Regular readers here may have noticed the disappearing act I pulled at the blog this week. Rest assured, I’m still among the living, and have neither stepped into an alternate dimension, nor been abducted by aliens.
I have, however, seen the number of little people controlling my actions increase by one.
But I certainly can’t complain about that. After all, who couldn’t love a face like this?
The little guy came about ten days early, but still weighed in at a respectable 10 lbs. 9 oz. His brother and sisters couldn’t wait to meet him, and while it’s been a little stressful and exhausting, we’re hanging in there, and it’s so awesome to have another little boy to corrupt raise.
The fun part was that the day after returning from the hospital, 3yo started throwing up over…everything, and 5yo got sick as well. Then the baby got jaundice bad enough to get hooked up to the light therapy for a few days. Part of that treatment also meant waking him up every two-three hours to feed him.
So things got a little crazy busy for a few days, as I’m sure you can imagine. But now the kids are getting better and they baby is off the treatment and everything is good and back to normal. Well, back to the new normal anyhow.
But what does this have to do with writing?
Okay, on the surface, I guess my adorable 🙂 little guy has nothing to do with writing. But that’s not really the point of this post. In addition to making excuses giving an update on why I’ve taken a week off from all writing-related things, I wanted to real quick talk about the new baby will change some of my writing goals and priorities over the next few months.
And “priority” is the key word here.
What I learned this week was that there will be days where you have no time for writing. None. Not a single minute.
So how does one progress on the writing career, when one doesn’t have even a minute to spare? What worked for me was to set a weekly goal list.
Try this:
- Write down everything you’d like to get done for the week.
- Prioritize the list in whichever way works best for you. Maybe numerical, maybe a more important / less important grouping. It doesn’t matter. Just have that priority set so that you can devote ever free minute to crossing the most important items off the list.
For me this week, the most important writing-related things I needed to do were things involving other people. I can miss self-imposed deadlines, blog posts, short story submissions, and novel revisions. I can’t skip a Theme of Absence post since that involves another author. I can’t skip a podcast because post because that also involves another author. I can’t skip out on any responsibilities I’ve taken on for the Nebraska Writers Guild, or any public appearances I’ve scheduled.
So that’s the type of stuff I plan to focus on more in the next couple of weeks. This blog will also remain a higher priority, but I may not always be able to keep up with the schedule I set (and have remained faithful to) in September.
And if I can keep mostly current on that stuff, I can hopefully get back to doing some actual writing too.
Finally, I want to say that no matter how crazy life is, I’m so grateful for our new little boy. We’re so fortunate to have had four healthy kids and even though I often complain joke about how exhausting it can be at times, I wouldn’t trade this life in for anything.
Thanks for reading, and check back next week, when I plan to be back on a semi-normal posting schedule.
