I don’t post often. There’s a pretty big reason for this. Couple of them, actually.
For 8 hours of the day, 9 during the summer-except Fridays, I’m at work. The little free time I do have at work, my lunch hour, is spent doing 3 things-eating my lunch, reading while I eat, and when I’m done eating, I write.
After I get home, the next hour is spent exercising. Or writing. Then there’s dinnertime, and after dinner and washing dishes, shower. Once the shower’s done, I set up my laptop in the bedroom, set my iPod to charge for the next workday, and I sort of watch TV. I say sort of because at the same time, I’m typing up the words that I wrote that day. I’ve gotten pretty good at keeping current with that, aside from Friday and Saturday-those get typed up Sunday-so that I can keep track of my daily word count. And so far, I’ve been either hitting or surpassing that.
When I finish with the typing of words, I check the blog posts I didn’t read during the day. Depending on the post, that can take a little bit of time. Some are quickly closed because I’ve either read it, or the info, before, or it’s not really useful.
But I’ve mostly gotten pretty good at figuring out what is and isn’t worth reading.
Then, at 11:00pm, time to sleep.
So, that really doesn’t leave me much time to write blog posts. Yeah, I could do it, eke out a bit of time here and there, if it weren’t for one teensy, tiny little problem.
That’s my writing time.
I’ve made sacrifices so that I’d have the time to write, and it’s paying off quite well, so I refuse to jeopardize that because I’ve gotten an idea for something I’d like to comment on. Because, trust me, there are some ideas I’ve been wanting to blog about for quite some time. But the time I spend thinking about and writing these things are time I’m not thinking about or writing on my story.
Yeah, there are other authors and writers who make the time to do both. But ya know what, I’m not them.
I’m not bothered by this because, for the most part, there tends to be a pretty big difference between them and me. Most of them don’t have a day job, or the day job they have is the writing. I’m not at that point, yet. And I have way too much debt to be able to consider quitting my job. Which I wouldn’t likely do, anyway, because I get most of my reading(listening) done while working on puzzles. (It’s about the only way I can get the books in, now.)
No, I’m not generalizing and saying this is true of all other writers or authors. Because it’s not. In the same way that there’s no one way to break into publishing, though some authors have similar stories.
I might change my mind and start posting more regularly, if I can squirrel away some free time somewhere, maybe on Sundays between chores, but I’m not going to hit my head repeatedly against a brick wall if it doesn’t happen.
Really, one of my favorite authors has posted a blog entry once in the past three years. Oh, wait. Twice in the last four years. If I’m doing the math right. Which I may(read, probably) not be doing.
