Just a Little Bit Better

Wednesday is my two-post day -- the day I post both here and at Organizing by STYLE. Technically, it's a three-post day, if you count my STYLE Savvy post at CatholicMom.com, but, since that post has an earlier deadline, I'm less likely to feel the posting crunch there. 

Some Wednesdays, I get one--or both--posts done ahead of time. Through a wonderful confluence of time and creativity, I not only figure out what I want to write about before Wednesday rolls around, but I manage to write the post and set it to publish automatically.

Today is not one of those Wednesdays. Today, I'm writing both posts from scratch on Wednesday, grateful that I'm tackling them while it's still morning. And, as I was thinking through the possibilities, another sort of confluence occurred.

A theme. 

So today, I thought it might be fun to try something. Although my post here and my post over at Organizing by STYLE have different content, they have the same title. I hope, if you have a minute, you'll take the time to read both of them.

Happy Wednesday!

Each semester, my schedule changes. Consequently, I struggle to determine where my writing fits in, and it often takes me the better part of a semester to do so. Semesters like this one, when I'm teaching three classes, it barely fits into the small snippets of time between planning, teaching and grading.

I've long been part of a critique group, and that's a motivating factor, but late last month, I upped the accountability ante. A fellow writer and I are meeting once a week to just sit and write. We meet at my home away from home (Starbucks), snag a table, chat and work for at least an hour.

Last night, as I looked over my end-of-semester to-do list, I started to get anxious about taking an hour out of the day to write. In just a couple of weeks, the semester will be over and I'll have much more time at my disposal.

But, because I'd made a commitment, I added it to today's to-do list. And today, as soon as I sat down at Starbucks, I felt the stress melt away as I prepared to finish blog posts and chat with my characters. 

Pixabay

We all need a nudge sometimes, even when we need to do something we like to do -- perhaps even especially then. It's easy to get sucked into the daily to-do lists and successfully push one set of tasks aside in order to accomplish another set that seems more important.

But, if I don't put my writing first, carving out a place for it in my schedule, how will it get done?

I'm still not writing as much as I'd like to, but thanks to my new accountability plan, my writing plan just got a little bit better.