Truth About Writing–When You Have A Life

So as many of you may or may not know, I have a life–other than writing. Yes, I know. Shocking. But here’s the little truth about my experiences, thus far, with my writing and normal every day life.

One or the other ends up getting put on hold. The advantage of getting tunnel vision when I’m writing is that I can deck out five-thousand words a day easily. The bad news, mostly for my husband of so many years and three young children, is that I disappear into my computer. I become a mumbling, babbling mess of a woman until the nearby screams of attention FINALLY draw me away from my screen. It’s a battle. My kids happen to be very tenacious, and very up for the challenge.

So the real question is: how do you write and have a life? Is it possible, Brianna? Tell us about your brilliant steps towards having both–a family and a writing career. (Still sort of working on “writing career” part). Well, lemme tell you! I…haven’t really figured it out.

Instead, I’ve found that if I goal myself with writing every day–sort of like you do when NaNoWriMo comes about–then I have my story written and kids fed. The real task comes about when one or the other thing starts to take precedence. And in those cases, I’ve found, neglecting the lesser of the two seems to be the best course of action. And yes, lesser meaning writing because–come on–kids you can’t neglect; they won’t let you. Not mine anyway.

On the plus side, I’m still learning the ins and outs, dos and donts. I’m hardly an expert in this field. I also take to a lot of food therapy of the chocolatey sort. Cookies never did any harm. Okay, maybe a lot of harm since my extra love handles would beg to differ. Still, if I’m in a bind, I choose chocolate.

So I guess the moral of this little blog post is: when in doubt, choose chocolate and forget the rest. Who cares that you have a manuscript deadline hanging over your head or children barking at your feet for food? Chocolate solves the world’s problems. And mine, too.