If you don’t write because you don’t have time, then you don’t want to write at all. There’s more time in a day than there is ambition in most wannabe writers. Your average author has more time management skill than a watch repairman. And that’s just the common toiler at the craft, the one who churns out wordbuckets of chum only because they’ve extinguished their wiles on finding the time to pollute the word world with mediocrity. Credit where credit’s due.

The real battle to write isn’t in the weapons or strategy. It’s in finding the battlefield.

That’s why we’re Writing All Wrong.

I’ve really tried hard to focus on finding time to write, but I just can’t seem to fit it in my hectic life. Balancing a job and kids takes a toll, and I spend more time recovering from all of it. It just seems to be one of those things where I spend more time preparing to do some writing (poetry, bits and pieces of a novel, a short story here and there, reflection) than actually writing. I’m not a natural procrastinator, but if I don’t make time to do what I want, then I won’t do it at all. What do good writers do to make time for writing? Thanks.

—Olivia McCloskey, San Marcos, Tex.

Your life isn’t hectic, you’re not supposed to “balance” jobkids, and you’re overvaluing recovery. Can’t you just knock down shots of tequila in between Max and Ruby episodes?

I can already see how you mismanage your day, leading to such tumult. For starters, if the kids aren’t helping with the farm, they’re probably not helping at all. I’d suggest seeing what they’ll fetch at auction or look into trading up for older children who occupy themselves. That may be a drastic step, but unless you pony up for a governess, you can kiss your writing and your life goodbye.

And the job? Unless you’re like everyone I hate in life, you probably need an income stream that isn’t generated by your wealthy forbears. Might want to keep that. I trust you’re already writing during your commute, union breaks, and quite possibly during your mundane office work that isn’t really work anyway. If not, that needs to change. Or check the yellow pages for “Daddy, Sugar.”

Let’s assume you’re on the way to freeing your life as prescribed. Good for you! Now to heighten your ambition, let’s look at your day re-imagined as a writer:

2:00 AM to 6:00 AM: Musing on your failure the previous day, somnifically plotting for your next labors, dreaming of coherent narratives. Optional: sleeping.

6:00 AM to 7:00 AM: Swearing at the alarm clock, drinking enough coffee to see into tomorrow and burn your eyes clean, and a primal yell to greet the dawn’s vanquishment of night. Capture the idea swirl as it siphons the dregs of dreams.

7:00 AM to 9:00 AM: If you’ve done it right, your pot of coffee should get you to breakfast. Write, and keep writing. Keep some potassium chloride (or ether, if you’re old-school) on hand for distractions, because that’s gotta stop.

9:00 AM to 9:15 AM: Sneak in a breakfast while you take your bathroom break. Don’t get them confused, because eating Cocoa Puffs from a toilet is a mistake you won’t catch until it’s too late.

9:15 AM to 12:00 PM: Keep writing. You’ve already written two hours worth of sputum—it only gets better if you stick to it. Most of the waking world should be on its way toward wrecking your day. If you haven’t sold the kids yet, ensure they’re glued to Nick Jr’s. HypnoTown – keeps ‘em from whining about food or attention. Your boss should know you won’t be in today—hope you told him that you’re dealing with some sort of lava measles or scarlet mumps in one of those kids (whom you’re ignoring for the sake of the craft).

12:00 PM to 1:00 PM: Eat something, pump up that brain of yours. You’re taxing it for all it’s worth. Drink more coffee or make use of those illegal stimulants your live-in stashes in the bread box. Can’t have a food coma interrupting progress. HypnoTown’s over: change it up with an array of mind-sucking DVDs. Call your boss, vomiting into the phone for effect, letting him know you’re serious about the bubonic plague redux you didn’t report this morning.

1:00 PM to 3:00 PM: What you wrote? Yeah, that’s no good. Go back and do it better. Don’t be deserving of that potassium chloride injection. Make something of your life.

3:00 PM to 3:43 PM: Who shorted the DVD player with a steady stream of drool? Don’t blame the kid. Blame yourself for neglecting to slobber-proof this thing. And they’re complaining about eating beef jerky for breakfast? Ran out of Gushers too? Wow. Better call up that auction house if you want to salvage this day, or else it’s a afternoon’s worth of Best Buy and GroceryMart.

3:43 PM to 5:39 PM: Because you didn’t call the auction house.

5:39 PM to 5:45 PM: Skittles and M&Ms for dinner? Now that’s pragmatic.

5:45 PM to 6:58 PM: “Mommy’s going to play ‘Silent Hide & Seek’ with you! If you find me, you have to be real quiet or else you don’t win.” — I’m not sold, but whatever works for you here, so be it. Keep writing.

6:58 PM to 8:17 PM: Because you thought leaving the crayons and coloring books within reach was a good idea. At least the kids colored within the lines. Well, within the lines of your walls and furniture. And the cat ate your Magic Eraser? We have a cat here? This situation must be addressed.

8:17 PM to 9:00 PM: Better be writing while you read these bedtime stories. Or just read them what you wrote today. Can’t stress the soporific potency of bad writing.

9:00 PM to 9:02 PM: Take some time to kick back and relax. You’ve had a busy day.

9:02 PM to midnight: Time for the final strike. House to yourself? Perfect. Cozy up in a bathrobe and light a candle. Take some of that liquor cabinet with you if needed. Snack on those leftover Skittles stuck to the table. And if you haven’t written anything of consequence, then you’d better carry this into the wee hours of tomorrow.

Midnight to the wee hours of tomorrow: Yeah, I figured.

Writing All Wrong can be reached via email (WritingAllWrong@me.com), followed on Twitter (@WritingAllWrong), and plotted into your minute-by-minute planner. 

