what would happen next. You know. Typical writer stuff.
Then, in June, I visited a new cardiologist.
I should have known how it was going to turn out when I walked into the UCSD cardiology courtyard that day. Nice place, I thought, seeing the fountains and benches outside the brand-new facility. But this’ll be my last visit. It was the kind of foreshadowing that reality shows use, displaying footage of too-cocky contests bragging about how they’ll win, only to be immediately booted.
I’d been going to see a different cardiologist for a genetic condition called noncompaction cardiomyopathy for the past five years. It runs strong in my family; both of my siblings have it, and my mother and two of her sisters died from it. Basically, the heart walls are supposed to be smooth, but for us they’re spongy, which can lead to the muscle flabbily and ineffectively pumping. There is no cure, only management of symptoms. Symptoms range from none at all, to heart failure.
My old cardiologist had told me everything looked stable. To come in if I ever fainted.
This new cardiologist conducts research into the condition, a relatively newly discovered thing. He has about a dozen patients with the disease. As such, he’s more experienced and proactive. The monitor I’d worn, he told me, had revealed a run of ventricular tachycardia. Too many of those and you can go into cardiac arrest and die.
The solution was a pacemaker and defibrillator. Grim Reaper insurance. A mini-paramedic team accompanying you wherever you go.
As I listened to him talk, I felt all the emotions expected in such a big-stressful-news situation: panic, worry, sorrow. But underneath that, my pragmatic writer’s brain rubbed its hands together gleefully. “Damn. So this is how a doctor speaks when delivering news like this. I wonder when I can use it in a story?” We are buzzards, writers.
Over the next few months, my luck worsened. The two procedures I was originally supposed to have—the pacemaker/ICD and an ablation—turned into four as complications arose. The last was the worst, a week-long emergency hospitalization to correct a dissected femoral artery and blood clot, with six weeks’ recovery afterward.
During those months, I realized a few things about writing.
One, when you’re sort of close to dying, it’s a hell of a lot easier to see that worrying about things beyond your control—which is most of the business end of writing—is wholly futile. I mean, we always know that intellectually, don’t we? But it’s hard to know it in your bones until a bigger problem comes along and punches you in the gut. You won’t go to the ER clutching your manuscript, and your Amazon numbers are not very good at making you soup.
The spotlight’s shifted to the important objects on stage, the actors, and you suddenly start paying very close attention to them. The way your youngest daughter’s hair turns from gold to brown in the light. How your husband’s eye color varies with his shirt. Your teenage son’s new facial hair. How your oldest daughter sounds so much like you that you can’t tell where your voice ends and hers begins.
Two—and I realize the contradiction here—your writing really does matter.
Writing provides a bit of flotsam in a sea of chaos to cling hold of. The need to tell stories, that writer brain that filed away the doctor’s dialogue to use later, is what kept me sane. While you’re lying in bed recovering, what better way is there to take your mind off your problems than to make up fictional ones about fictional people? (Yes, the prose may have been rather interesting when I was heavily doped up; but it also provided some amusement when I reread it later.)
Writing is a constant companion, whether or not you have a book deal, whether you’re rich or poor, healthy or sick. The business of it doesn’t matter as much as the process. Writers are defined by their need to write and hone their craft. This experience taught me that.
Every day, I regard the tangible reminders of my mortality. I feel the hard plastic case of the ICD pressing under the tender skin of my upper chest as it sends reports to the doctor. I apply cream to the six-and-half inch scar on my leg and make appointments for the graft underneath to be scanned, so it doesn’t close.
Which brings me to the most important point. The question people ask the most at book events is: how do you find time to write? I have a full-time job/small kids/I’m too tired. Maybe I’ll knock out a book when I’m retired, people tell me, or after the children go to college.
My answer is to write. Steal that time. Write now, because now is all you have. Write the stories you love and which make you feel whole.
How do you steal time in your everyday life to write? Why is writing important to you?
[coffee]
Margaret Dilloway is the author of the new middle grade series MOMOTARO: XANDER AND THE LOST ISLAND OF MONSTERS (Disney Hyperion) and three women’s fiction novels. She lives in San Diego with her family and a big Goldendoodle named Gatsby. She teaches creative writing to middle schoolers and does developmental editing.
Wishing you well, in your writing and in life.
“My answer is to write. Steal that time. Write now, because now is all you have. Write the stories you love and which make you feel whole.”
Powerful testimony. I’m in awe. Whatever else is going on with your heart, it’s located in the right place. Your words are pumping strong, too. Can’t wait to read Momotaro. Thank you for this post and the brave picture that accompanies it.
Steal it, actually wrestle for it- be prepared even to see family members as opponents. And fight dirty, at least for that first hour free.
All the best to you Ms. Dilloway; I hope the absence of your story’s ending is that it has so far been happy and will continue thus. The Happily Middle After is one place the spotlight should be anyway.
Yay, Margaret! Great to have you back, and so great to see you on the sidebar! I love that you realized the contradiction, writing in the scheme of things AND its vital role in our lives. That’s a gift you’ve offered us. So thank you.
