When it comes to "time," writers are as hard to please as Goldilocks. Too little time and we can’t get that creative buzz going. Too much time and we can’t reign ourselves in to buzz at all.

So how do we ever get our metaphorical porridge “Just right”?

I took a wonderful crash course on Time Management five years ago. It was called child birth.  Shazaaam! Talk about porridge being too hot! Literally overnight, my relationship to time altered. Fifteen free minutes was a find. An hour? An eternity. I was time travelling like they do in those old sci-fi movies where a year on certain planets translated to five minutes in Earth time.

So when people ask me how many hours I write every day, my only answer is, "It depends which planet I’m on."

When I am first starting a book or when I’ve hit a tough spot, I’m writing on Planet Shawn. I have named this planet Shawn because when I was a waitress there was a busboy named Shawn. He was the slowest thing going. In fact, we called him Slow Motion Man. When you needed a table cleared and reset in a hurry, watching Shawn plod along made you want to pull your hair out. Or pull his hair out. But miraculously, in his Slow Motion Man way, he managed to get the job done.

 When you are writing on Planet Shawn, you are operating in a thick, viscous atmosphere. Your thoughts will be as limp as a Dali clock. Yooouu wiiiiill taaalk liiiike thiiiiiiiis.  You will labor over your work for what feels like hours but when you return to Earth your coffee will still be hot. Don’t fight it. Don’t second guess it. Time travel is often not an “at-will” sort of thing. Just plod along like Slow Motion Man and get the job done as best you can.

When you are in full swing and your words are spilling out effortlessly, you are visiting Planet Depp. I have named it Planet Depp because I like Johnny Depp.  On this planet the sun always shines and you are a genius. Time goes into hyper-space. You will frolic through your work for what seems like an hour, but when you return to Earth an entire day has passed. I love this planet. I don’t get there as much as I’d like to.

So how do you transport from Planet Shawn to Planet Depp?

Well, desperation seems to help. While I was simultaneously nursing my baby and typing to meet a deadline that was three months overdue, I started on Shawn then speedily moved on to Depp. But that’s pretty stressful, not to mention uncomfortable.

Nowadays, with my son in kindergarten, I cannot rely on desperation as much. Instead, I have come to understand that dogged, sustained focus can transport you there too. It lacks the drama of those “Beam me up, Scotty” moments, but ultimately Depp is the reward for putting up with Shawn. For not reporting him to the management.

And of course I do spend quite a bit of time writing on Plain Jane Planet Earth. No, it doesn’t have the psychedelics of Planet Depp or the artistic angst of Planet Shawn, but Earth is a serviceable, work-a-day sort of place. And it’s operating on “real time.” So when pressed, I’d say that if I write for two to three hours a day, Earth-Time, I feel like I’ve succeeded. And if I can’t get to Planet Depp, well, there’s always Netflix.