Stolen moments

I’m going to have to start learning how to write differently.

When drafting VICKY, I spent many a Saturday just letting myself write freely into my lazy day. As my self-imposed deadline for finishing got closer, I made an outline that still had me putting in at least an hour every day. After years of starting and stopping NaNoWriMo, I finally won through sheer force of will. I wrote when I was tired. I wrote when I was away from home. I wrote when it was hard. But through it all, I had one thing going for me that aided me along in my endeavor — I had time.

Now, things have changed. I’ve become a proud member of #MomsWritersClub. Being a mom is one of the greatest gifts of my life — but it also means that I’m having to adjust the way I do everything. There are no more full Saturdays stretched ahead of me with just inspiration and a blank screen. There are definitely not hours after work each day to dedicate to a draft.

But that’s not an excuse.

I’m so used to being able to say, “I have two hours that I can dedicate to writing,” or “I’m not getting up from this couch until I hit X amount of words.” But because I can no longer do that, because I no longer have those blocks of time available, I’ve been thinking, “I can’t start writing. I don’t have time.”

I want to learn to think differently, to write differently, and I hope that like so many other things, me writing it down will help me achieve it. A fellow author whom I cannot recall tweeted about writing, “Sometimes all we have are stolen moments.” I want to learn to sneak in the words in the cracks of my day. If I find myself up before my alarm, I want to write. If the baby went down to bed early and I’m not yet falling over from exhaustion, I want to write. I won’t be hitting big targets or word count goals — but I’ll be writing more than zero words, and if that’s all I can right now, then I want to be okay with it.

Wish me luck!