STAYING ON TRACK by Nancy L. Eady

Today is the Friday before Thanksgiving. Since Thanksgiving is always on a Thursday, I tend to think of this Friday as the last quiet before the flurry of the holiday season descends upon us (unless you’re one of those incredibly organized people whose December holiday shopping is done by July 31, in which case I tip my hat to you as one of those people whose organizational skills reach an elite level to which I never can aspire.) While we’re rushing around trying to complete our holiday tasks, it is easy to let our writing time suffer. I’d like to share with you some ideas I had (probably most of them terrible) in exchange for you sharing your (hopefully much better) ideas in the comments below. 

It takes a certain amount of discipline to be a writer, doesn’t it? Especially when we work at other jobs during normal working hours to support our writing habit. If you write regularly, you’ve already developed the self-discipline to do so consistently. Staying on track during the holidays can be as simple as mixing self-discipline with a small dose of understanding as to the realities of the demands on your time during the next four to six weeks. If your calendar for the next six weeks has so many blacked out squares that it looks like the mouth of a six-year-old with ten missing teeth, accept you might not meet your normal quota—but then come up with a quota that you can meet until sanity returns on January 2. 

Another helpful tip is to remember that the word “no” is in the English vocabulary and use it. Pick the events that you truly want to (or must) participate in and give yourself permission to say “no” to others.

Something I suffered from for many years was the illusion that it was my responsibility, and mine only, to ensure that my family had the “perfect” Christmas every year. There is no such thing as a perfect Christmas, and to be honest, our best stories come from the years when Christmas was less than perfect—like the Christmas tree Mom put up in Louisville one year that slowly sagged downwards until it was at a 45-degree angle to the floor by Christmas Eve and held up with fishing wire. It was an artificial tree on its last legs, and my sisters and my husband and I have some of the best pictures of all of us laughing while we took our holiday pictures leaning at an angle to match the tree. Or the Christmas Eve when Kayla, my daughter, was six and Mark’s mother had to go to the ER. Mark, my husband, ended up getting back home about 5:45 a.m. Christmas morning, so we did Kayla’s Santa at 6 a.m. that morning before he went to bed to snatch a few hours of sleep. Her eyes were saucer-wide as Mark told her about seeing Santa driving away from the house as Mark was returning. So, ditch the idea of a perfect Christmas and give yourself permission to spend some of the time writing. 

Something that helps year-round is figuring out when you are at your most creative each day and then trying to structure your writing to take advantage of that peak creativity time. My peak writing time is NOT first thing in the morning. Getting up in time to see the sunrise is vastly overrated, and my brain doesn’t fully engage until I have been heavily caffeinated. So, 5 a.m. would not be my ideal writing time. Lunch is a good time for me, as are late afternoon and mid-evening. Others, though, are eager morning people, and to them, that 4—6 a.m. shift is just ducky. Choose what works for you.  

And remember, you can make astonishing progress with as little as thirty minutes a day if you use them consistently. There was a French author, whose name I don’t remember, who wrote a 400-page tome exclusively using the time he spent waiting for his wife to get ready for dinner. 

If you have a schedule that is interrupted for a day or two, instead of beating yourself over the head about it and losing even more time, simply accept that life happens and pick your schedule back up the next day. 

What ideas do you have for staying on track with your writing during the holiday season?