Unfortunately, I don't have that luxury because there's always something going on.
When I was practicing law, I wrote during my lunch hour and whatever time I could have to myself on the weekends. Which frankly wasn't much because GK was a toddler.
When I stopped practicing law (thanks to high blood pressure), GK was still in public school. It gave me some time during the day between dropping him off and picking him up. It was only about six hours, but I made the most of it I could. The problem? I was still very much a newbie. At that point I'd only finished three novels--one of which will never see the light of day. The other two were Blood Magick and Zombie Love.
Because of our finances, I had to get a job a year after I'd left law. Unfortunately, that was about the time we pulled GK from public school. The public sphere just wasn't working for him. It wasn't working for me and DH either. We were constantly getting phone calls from the school personnel. Neither of us was getting work done.
So, I worked part-time at a Hallmark store, wrote a legal column for a law enforcement magazine, home-schooled my only offspring by myself, and tried to write in whatever spare moments I could grab. By that time, I was making some headway with my submissions, but after reading the full manuscript, the agent or editor would invariable say, "Love the story. Love the voice. I can't sell this."
In the meantime, Amazon was allowing writers to upload their novels in e-book format so Amazon had content for their brand-new e-reader, the Kindle. In 2011, I decided to take a chance. Heck, Maybe trad publishers couldn't sell my book, but maybe I could.
Within fifteen months, I was making more through online book sales than I did at my other two jobs. The magazine crashed and burned during the summer of 2011, and I quit my retail job the summer of 2012.
I had time to write again even though I was still homeschooling. I would get up and be at the local Barnes & Noble when it opened at nine a.m., write for a couple of hours, then head home for lunch and a afternoon of schooling. On weekends, I tried to have the lesson plan and materials ready for the following week, so I could have a little more time to write after GK went to bed. All of this worked because, DH was scheduled for Pacific Time hours with his employer.
During the stresses between having to watch my health, worrying GK, and trying to keep my marriage together, I often had insomnia. On those nights, I'd write until I became drowsy.
At the end of 2012, my father-in-law had a heart attack. About the same time, GK asked about going back to public school. So we made the difficult decision to move from Texas back to Ohio.
DH and GK moved to Ohio in August of 2013 to get GK enrolled in school and for them to help the in-laws. In the meantime, I would do the last little things to get the house ready to go the market. We thought the worse case scenario was I wouldn't have the house ready until Christmas.
It took a lot longer because everything seemed to break after my family drove north. On the plus side, I had plenty of time to write because I had no interruptions and we had weeks or months of saving up for the additional repairs.
Once we were all in Ohio, I was back to writing during the day while GK was at school. Just one problem. DH also worked from home. He had for the last ten years. But now we were in an 1100 sq. ft. apartment instead of a 2500 sq. ft. house. And when DH is on the phone with a client, he was loud!
It didn't help that I was having trouble with insomnia again. I started staying up after DH went to bed and writing into the wee hours of the morning. He'd take GK to school. I'd wake up in time to pick up GK.
But shortly before GK was done with high school, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Which meant I needed to be up before two in the afternoon for various doctor's appointments and scans.I couldn't stick to a writing schedule for a year. I still write, but I did when I had the strength and the quiet.
A couple of years later, GK was off doing Army stuff, and DH and I found a home that would fit our working styles. Our offices are on opposites side of the house. I can't hear him. He can't hear me. For the most part, we are back to a relatively normal daytime schedule.
Except with everything going on in our lives over the past three years, I don't have everything unpacked, and it's driving me crazy. So now, on days I have a morning yoga class, I take my travel laptop with me. After class, I stop at Starbucks for breakfast and an hour or two of writing. Plus, I do writing sprints with some fellow writers for an hour or three in the evenings. In between, I work on the boxes and sort between stuff to keep, stuff for the spring garage sale, and stuff that just needs to be thrown out.
It's probably going to take me the rest of the year to empty the boxes inside the house. Nest year, I'll focus on emptying the storage unit where everything that we couldn't keep in the apartment ended up.
But I may change my writing time depending on the whims of the one true god Murphy.
So what I'm trying to say in this long-winded diatribe is find whatever time to write works for you in your current stage of life. But be flexible enough to change that time when you have to. Good luck!
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