Balancing The Writing Life

Balancing the writing life means different things to different people. A lot of writers have children to look after, so not only are they trying to balance a day job and family life, but also writing. Truth be known, I have a profound respect for those folks who juggle all of that. Me – I can’t really complain. The writing life has always been easy for me to balance. Long story short — I don’t have children so ever since I was nineteen, if I wasn’t working, reading, or spending time with friends or family, I was writing.

I honestly sat down and looked at how I spend my time today and realized when I was younger (from about age nineteen into my mid-thirties), my writing time amounted to an average of 25-30 hours of any given week. As I’ve gotten older my writing time has increased to 45-50 hours a week. Of course before I made what amounts to a part-time income and now I make what amounts to a full time income, and my hours spent writing reflect that. If I didn’t have a part-time day job, I would absolutely be writing more hours per week.

I don’t have a lot of the responsibilities other writers do. I help out my family at their business part-time during the week. This means I get to see my family more often than some people. My mom and I also try to do dinner or something every month or every other month. My immediate family is my husband and our two cats.

A lot of my non-writing, non day-job-working time is  spent in spiritual study/practice, tending my plants, and working in the “lab” (i.e. my kitchen) creating tinctures and incenses, candles, amulets and other magickal things. But for the most part — I’m writing. It’s what I do and something I’ve done since I was in grade-school.  Of course that’s next month’s Merry-Go-Round blog topic (My Earliest Writing Dreams).  Keep your eyes open.

And now I’m off to go do some writing. For the record this blog also counts as writing. 🙂

  About The FM Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour

Today’s post was inspired by the topic How Do You Balance Writing With Day-to-Day Life?  this month’s topic in the Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour, an ongoing tour where you, the reader, travel around the world from author’s blog to author’s blog. We have all sorts of writers at all stages in their writing career, so there’s something for everyone to enjoy.

If you want to get to know nearly twenty other writers and read their thoughts on balancing their writing lives, check out the Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour.  I blog with this tour the 25th of every month.  Up next on the tour: Becky Pratt!