Reasons and excuses

First a bit apology for not writing for so long, but I hope you enjoyed the interview with author Valerie Hobbs.

So, you might be wondering, why has Day By Day Writer not been writing? Good question, and I have reasons and excuses.

My reasons are:

  • At the beginning of June, my dad had surgery (he’s doing great, thanks for asking) and I went to be with him for the week.
  • The week after I got back, my husband and I visited Austin (three hours drive away) for a couple days as he had a job interview. The day after the interview, he was offered the job and our life got a bit turned over.
  • Cut a long story short, the job is a great opportunity, and within a week after arriving home from my dad’s surgery, I was trying to sort out us moving to Austin.

So, those are my reasons, and as the fellow writers in my writing group told me when I said last week Saturday would be my last meeting, they’re pretty good ones. Sometimes, the rest of our lives do get so busy that it’s tough to make time to write.

But I’ll be honest here, these are also excuses. It wasn’t so much that I couldn’t make the time to write — I could have dragged myself out of bed at 4am every morning and still got an hour or so in — but with everything else in my head, I felt too distracted. My story has been on my mind, my characters have been playing around in there, but every time I thought about facing the page, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I felt that I’d let down those characters, because my mind was more on the packing I had to do, and finding a place to live in Austin. I just didn’t feel creative at all.

The thing is, though, that writers need to write, and now that I’ve been away from my novel for a month, I’m really looking forward to getting back to it. I miss it. I miss my characters and the world they live in.

Sometimes it’s ok to take a break when everything around us gets crazy, but sometimes, when everything else is crazy, that’s when our writing can help us the most.

How do you deal with writing when your life gets a bit too overwhelming?

Write On!

P.S. I’ll write again much sooner this time.

 

3 Responses

  1. Glad to see a new post from you, I wondered where you’d gone! 🙂 Congratulations on the new job and the move – even though it means figuring a lot of stuff out all at once. We’ve actually been considering a move to Austin, too, but if it happens, it won’t happen for a while.

    Best of luck with diving back into your novel! 🙂

  2. Andrea says:

    Wow – congrats on the new opportunities. Even though it sounds stressful to organize it all, it sounds worth it. I think that it’s true that when there’s too much “life” stuff in your head, it’s hard to get into mental writing space and be productive. Missing it is good too – it may give you a fresh take on things.

  3. Natalie Aguirre says:

    Congrats on the new opportunities. Austin is a great town. I think it’s okay sometimes when life gets too crazy to take a break. There are weeks when work, taking care of my family, volunteering at school are all I can handle. I’m trying to at least sit down and write for 15 minutes a day during those crazy times. It does help to keep moving the story along.

Leave a Reply to Natalie AguirreCancel reply