by Marsha Ward

BIC-HOK-TAM? What? Is she kidding? Isn’t that HoHoKam for “go to sleep right now or the evil raiders will get you”?

Not really. BIC-HOK-TAM stands for “Bottom in chair—hands on keyboard—typing away madly”. It’s what every writer needs to learn to do—every writing day.

Notice I said “every writing day”. This also might be “every writing moment.” I can’t write seven days a week like some full-time writers and novelists do. I have other commitments as an LDS (Mormon) woman. That’s one reason why I created a writing network for LDS women writers called American Night Writers Association (ANWA); the group encourages me and other LDS women to write in the time we have available. Oops, let’s re-phrase that. To encourage us to write in the time we MAKE available for writing.

Every writer has to make priorities in life; we find the time to write in a variety of ways. We cut out watching that favorite soap opera. We vacuum twice a week instead of five times (or teach our children to do that job). We stop going to every baby shower or lunch date. Maybe we use comforters on the beds instead of making tight hospital corners each morning (again, why aren’t the kiddos making their own beds?). Perhaps we eat Cheerios for dinner a few nights a week instead of cooking gourmet meals.

Whatever sacrifice we (and our families) make gains us a few more minutes to write. A few more minutes to practice BIC-HOK-TAM!

Okay, we have a few minutes before we have to pick up Tabitha from kindergarten. How do we do BIC-HOK-TAM?

We sit down (BIC), put our hands on the computer keyboard (HOK), and start typing whatever comes into our minds, if we don’t have anything already flowing (TAM). Okay, so it’s a letter to our Aunt Katie on how fun it was to play in the snow at her house on Thanksgiving Day, 1983, or a grocery list, or a journal entry that can touch our family members many years down the road. Maybe it’s just pure hoop-ti-do and garbage, but we’re WRITING, and soon, our minds will open up and we’ll start to write something we need to share, maybe a poem, an essay, a short story, a character sketch or a novel chapter. Maybe we’ll write a magazine article entitled “10 Ways to Make Time for Writing,” or another chapter in our non-fiction book. The point is to begin, and that’s where BIC-HOK-TAM comes in handy.