Life can be busy, especially with children.

Don’t get me wrong. I absolutely, unequivocally, love my wife and two girls. They are fun. I love coloring, holding them, wrestling with June (Clara is only 5 weeks old!) and just going on a walk or reading books to/with them. With being a husband, father, and working full time, I only have a few moments to write each day. My schedule is as follows:

7:00am-8:15am – Get up with June, get her and me breakfast while packing my lunch, getting ready for work, and then throwing down some coffee before sprinting out the door.

8:30am-5:30pm – Work, and travel to and from work.

5:30pm-8:30pm  Eat dinner, run errands with kids and Cindy, put June to bed.

8:30pm-12:00am alternate holding Clara, writing, blogging, cleaning, laundry, anything else.

How about the weekends? Laundry, kid time, hang out with Cindy time, housework, errands, grocery store, church – and that’s just the basics and does not count traveling for anything, helping friends move, and all other things that sprout up in life.

So, as you can see, the writing time is rather limited.

This blog is not about me complaining about my family because if you did not already notice and do not know me personally, I spend all of that time with them because I love them dearly and would not trade that time for anything the world.

The issue is, just how do parents with kids write?

Here are five ways to keep writing even during the busiest times of life:

1. Be prepared at any time. Keep a notebook with you and the ideas churning at all times so you are ready to go whenever.

2. Make goals so you have the mental battle of, “I’m sooo tired, but I promised myself 500 words today. I’ve got to get it done!”.

3. Schedule regular writing time and stick to it. I technically could do 5:30 am any day of the week… yuck, I know.

4. Hang around friends who write for encouragement. Guilt of not writing can be motivation enough to peck at your story again.

5. Sacrifice sleep. This one can be hard because as part timers go we are usually deprived of this anyway.

Remember no one will write your book for you. Don’t live with excuses or wait until the time to write is perfect. Simply train yourself to be ready to work in a moment’s notice and after a month of sporadically working on something, I am fairly confident you will be much further along, than having waited for that perfect time and written nothing. One of my friends once told me his dad, who also writes, has this by his desk:

Dreamers dream, Writers write.

How true that is!

Cheers,

Bob

Challenge – 1000 words before Monday?