Every morning I try to wake up at 5am so I will have some time to write before Astrid wakes up. The alarm on my iPhone goes off, and I groggily tap “Tap to snooze.” I repeat this at least once. By 5:30 I’m usually awake. This morning, I lay reading a book on the Kindle app on my phone to wake up a little more before getting out of bed. Then, Astrid starts coughing. We’ve all had this dry cough that won’t go away. I lay in bed a little longer to allow her to fall back asleep after the coughing has woken her up.
So I’m eating breakfast by 5:30. I’m reading a particularly good book. Kindred Rites by Katharine Eliska Kimbriel. I got the first book, Night Calls, as part of the Women in Fantasy Storybundle. It’s the first really engrossing book I’ve read in awhile. This morning, I’m almost done with the book, so of course I can’t just stop. I finish it by 5:50.
I open up Scrivener and begin to reread the scene I was working on the day before. Perhaps two days before. Astrid woke up too early yesterday for me to write. I finish scanning the scene, and type my first five words of the day. Just then, I hear a gasp and the sound of a pacifier dropping through the baby monitor. Then: “Mommy mommy mommy mommy.”
Sigh.
This is how my revision of Fate of Dragons, Book Three in the Dragons of Arethia series, is going. This is what it’s like trying to have a full time job, a toddler, and write a novel. I need to get up earlier, but can’t bear the thought. I have a lot of difficulty writing in the evenings. My motivation and energy just isn’t there. Weekends, I get a couple hours at a coffee shop or in my basement office, but I try to write every day so my mind stays in my story. If I leave too much time between working on it, it takes longer to get my head back into it.
I will figure something out. Something will work eventually. Or perhaps all of the small things I try will add up to working, somehow. But now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go answer my daughter’s chants of “Uppy!”
