I’ve laughed a lot here lately. I’m stupidly busy. I need to learn to say no more, but life is going like gangbusters on all GOOD cylinders. I’m not someone who finds it easy to say no to good things. I also end up on a lot of panels about Time Management for Writers and about Writing with a Day Job. So what all am I doing?

I do work a full time job. I’m a lawyer for a local government agency. I’m no longer doing involved trial work, but I’m in court regularly. It’s a 40 hour a week job, but it’s not one that comes with a ton of overtime.

I also work a part time job. I’m lucky enough to have found a part time legal writing job that, while there are deadlines, it’s a very flexible schedule, and generally involves a couple of evenings and maybe a Saturday morning every week. I’m starting to move some of this work to the hours after The Girl and The Boy go to bed at night.

I’m between book contracts at the moment. THE PERRAULT VOW will be out within the week (!) then my contracts for the GRIMM series are fulfilled. I’m working on a new novel, and while my goal is to have it completed in October, if not before, I do not have a contract for it, and do not have a deadline. In fact, I don’t have any writing deadlines at the moment. I generally write on my lunch break at the moment, and after The Girl goes to bed at night.

The Boy is in high school this fall. EEEK!! He’s on the high school soccer AND cross country teams. Which means that I’ll be there cheering him on as much as humanly possible.

The Girl is crawling. She, however, seems to be unhappy that she’s not making faster progress…she wants to stand and walk and run. She can pull herself up on furniture if it’s low enough to get hold of; otherwise, she keeps doing a very frustrated baby version of downward facing dog and getting ticked off that she’s not getting what she wants.

And The Husband and I are trying to eat healthier on a regular basis, eating out less and cooking at home more. The next step will be to add in exercise, but a lot of times that’s an issue of lack of time rather than lack of desire.

So people keep asking me how I’m getting it all done. To which, depending on the day, I either want to tell them that I’ve given up sleep for Lent (since it’s not Lent at the moment it’s fun to watch their faces as they realize this), or I want to tell them that I’m not getting it all done.

Truth is falling somewhere in between.

There’s a measure of planning required to have this kind of schedule and still be Mom. There’s a whole lot of tag-teaming going on between my husband and I as to getting The Girl fed/bathed/put to bed at night/packed for morning and getting The Boy fed/to practice/to games and matches/to team meetings.

My house is nowhere near where I would like it to be; but the level of cleanliness when I lived alone with one job, the writing, and a cat, is not something I can maintain with two jobs, the writing, four people (including a very active teenager), and the cat. The home improvement projects are coming along, though much slower than either of us would like, because of the aforementioned craziness in our schedule. And fall sports have just started this week.

And the writing is happening around deadlines for my part time job, on breaks and lunch hours at work, as well as after The Girl goes to bed at night. The other night, my husband and I were hunched over my laptop kicking around ideas for upping our game for our convention displays, and coming up with a more cohesive, professional look (not that it looks BAD per se…just how can we make it look BETTER). I’ve talked marketing on a phone call with a marketing consultant while spooning strawberry peach apple baby food puree into The Girl’s mouth one evening. Email marketing will be kicking off soon.

Now you see why I find it funny to be on these panels about Time Management. I swing wildly between wanting to say that if I can find time to write, others can too, and saying that if it’s important, a writer will find the time. And then I realize how condescending that sounds, and I don’t mean it that way. The reality is, however, that there’s some truth there. If you truly want to write, you will write after the kids go to bed, on the commuter train to work, on your lunch hour, or first thing in the morning before the rest of the family gets up for work. If it’s important to you, you will treat it as something important in your life.

Or you can just be me and totally lose my mind trying to do it all…and taking my husband to the funny farm with me…