On a good day, I check off all the items on my schedule. But then there are those other days. This is what comes from trying to lasso time and break it to my will.

I’m sure you can imagine the outcome of that.  

A family member who works from home recently explained how doing a puzzle between working on her pottery helped her accomplish just as much without the usual stress. That chimed with me. What if, instead of herding time into a corral of my choosing, I traveled alongside it, honoring its freedom from constraint?

Accepting my limitations is humbling but also empowering. These days, I look at my schedule from a different perspective. I still believe it’s important to have a plan, but mine is now more of a flow chart.

Each day, I list the tasks I should accomplish under three categories: writing-related, household responsibilities, and personal activities. I’ve determined how much time to allot each task weekly, and with that in mind, assign blocks of time to each category within the day. I usually prioritize each category’s to-do list and try to complete them in order. The blocks of time are as flexible as I can make them, taking into consideration certain inflexible deadlines over which I have no control.

Before I adopted this system, I had trouble bouncing back from the disruptions (inevitable with such a rigid schedule), but my new approach reduces them. A disruption is only a disruption when it takes you away from something else. Giving myself flexibility allows me to respond to interruptions with more spontaneity. Turns out, that’s better for a creative person anyway.

As a child, I rode bareback, reveling in freedom from constraint. The horse that carried my slight weight would obey my commands, but not always. Sometimes green grass or a spot of shade caused my mount to misbehave. Lacking the force of personality some people have over horses, I learned to negotiate.

This is a lot like that.

What I’m Writing Now

Book Projects

I am two-thirds of the way through the last editing pass for Sojourner, Tales of Faeraven 3  and hope to finish in the coming week. This would be a Very Good Thing, because I need to start on the next project in line, which I’ll announce next week.

Blogging

I published “Grandma Katie’s No-Egg Wonder Cake (Wacky Cake) Recipe“ in the Old Bohemian Homestead portion of the site, sharing a cherished family recipe.

For Live Write Breathe, I started a series on conflict in fiction with Types of Conflict in Literature and released Readership Challenge #3 for subscribers.