Every time I see that quote in my newsfeed, I think it’s Anne Lamott or Elizabeth Gilbert, about what a shame it would be if you got to the end and hadn’t finished your manuscript, it gets me thinking along these lines. For me it wouldn’t be that I hadn’t finished. Been there, done that (quite a few times, actually). For me it would be that I never got it out there. I’m steadily gaining on a conviction that my work’s nearing a “readiness for prime time.” And every day that passes without pushing that boulder another inch closer to the pinnacle I can so clearly see is a darn shame. Don’t get me wrong – I also realize that I’ve got to live each day without letting that single goal become an obsession. I want to live a well-rounded life, make the most of each day I’m given. And I actually do enjoy the boulder pushing… er, most days. But since I realize that this big task, this vital enterprise I’m undertaking is ultimately about human connection, it’d be a shame to not experience that before I’m done.
Thanks again! Wishing you continued improving health in ’16, and continuing success in this vital enterprise.
This was beautiful, Margaret. And touching. Please feel better soon. The world always needs a writer.
Dee Willson
Author of A Keeper’s Truth and GOT
Retired, I have too much time on my hands. Result? I’m not writing.
Reason? NOT that I have too much time on my hands, but that I have too little stress in my life.
Used to be I’d come home from the clinic (I’m a veterinarian) and rush to sit down and write. Reason? Writing was my ‘other life’, my escape hatch to other worlds, my way to put the stresses of the day behind me and replace them with the much larger, more dangerous stresses of the characters in the WIP.
Ladies and gentlemen, do not be in too much a rush to have time on your hands.
Excellent essay. I love the telescope of time and the urgency, and the fact that writing does matter. My writing has been my most constant companion all of my life.
Glad you saw the new doctor and discovered the information you needed.
Thank you for this beautiful reminder that all we have is now…this moment. I am so happy that you have a loving family and writing to keep you company on this journey. It has given you a wonderful perspective and I appreciate your honest sharing.
Thank you, Margaret, for the profound and beautifully crafted essay. I especially liked the part when you describe looking closely at your family and really seeing each person in the moment. It is so fatally easy to sleep through our lives and not notice. Best wishes to you in you in your recovery!
“Writing is a constant companion, whether or not you have a book deal, whether you’re rich or poor, healthy or sick. The business of it doesn’t matter as much as the process. Writers are defined by their need to write and hone their craft.” People often ask me if I am lonely, spending so much time writing and rewriting. Lonely? Impossible! I am filled to the brim! Thank you for this awesome article. Your profound words will stay with me. So strong on so many levels. Sending you all good thoughts, Deb Henry xox
A beautiful post. Writers are buzzards…I love it! I can so relate. After my brother committed suicide in September and the varied horror surrounding that, I kept thinking, ” this is writing gold.” and I wrote a short story about it, in fact. Thank you for your honesty about your medical condition…hoping all goes well!
Loved this post! Yes, stealing time to write is like being with a lover. I’m so glad you are recovering from the surgeries and complications and writing and alive! God bless you.
What a brave woman you are, Margaret. You’ve written a profound essay that gets to the heart of why we write and what REALLY matters in the world. Thank you so much for sharing with us.
Margaret, I wish you the very best in all things. I get what you are saying about your writing and whenever I have to wait in a doctor’s office I either have a notebook or a book with me. Time is precious. Please don’t make me watch some stupid TV show that the doctor’s office has decided is good for wait time. And again, we need always to cherish our lives, despite the ups and downs of writing–because you are experiencing the TRUE ups and downs and I’m wishing you good health as well as good writing, Beth
“Write now. Because now is all you have.”
Yes, and each of us has a unique perspective that’s worth sharing.
I hope all goes well for you, Margaret. It sounds like you’re in wonderful hands with your doc.
I had a similar eye-opening experience after a medical situation a few years back. The thing I remember most about that time was that the ‘color of life’ seemed to alter, for lack of a better way to say it. It became crisper and richer. And whatever half-focus I might usually bring to a moment was gone. I was totally present, seeing what was before me, appreciating it, living it. When the emergency passed, I was grateful, of course, but I felt that vividness slipping away and missed it. I haven’t been able to replicate it, either — not in the same all-consuming way. My feelings about death and living were altered, though, and in a way that makes me more appreciative of both.
I love this post. It is exceptionally timely for me.
Thank you for the inspiring essay.
I’ve been stealing time to write for the better part of 50 years. I semi-retired about about three years ago, and with grown children the best part of having fewer responsibilities has been not stealing writing time from sleeping time. Now, I relish the first hour each morning when I fill a large coffee mug and open my laptop.
Could I be doing something more productive with this time? Sure. But, writing has been the glue that has held me together, giving my life meaning, clarity, and a sense of purpose. And, with each year flying by faster than the year before, I become more keenly aware that the stockpile of hours I have left for writing is dwindling. It really is now or never.
My very best wishes for your continued and complete recovery.
Margaret, as a fellow buzzard, I can appreciate your perspective, and the visceral skill with which you express it. Time, yep, stuff’s precious, and so easy to forget that, while we fuss with our ledgers and laundry. (I am still going to fuss with my punctuation though.)
