The Writer's Mind: Carving out Writing Time

Well, life happened this week, so this is going to be a shorter post than I had originally planned. (Writing tip number 17: don't develop a social life or pick up hobbies. They take too much time).

From here.

This semester was supposed to be "easy" compared to the last one.

A conference, tournament, and two projects later, I'm starting to have my doubts. I've been running like a chicken with my head cut off for a couple weeks now and there doesn't seem to be an end coming any time soon. 

As often happens, something ended up on the back burner. This time around, it was writing. A month ago, I set out to write 5,000 words a week. 

That's about what I wrote last month. 

Yikes. 

So, I've been trying to focus on what I can do to improve my word count--and I realized that, unlike most other activities, I don't have a time of day set aside to write. It's been lumped in with homework and studying. 

As most college students would tell you, there isn't such a thing as being done with homework or studying, at least not during the middle of a semester. There's always one more project, one more reading assignment, and one more test for which to study. It's not easy. 

But very little that's good comes easily. 

Hence,why my alarm is now going to be going off a half hour earlier during the week. I need some serious writing time at a point of day when I'm not going to be as tempted to do homework or get sucked into Facebook. I typically write better at night, but right now it's between doing some not-so-inspired writing regularly in the morning or not writing very much at all. 

Editing can fix one of those problems, but not the other. 

So, here's to fighting for dreams. To balancing the five hundred things we decide to be involved in at any one point in time. Here's to the writing life.