Write on a Dime

Time is Money. Who doesn’t know this old adage coined by Benjamin Franklin? Everyone, including you, has repeated this saying before, and those who have relied on it multiple times probably work too hard (or have a very high opinion of their own worth). But in any case, there’s no denying the validity of the phrase. Even writers live by it; they depend on it.

In 1951, Ray Bradbury had the phrase forced upon himself when he wrote The Fireman. He rented a typewriter at the rate of ten cents per half-hour in UCLA’s Powell Library. It took him 49 hours—spread over nine days—to write the 25,000-word story. The endeavor cost him $9.80. (Almost $100 today.) Imagine the immense pressure he must have been under, not only by the thought that he had a wife and kids at home to support, but also by the fact that he was literally paying for time to write (to ultimately hopefully get paid). Time was money, and he was writing on a dime. But it all worked out for the best. He was later urged by his publisher to double the length of The Fireman so that they could sell a novel. So Bradbury returned to the typing room and completed the canonical work, Fahrenheit 451, in another nine days.

I wanted to use this mentality to encourage myself to write more, so I incorporated the adage into my everyday life. Take a look at the watch my designer friend at Modify Watches made for me. It’s pretty cool if I do say so myself. It has the backside of an American dime printed on its face. So like with Bradbury, my time is literally running on a dime. It’s also convenient that the symbols and text on the dime work well to reinforce my writing spirit. The olive branch is a symbol of peace, something writers must be comfortable with when they write. In fact, it was Bradbury who gave the advice in his collection of essays on writing, Zen in the Art of Writing, to “Work. Don’t think. Relax.” The torch is a symbol of liberty, urging writers to run free with their ideas. The oak branch is a symbol of strength and independence, reminding writers that they can only truly rely on themselves to write everyday, and to never give up. Finally we’re left with the motto: E pluribus unum (Out of many, one). Benjamin Franklin, along with John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, proposed the motto for the first Great Seal of the United States in 1776. Its meaning, one from many, represents how out of many states (or at the time, colonies) emerges a single nation. Likewise, out of many days and pages of writing emerges a single novel. Even if I were to write only 1,000 words a day, I’d have written three 300+ paged books by the end of the year.

So what time is it? It’s time to write!