Truth is stranger than fiction. And it’s harder to write about. When you don’t have the unreal at your disposal, the box of parlor tricks is reduced to a goodie bag, if that. While you may have the framework of the real on your side, the legwork of writing effervescent prose is up to you.

You move from being the powerful architect to being the interior decorator. Unless you’ve taken Christopher Lowell’s Interior WOW! for Writers™ seminar, it’s not the smoothest transition. Even if it’s not a transition, you probably weren’t good at non-fiction writing anyway.

That’s why we’re Writing All Wrong.

All fiction, all the time—that’s what Writing All Wrong should be about. Seems like you couldn’t handle writing something that isn’t purely in the fictional realm. Not everyone writes just for fun, you know. You highlight only the recreational side of writing, and I think you fail to give non-fiction writing its due because you’re not serious, and you cannot seriously dispense advice for those of us who write for a purpose.

—Sofia DiBenedetto, Kenilworth, Ill.

Sofia, I’m sorry that you write poorly. It’s fairly evident, given your double-fail combo of seriously repeating “serious” and your clumsy handling of three clauses within one sentence. I’d like to say I understand how you feel, but I don’t.

I think you’re more the fictional exclusivist than I am the non-fiction non-inclusivist. Besides, non-fiction and fiction writing are just two sides of the same coin. Only one side of that coin is  real, and the other side isn’t. Stop me if I’m going too fast for you. I’m not sure how good you are at math, even if it’s non-fictional.

Even when there’s a story in place, you’re not spared the work (or the privilege, for the masochists) of telling that story. Just as you can fall flat in telling a fictional tale, you can enliven something that really happened in this non-fictional world. Cadence, description, poignancy, clarity, and tone are found in the toolkits of both fiction and non-fiction writers. It’s a shame when they’re not used, regardless of content.

Take the following excerpt:

“He knew the theater as well as he knew his own residence, having free reign over its corridors and backstages by virtue of ‘owning’ its stage on occasion. No one would have thought much of him boring an inconspicuous peephole in one of the doors upstairs. He couldn’t afford barging in uninvited and unexpected, since most playgoers settled in with their social circle long before the show. But for a man of his profession, slinking around in the back would just be part of his doing, non-intrusive and to a degree, expected. As for expectation, it was critical to his plot. He knew well how the play would unfold, when certain actors would be onstage, and which line would provide the ‘perfect moment.’”

And here I go again, Sofia. Perfect example of how to write good, purposeless, un-serious stories, right? Right. I don’t believe in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth either. Pure fiction.

Writing All Wrong can be reached via email (WritingAllWrong@me.com), followed on Twitter (@WritingAllWrong), and featured on page 4D of the Investor’s Business Daily (a completely non-fictional publication, I think). 

Derivative storytelling — now there’s a concept that needs to be sent back into the Age of Never Existed. In our “originality crisis,” we find the weak-minded yearning for creation but ignoring the need to make something new.

Is there merit in a new take on a classic story? Mayhaps. But is there room in this world for amateur tales expanding the Twilight universe? Or banal background narratives that explain the unexplored trainer-monster relationships in Pokémon? Or adding another layer of awkward teen romance to the Harry Potter series with fan-created awkward teen romances?

I shouldn’t have to answer this question.

That’s why we’re Writing All Wrong.

What’s your take on fanfiction? Do you think its [sic] a good idea for writing practice and coming into your own as a writer?

—Kymberlee Lane, Chandler, Ariz.

My take on fanfiction? I usually take it to the garbage, the shredder, or the fireplace. On rare occasions, I take it to the Black & Decker® FireShedder™ Deluxe. It’s a beauty. With just the push of a button, it vivisects sub-subpar writing, reduces the excrement to confetti-like crinkles, and sets the whole thing ablaze. If I had a nickel for every fanfic it handled, then I’d have a lot of nickels.

Outside of feeding a B&D®FS™D, there are only three ways to utilize fanfiction.

1) Don’t.

2) Write meta-fanfiction or fictional fanfiction.

A salvageable option, better suited for theory, in my opinion. If you’re not familiar with meta-narratives, you’ll be forgiven this once, spared from taking a chainsaw to your mouth.

With meta-fictional fanfiction, we add a layer of fictive narrative that makes an uncreative process twice as creative. Take the aforementioned awkward teen romances within the Harry Potter series. We already know they suck, and by extension, we already know that their half-breed, ill-formed fanfiction offspring will continue in the lineage of suck.

But what if you fanfic leech off of a fictitious fiction, like The Sordid Portent of Cornbread Field, Galaxtar Ballactica, or Moonlight: The Werewolf-Zombie Diaries? That fictitious fiction doesn’t exist and doesn’t have to suck. When you write about the bovine romances in Cornbread Field or the secret Pylon invasions in Galaxtar Ballactica, then you’ve removed the hereditary curse that plagues your typical fanfic.

Then again, if it’s not well-written, nothing can save you there.

3) Write literal fanfiction:

“Hunter oscillated gently in the summer heat, his lazy blades doing little to beat back the stifling air. He observed the lovers from his bird’s-eye-view of the spacious bed, teasing them with whatever breeze he could muster. A jealous gesture, to be sure, as he longed for a lover of his own.

He wanted to whirr in annoyance, as that garnered attention every now and then. A yank of his cord, a switch in his speed, sometimes a delicate caress. Perhaps he could hum continually, demanding immediate attention. Maybe his owner, after venting his frustration at the aberration, would understand Hunter’s cry for company, balancing on a step stool to embrace him tenderly, wrapping his arms around his forlorn blades and dated light fixtures.”

(You get the idea. And it’s not even that good an idea.)

Writing All Wrong can be reached via email (WritingAllWrong@me.com), followed on Twitter (@WritingAllWrong), and chronicled in Brannon Chadman’s new fanfic “Writing All Wrong’s Adventure in Hogwarts.”