Mamas, give a warm welcome to our guest blogger today, fellow mama and writer Gina Badalaty:

GINA:

After years of procrastination, last fall I decided to jump in to write a novel.  A few years back, I wrote a manuscript while participating in NANOWRIMO.  For the past 10 or 12 months, I’ve been world-building, revising and developing sub-plots. I’m surprised by how long it actually takes to produce a workable manuscript.

I had hoped to be finished by now, but I’m not done with my current revision and the last few weeks have been insane.  My oldest daughter just entered first grade and “homework” is now added to my list of chores.  Her schedule includes an early bus, daily readings, and assignments due twice a week.  She is learning-disabled which means that homework is a pretty time consuming task, but one I feel is important.

On top of this, life already was busy.  My four year old has been throwing tantrums and refuses to dress for preschool.  Over the summer, I took on extra contract work to help with bills.  Since I work from home, I’m usually the one who makes dinner, does the laundry and keeps track of all the little things.

That leaves little time for both writing and sleep, but I’m lucky to have an accountability partner for writing.  She sent me goals as soon as school started.  Yikes, I thought, how on earth am I going to keep up?  By mid-September, I had not looked at my manuscripts in weeks, but when could I find time for writing goals?

So, I did something off the wall: I committed to 5 minutes of editing per day.

Let me clarify: that is five minutes of revising after I’ve opened the document, found my notes, and looked up what I need to keep moving on.  In keeping this commitment I’ve discovered some benefits:

1. My editing time almost always goes past 5 minutes.  If I choose to work at an open-ended point in time, like the beginning of my lunch hour or before bed, it easily leads to 10 or 20 minutes of good writing.  The pages start to fly by.

2. There’s no excuse for not finding time.  Five minutes is too short a time period to avoid without guilt and I can pretty much write whenever I think of it.

3. Five minutes a day keeps me engaged with the story daily.  Setting a longer time goal or, worse yet, page goals (i.e., edit 3 pages a day) encourages procrastination.  By keeping up every day, I never lose the thread of my plot.

4. If I’ve only got 5 minutes, I have to make merciless decisions.  There’s no time for long internal debates about keeping it in or cutting it out.  If I’m unsure, it goes.

At some point, I will have to find a long block of time to sit with my novel and digest it as a whole.  Five minute editing is only a temporary fix until some of my projects end and the holidays arrive, but in the mean time, I don’t have to feel guilty.  I’m working on my novel every day, and every day that work is moving forward.  Good for me!

Gina Badalaty

www.mom-blog.com

www.artremarkable.com

www.artbytech.com