Don’t Forget To Write
So how do you stay motivated during holiday season to write or revise or whereever you are in your current writing project?
My motivation is simple – I have a contracted deadline and if I don’t make that deadline, I’m toast. But even without it, I’m always motivated to write. Writing is a distraction from the madness. It’s my time. It’s away from shopping, wrapping, thinking about who’s house we need to go to at any given time. I don’t have to think about Christmas cookies or baking or what gift I haven’t bought yet.
The holidays bombard us with stimuli. Some of it’s awesome, but too much of it makes me twitch. Writing can sometimes be frenetic, but it can also calm me, because it’s my normal routine. And this time I year, I crave normal like nobody’s business. Besides, if I get too far outside my routine, it’s so damn hard to get back into it. And there are times when I’m stressed and busy and I think I can’t possibly pile one more thing onto my holiday agenda, that I just know I’ll never be able to write.
But you know what? I do find time. This is my job. I don’t take the month of December off just because it’s the holidays. If I worked at a bank or anywhere else, I wouldn’t get to take the month off, either. Writers, whether you tackle that career full time or part time, also need to remember that.
Don’t forget your writing “job” during December. You may find it the most calming, stress free thing you do all month.
December 18th, 2007 at 1:07 am
I always write at the end of the day, before bed, making it hard to skip. I’m a creature of habit.
December 18th, 2007 at 11:53 pm
When I can work it out so I can take all or part of the month off, I would. Had planned on it this year, but then got offered a new contract and it came with a Feb 1 deadline.
December 19th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
I try very hard to do stuff ahead of time so if I need to take extra time for family stuff, I can. But I’m revising just now, which is a different sort of writing exercise so it’s nice to disconnect from doing all that mom stuff and to ease into something just for me.