Protect Your Writing Time

Me, at life.

This morning is a perfect example of why writers need to carve out their writing time. It is the perfect example of what happens if a writer doesn't protect their writing time.

Because something always goes wrong.

If you've been paying any attention at all, you know I've really been struggling lately to ramp up my own productivity. Now, I could probably work a bit more efficiently–lord knows having an "online presence" sometimes means I lose swaths of time in Facebook arguments. I could probably squeeze a couple more productive hours a week out of the time I have.  But for the most part, more writing is going to mean more writing time.

With a two year old in the mix, that is not an easy proposition.

Two weeks ago, getting back from not one, but TWO back to back vacations, I decided it was time to hammer into a whole new routine and redesign my week from top to bottom giving myself another couple of hours a day...but the holidays.

Last week I was ready to go, but I got really sick.

This week I was absolutely ready to go, nothing holding me back this time, rock and roll, we can build this dream together because NOTHING'S GONNA STOP US NOW.....

and our morning baby sitter called in, so I had to watch the contrarian for six hours instead of three.

Which is all by way of saying that there is supposed to be a VLOG here, but it'll be up tomorrow.

But even from my head-deskingly frustrated position of trying to write a splat, jazz hands post before I drive to teach, I can relay two things. One: if I were letting all this schedule crap stop me from writing at all, I would have just had over a month of no productivity. There is ALWAYS something. Some reason it can't be done. Some visit, some holiday, some vacation, some illness. That's just how life is.

Two: Getting writing time is always always always (even for a guy who's been making money at it for three years now) an act of will. Even the best writers (which I am most certainly NOT one of) are constantly trying to push themselves even further to write more.