That’s where I am right now.  I am still working on my book but it has suffered in the attention department lately.  I try to juggle two kids, a husband, house work, volunteering and church with writing time, and I fail quite spectacularly at doing any of these things well.  Hence the gap in time between my last post and this one.  It is so easy to get consumed by daily life and not give writing…the one thing that gives me the most joy and pleasure (and, to be quite honest, pain sometimes)…is the one thing I push to the back burner first. 

I get frustrated when asked, “Why haven’t you written anything lately?”  I look around me and I see a kitchen that needs to be cleaned, toilets that need scrubbed, floors that need mopped, kids and homework and soccer and baseball and now cheerleading.  Not to mention singing in church every once in a while which involves rehearsal time and lots of practice on my own.  I am not a natural at this music thing so it requires more of my time than perhaps another person to whom singing…and singing wellcomes more naturally.  So when, exactly, amidst all this whirlwind that is my life, I ask, am I supposed to sit down quietly and summon my  muse?

I have come to the realization…it never happens.  I have to make time.  I have to rearrange my schedule and give myself at least one hour of writing time every day.  In theory, this is perfect.  In practicality, this is near impossible.  But, it is a goal, and therefore I am working toward it.

Take this posting, for example.  I did not want to sit here today.  I wanted to work on two parties I have to help plan for my kids’ classrooms in a couple weeks.  I need to go out and purchase the Bunco prizes for my bunco group which meets here tomorrow night at my house.  12 women are coming over and I have nothing for them…no prizes, no food…nada.  I wanted to mow the lawn (?!). 

Well, the people I need help from to plan the school parties are not at home, so I cannot do anything with that.  The lawn mower has finally given up the ghost and left me with a half mowed lawn.  I was about to get up and take a shower and go get those Bunco gifts when I noticed that my computer was running slowly.  I looked to see that I had about 12 different applications running all at once, so I began to close them down one by one.  And then I hit upon the icon for this software which allows me to publish my aimless ramblings on the internet.  (I use ecto).  I moved my mouse to click on the quit button but before I knew what was happening, my fingers were flying across my keyboard!

I entitled this entry “Synopsis Hell” but somehow it has transformed itself to a broader, if cliche-ish, scope:  The Writing Life.

So now I can go about my business, having exercised my writing brain for the morning and hopefully this will induce hours of money-making synopsis-writing later on today…after I get the Bunco gifts, and take the lawn mower to the shop, and clean the house, and pick up the kids, and do homework, and get them to their baseball and cheerleading practices, and go to choir practice tonight.  Oh yeah, did I mention I have to go to the grocery store today, too?

Sigh.  And it’s only 10:00 a.m.  C’est la vie of a writer.

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