Thanks for an insightful piece, and good health to you.
Thank you for this, and many thanks to the cardiologist who made sure we have you and this essay in our lives. Living mindfully is something I’ve become more aware of and focused on. This article, I predict, is going to be a touchstone for many of us.
Great inspirational story, Margaret! All the best to you.
I identify completely, having just gone the route of resetting my pacemaker after rollercoaster pulse and pressure readings at my cardiologist’s office. Toss in shortness of breath, sudden weight gain and accompanying anxieties for a more complete picture. Luckily, I have two wonderful writer groups here on the Big Island urging members to write, write, write. In the end, we have our stories.
Thank you for sharing your courageous story, Margaret. Your powerful sentences ring out clearly.
Expressing myself verbally has been a challenge, but pen on paper seldom does. My writing entertains me and–I’m blessed to add–others.
Wishing all a happy and healthy new year.
Beautiful. From one time bandit to another, I wish for you a hefty heist of life. Blessed be your journey.
I can understand why you are such a successful published writer – you can WRITE. Really well! Thanks for an inspiring, and compelling and wonderfully well-written post. I’m off to search for your adult books. When someone can words together as well as you, whether it’s about real life challenges or fictional characters, I want to read them! Stay well – the world needs writers like you.
Your courage, sense of humor, and grace in dealing with all the life has thrown at you in just these past months continues to astonish and inspire me. Thank you for sharing your gifts with the world.
Lovely, thoughtful piece that stayed with me all day long. Thank you for sharing this.
Wishing you a healthy new year.
Just like everyone else in the world, I’m busy as all get out. I still manage to write for 1-2 hours each night after the kids go to bed. When people ask “where do you find time to write?” the answer is easy. Turn off the TV.
If you “don’t have time” for something, that simply means other things have a higher priority. And aspiring writers need to learn to make writing their # 1 priority after family and work.
Totally agree!
Welcome aboard, Margaret!
Another heart patient here. Except for journaling, when I went through my last health crisis I wasn’t writing. But once I was through the other side, it became clear that I couldn’t count on “forever”. It was the push I need to tackle my dream of writing fiction.
Wishing you many more years of funny/wise stories to tell.
What a beautiful post! So much of this resonates with me– snaps things into perspective for a moment. Welcome, to Writer Unboxed, Margaret. Thank you for sharing this with us.
Loved your post. I am sorry to hear about your medical struggles. I really resonated with the doctor dialogue part. I was diagnosed with MS six years ago and the neurologist was really rather cold and clinical with little bedside manner. I used the interaction in a short story I wrote, and some people didn’t like it and said, “But a doctor would never behave like that when giving such a serious diagnoses,” not realizing that small part of the story was autobiographical. I said, “Well it happened in real life. Not all doctors have good bedside manner” The group leader said, “Then that shows you that some stuff that happens in real life is not good for fiction.” I disagree! And people who had gone through difficult diagnoses resonated with that part of the story, precisely because it is hard. And doctors don’t like giving the news and they aren’t necessarily trained in being empathetic at that time. There is a great scene in the movie 50/50 with a similar negative diagnosis. Anyway, I wish you well. And yes, we never know what our future may hold. Serious illnesses have a way of showing you what is important in life, as you talked about. I wish people could get that lesson vicariously.
Yes, doctors really vary widely in bedside manner/ability. I think you offered an accurate specific depiction of that. This doc was very kind; he told me that he was giving me the same advice he’d give to his mother or sister if they were in that situation. And once, he accidentally said something insensitive and immediately apologized. So if I were writing a scene, it might feature a sensitive doc instead. When I had the vascular surgery, a whole surgical team took turns seeing me; some were all business and cold, but one was very kind and even stayed after his shift to make sure he was on the surgical team, and visited me and things like that.
So glad to have Margaret here with us on the WU blog now! She’s a wonderful writer and great friend. :)
Margaret, thanks so much for sharing your difficult experience and the insights it gave you. Hopefully we can all learn the lessons without going through the (literal) heartache. And even more importantly, I wish you the best possible health moving forward. <3
Thank you for a courageous post and journey. Stealing time is only possible in this very moment as that is all we really have, though we fool ourselves otherwise until we have a very serious health problem and have to face reality that we are all mortal. So though I love the phrase, its not really stealing time, its having every moment while we live it. I wish you a fast recovery and good health this year.
Thank you, Margaret for sharing your story! You are an inspiration.
Thank you so much for sharing this. I have five autoimmune diseases, three of which have major daily impacts on my life, and sometimes in the fatigue and depression and self-pity it gets hard to write. But I also believe that my reality of living with these difficulties makes my life (and writing) more vivid. I notice details that others overlook, and I treasure things that most people pass by. I love it when I get an opportunity to press those bits into writing, like a flower preserved between the pages of a book.
I’d like to echo the sentiments others have expressed here. This:
My answer is to write. Steal that time. Write now, because now is all you have. Write the stories you love and which make you feel whole.
…had me blown away. Amazing testimony. Sharing!
Wishing you good health Margaret. Keep writing