Balancing Time and Writing

Who isn’t balancing time?  Life is full of commitments and responsibilities.  And then there are the things we just want to do.  Family, work, school, friends, Game of Thrones, Vikings, you name it.

Sometimes balancing time for writing and editing can seem almost impossible.

For myself, I juggle full time work, being the “housewife”, a term many detest but nevertheless is the reality for the majority of married women working or not, the kids who take first priority, being on the daycare board and involved in our local crime watch group, and writing and editing.

Life is full of challenges, and time is only one of them.

As a necessity, we all have to prioritize our time.  Work, family, and kids take up the most.  Unless you want your home to be declared a disaster zone, as it sometimes feels like it should be, housework chores likely has to come next.

So after everything else, how do you find time for writing and editing?  Sometimes you have to just take it where and when you can find it. I spend my lunch breaks editing.  My smart phone notes app has become both my best friend and worst enemy.  Particularly after I recently deleted the most important note with all my writing notes, thoughts, and excerpts when the phone decided to highlight the whole note and refused to release its grip of death on it while I was trying to add some thoughts to it. (p.s. like a computer, smart phones also have a “cache”, a secret temporary memory stash that the right third party app can hack and possibly retrieve some or all of that lost data.  Also, listen to your gut feeling and back up regularly!  If your gut says, “I should email myself this note as a back up just in case.” - do it immediately!)

Fifteen minutes, ten, half an hour.  If you are like me, in a small house with nowhere to go to escape the mini me minions who have to do everything under your feet, every minute you can grasp for writing and editing can be precious.

The most important thing in time management is knowing and understanding your priorities.  You cannot push your kids and partner aside so you can write.  They have their own priorities, and you are probably one of them.  Bills have to be paid, laundry done, and life managed.  But you also cannot neglect yourself and your own needs, including your need to write.