Motivation...

As some of you may know my work schedule changed not long ago. I still start at the same time, but instead of getting home at 3:15, I now get home around 5:30. By the time I change out of my office attire, make dinner, clean up after dinner, pack lunches for the next day, and do all the other things that need to be done, it's somewhere between 7:00 and 7:30pm. I then try to do an hour of family time so my family doesn't feel neglected and I don't feel like I'm not present in their day.

My writing routine was usually to be at the laptop by 3:30pm and to write or work on revisions until 5:00 or 5:15pm, then I would start dinner and so on. I miss that hour and a half more than I can say. I'm continuing to struggle to find writing time. Some days I manage to write or revise a few pages, some days quite a few pages, and other days, no pages at all.

There are some days when I finally get a chance to sit and just be for a few minutes and the last thing I want to do is turn the laptop. On the days where I've had a rough day at work, the last thing I want to do is come home and write. I just want to escape into a book for a while. You'd think that those bad work days would give me even more motivation to write so that I'm that much closer to being able to write full time.

I don't know that I can say I'm lacking motivation so much as time seems to be at a premium. I know working the hours I do now and taking care of family commitments, and writing regularly is possible. There are a number of authors who do it quite well. A good example is my sister...although she's not a writer.

She went back to school full time to get her nursing degree. Besides carrying a full course load that required a great deal of outside of class work as well as studying, she worked thirty hours a week, and took care of her family including taking her two teenage daughters to and from various after school sporting activities. She did this for eighteen months before graduating with her RN degree and passing her state board examination. I asked her how she managed to keep up with everything. She laughed and said lack of sleep. She only averaged between 4 and 5 hours of sleep a night. She said that many times she'd fall asleep at the dining room table while studying.

I am serious about my writing career, but I don't want to walk around sleep deprived. I also tend to get crabby when I'm really tired and who wants to go around feeling crabby much less having to deal with me being that way. There are also numerous studies showing the ill effects on your health if you're chronically sleep deprived.

So until I can figure out a writing schedule that's doable for the long term, I'll keep trying to fit writing into my day the best way I can.