You Are Not Running Out of Time To Write
6 minutes read
Sian Meades-Williams reflects on the familiar end-of-year feeling that time is slipping away from our writing goals.
It’s the tinsel that does it for me. A mild flutter of panic sets in around the first mince pie. Our diaries start filling up with Christmas drinks instead of writing time. Suddenly it’s New Year’s Eve and the writing project you promised would be finished is still only halfway to being done.
You know the one. Your first, seventh, or final draft. The piece that you loudly declared on New Year’s Eve, glass thrust into the air, would be out on submission by the end of this year. A nine-way auction, accolades, prizes, all of the good stuff would come your way. This was going to be your year! And yet. Someone has announced on social media that it’s just ‘seventeen more sleeps!’ until Christmas and it feels like you’ve got absolutely nowhere.
We feel like we have so much time stretching out ahead of us in January. Then it goes awry. Perhaps you got stuck on a plot point in July and didn’t pick up your manuscript again after your holiday. Maybe you had a small life crisis at the start of the year and never quite found your footing. And well, it’s nearly Christmas now, what’s the point in starting?
There is every point in starting. I can’t stress enough that you are not running out of time to write. Actually, I don’t believe that such a thing is possible.
Deadlines can be useful. I like having accountability and it can be a real kick up the bum to decide that we can write a novel in six months, or finish a poetry collection by the end of the year. And we can! But that’s not always how life goes. Things don’t always fit into arbitrary deadlines and calendars. Yet still we try to squish out creativity into boxes – outline in January, three chapters in February – and that doesn’t inspire me.
I’ve been working pretty seriously on my novel for six years. This year was going to be the year it was done. Polished, redrafted, the whole shebang. And it very nearly is! But 2025 had a curveball for me: I’m writing this while six months pregnant. Talk about a firm deadline. I’ve tried to write around morning sickness and midwife appointments, but my book is not going to be finished before the little one arrives. Time slipping through my fingers has never felt more real.
The thing is, no one asked me to work towards any sort of deadline. I’m writing out of contract, no one is checking up on me. The pressure that we put on ourselves and our creativity is huge. It would be lovely to wrap things up in a neat little bow on December 31st, but I don’t want to cut corners. Sure, I could race to the end of my edits just to say I’m ‘finished’, but for what? I’m nowhere near done with the red pen. If I know it, an editor certainly will. If something isn’t the best I can make it, then I have no business hitting ‘send’.
When I have a little voice lamenting that I’m running out of time to write, I try to reframe it. Perhaps it’s actually telling me that I haven’t been as focussed as I would like to be. (And this is true, growing a person is hard work.) Your voice could be trying to tell you that the only way to really dig your way out of that plot hole is to stop hiding from it. It’s pretty bruising to the ego to admit that we thought we’d be somewhere we’re not, but the only way we can get there is by doing the work.
Anyway, what exactly are we rushing for? To say we’ve finished? To impress other people? To be published? For acclaim and awards? I want that to be for my best work.
When we rush the writing, we miss out on the best part of it all: the creation. I don’t want to skim over what I love doing. I want to dig deep into it and feel changed at the end of it.
Rather than giving ourselves hard deadlines, we can try simply committing to our craft. This isn’t necessarily a number of words by a certain date, we can be more flexible than that. This week while running a creative workshop, another writer talked about how they want to make time to experiment, and it really sparked something in me. That’s what we want to do, isn’t it? To play with words and see what magic comes out of them. We haven’t ever run out of time to do that. I’m knee deep in a sub-plot that I had no idea was buried in my book draft until I asked ‘what if?’ and gave it a spin. When I’m having fun getting my characters tangled up in all sorts of trouble, who cares if it’s taking longer to finish? Writing is the thing, not typing ‘the end’ on New Year’s Eve.
Wherever we are in our writing, we can commit to finding out what comes next. The next chapter, the next poem, the next brand new thing we haven’t even dreamt up yet. I’ve booked myself a writing retreat to focus around baby kicks and unscheduled naps, and I’m diving into research and workshops while I can. It’s not about the words on the page, but my mindset. I want to keep the momentum going in my work, but I want it to be fuelled by curiosity and fun.
The end of the year is a time for reflection, not an excuse to berate ourselves over things we haven’t managed to achieve. What are you proud of in your writing? Where does your work really shine? We’ve grown, and our writing has evolved even if it’s not where we thought it would be. That’s why you can’t run out of time to create: it’s an ongoing process. You can lose focus and life can get in the way, but we aren’t in a writing race. Instead of piling on the pressure to finish, let’s commit to our craft with kindness and encouragement. However long it takes.
About the Author
Sian Meades-Williams is an award-winning author, poet, and features writer. Her journalism has been published by the New York Times, National Geographic, and The Sunday Times. She is the author of several non-fiction books and her historical novel-in-progress, Belville, won the Yeovil Literary Prize. She is also founder of the popular media industry newsletter, Freelance Writing Jobs.
Photo by Julie Kim.
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