Where Do You Find The Time?

I get up at 7:30 every morning. The first thing I do is go to my kitchen and make food for breakfast. I am a teacher and housewife. That means I have a big responsibility …I am often asked, How do you do it? Where do you find the time to work a full-time job and also write books? The answer is simple. I make the time. However simple the answer might be, actually doing it can be pretty tricky. I get up at 7:30 every morning. The first thing I do is go to my kitchen and make food for breakfast. After that, I will start my other work.

 I do what I need to do there and when I exercise. Yes, that's right, sit-ups, touching my toes (which I can still do!), buttock tucks, the whole nine yards. After that, I get myself ready for work. Without fail, I meditate before I have breakfast. I credit my meditation practice with training me to have the concentration I need to write. After I eat, I leave for work. I put in a full day doing the teaching. Children are my life at the school.

I do anything and everything that needs to be done to keep my job running smoothly. In my school, We have international things to teach students. Part of my job is to make sure students are learning correctly, too.

When I get home, I have cooked some dinner. Then, I start my writing workday. On Weekdays evenings, I try to put in a few hours at the computer before going to bed. If I need help shifting out of the problems of my workday, I use music. I have a Bose Sound Machine and wireless headphones that help me shut out the world and get into my writing space.

I reread a page or two of what I last wrote and hope that the following line will come. It usually does. The lion's share of the writing happens on weekends. I typically spend at least four hours on Saturday and Sunday at my computer.

Sometimes, it can be longer. On Monday morning, the cycle starts over again. Oh, yes, I have a week's vacation for after children given report card. I had an April 15th deadline. I lost some ground last March when I suffered from the covid and couldn't write if my life depended on it! I had a fever of 103.4, cold, and cough, the highest fever of my adult life! I put in nine consecutive twelve to fifteen-hour days working on my manuscript. I only stopped to go back to work on Monday. 

Now comes the real question! How do I do it? As I'm writing this, I think no one will believe I keep this schedule. But I do. I've been doing it for almost two years now because this is my passion. It is very tough for me in my busy schedule, but I will have written three novels and two novellas, budgeting my time as I do. I haven't missed a deadline yet, not even when my legs fractured last June.

There is a single driving force behind how I manage this. I am a writer. That is different from being an author. Being an author is an occupation. Being a writer is a vocation. The intangible something inside that compels me to write is not at all comfortable. The words don't start in my mind. They seem to well up from my chest. Sometimes it feels like an alien is about to burst out.I fully expect one day Sigourney Weaver will show up in her Ripley costume, gun in hand, ready to take me out! No matter how tired I am, and trust me, I get tired; I have to write.

The alien inside me needs to be appeased, or it will eat me alive! I am amused by the number of people who have said to me that someday, they will write a book. The only way to write a book is to sit down and do it! Procrastination is not a novel make. It doesn't matter if it's a blank page or a white screen from Microsoft Word on a monitor. It has to be filled with words. Those words are the writer's responsibility. No one is going to do it for you.  

You have to do it yourself. Of course, along with the fire that burns in a writer's heart, there also has to be a technical skill. To become a published author, you have to not only want to write, but you also have to be able to write. It astonishes me at times when I meet people who can't put three sentences together in a coherent paragraph and expect to get published. The competition is extraordinary.

You have to be good to get published. Period! End of story! Talent notwithstanding, you have also to be willing to do what I'm doing. There aren't many published authors these days who can make a living wage writing. Indeed, I'm not one of them, at least not yet. That's why I work hard every day. My way isn't for everyone. But it's working for me. I have the books to prove it!