Balancing Your Writing Life

With The Rest Of Your Life

By Lauren Ford

Balance.

Anyone who’s ever tried to walk a balance beam knows how difficult it is to balance. Just thinking of doing a cartwheel on that balance beam brings terror to many of us because it involves trying to maintain balance while doing multiple things. But then, that’s how our lives are. All of us have many facets in our lives, and writing is just one of the aspects we try to balance.

There’s that word again. Balance. I have a full-time career, two children, a husband, and a dog, not to mention friends and hobbies. When I think about trying to balance all that and writing, I get hives. How in the world can I keep all those factors equal and equivalent?

I can’t. Rather, I think the question we should be asking ourselves is not how do we balance writing, but how do we manage to juggle all the elements in our lives.

Juggling is much different than balancing. You can make things easier or more complex at any given time, and you don’t have to make things equal. With juggling, you can juggle two balls, or four. You can move on to more complex elements, such as clubs, and if you really want to get fancy, you can juggle flaming clubs.

When I decided I wanted to be serious about writing, I realized I would have to add another ball to my act. I was pretty good at my current act. Sure, I dropped the hobby ball every now and then, and sometimes the husband one, but the good thing about juggling is that when you drop something, you can pick it up and start again. Or, you can decide to leave that ball on the floor for a few days while you work with fewer items to juggle.

But what happens if the same ball is always on the floor? Or if you start dropping more and more of the bags? Early in my writing career, I found that my writing ball was always on the floor. After all, writing began as a hobby. But then as I got into it and realized that yes, I could do it, and I could be good at it. I realized that I wanted to make writing a (gulp) second career.

So what did I do to make sure that ball didn’t get left on the floor? I made writing a priority. It was no longer a matter of, “I’ll write at night after I get the kids to bed.” Or “I’ll write while my husband’s cleaning up the dinner dishes.” I wasn’t going to settle for squeezing in time. I was going to make time.

For me, the answer was simple. I’m a morning person, and I suspect I always will be. To make writing a priority, I decided I would have to do it first thing in the morning. I set my alarm for five o’clock (yes, that’s a.m.), stumble out of bed, and fire up my notebook computer. And write without any distractions. No Internet. No TV.

This is my time. This is my haven. And best of all, I’m not taking time away from any of the other balls I have to juggle.

Some days I write for only half an hour in the morning. Sometimes I write an hour and a half. And some days, I don’t write at all -- and when that

happens, watch out -- I might be a little bit cranky that day. But my writing comes first in my day. It comes before the white noise of the day. It comes before I have to think about what type of training course I need to design. It comes before I have to think about what in the world we’re going to eat for dinner when my kids have to be at two different sporting events at the same time that evening.

So, do I have balance? Absolutely not. But am I able to keep multiple projects in the air? Yes.

As a to-be-published writer, I don’t have an editor with deadlines. I don’t have to think about promotion. Or update my web site. Or answer fan mail. Or read the reviews -- the good and the bad.

So how do the published authors do it?

Denise Swanson manages two careers. “My method,” she says, “is to keep the different parts of my life pretty compartmentalized.”

Denise works on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, so those are not days for writing. On the other days, writing is the focus, and she treats it as if it were a job, writing from eight until one. She spends afternoons from three to five on promotional activities. Swanson adds, “I really stick to my routine, unless it is a dire emergency. What I do works for me because my spouse is so supportive.”

Katherine Garbera has had two different perspectives. Early in her writing career, she also worked full time. “I’m a huge fan of the Franklin Covey planners and the system they use,” Garbera says. She maintained a list that included job, family, and writing to-dos. “I weighed them all equally and then ordered the list by importance. Writing was always in my top category and always the first thing I did when I had time.” That included writing on her lunch hour and in the evenings.

She now has the privilege of writing full time, but she still keeps time for her family. She has a solid working time each day (when the kids are in school). In the summers, she and her kids decide on a time when she can write.

Allie Pleiter/Allie Shaw has a similar routine. With a family and a writing career, Pleiter says “I am religious about protecting my mornings.” When the kids are in school, she writes every morning for one to two hours. But even in the time when she’s not actively typing on a keyboard, Pleiter says, “an upcoming scene is always percolating in my mind.”

Like Garbera, Pleiter adjusts her schedule during the summer, writing at night after her children are in bed.

A common theme among these writers is that writing is a priority. That doesn’t mean that writing always takes precedence, but rather they adjust their schedules to be sure the writing gets done. Pleiter says, “Family always comes first. My books aren’t going to visit me in the nursing home.”

Pleiter also takes to heart a quote from Steven King in his book, On Writing. He states, “Put your desk in the corner and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support system for art -- it’s the other way around.”

Sometimes, making writing a priority isn’t enough. Sometimes the writing just won’t flow. Cathie Linz allows herself to break writing into smaller pieces that she thinks of as baby steps. She sets obtainable goals so she can often exceed them. “If I set a goal of 10 pages, sometimes it’s hard to sit in the chair and actually write those because the goal seems so large. But if I tell myself I only have to write three pages, I often end up writing seven because once I get on a roll then the words flow.”

Linz adds, “I’ve also resumed doing something I did earlier in my career and that is to write down the number of pages I’ve written so I can see where my days go. If I don’t get any writing done, I write what I did do, such as housework, family obligations, or taking a break. That way, I can see what gets done.”

So, as writers, do we have to balance our writing, giving it equal billing with everything else in our lives? Absolutely not. The solution lies in finding a rhythm that works for you. Leave the fancy balancing act for the gymnasts.

My suggestion is to take up juggling instead. Devise a routine, modifying it as you go along. Pretty soon you’ll be tossing the flaming clubs.

Bio: Lauren Ford is the author of two award-winning romantic/suspense manuscripts. When not working, attending one of her children’s sporting events, or spending quality time with her husband, you can find her in the early mornings curled under an afghan, her notebook computer on her lap, and a copy of Juggling for the Complete Klutz by John Cassidy and B.C. Rimbeaux close by on the book shelf.