My summer has been pretty great so far on every front except writing & reading. We’ve just returned to American shores after a month-long trip to the Motherland soaking up family time. It was full of many, many firsts for my little one (‘big girl’ bed, beach/ocean play, steam train rides, adventure playgrounds) and it was full of lots of down time for me (& even a full night get-away for me and the hubby). But what it wasn’t full of was writing, or even reading for that matter. For the first week I felt guilty about this and pushed myself to read – plowing through half a book on my sister’s Kindle – but then what is the point of traveling 3500 miles to see family to be sat with my nose in a ‘book’ all the time. Not a lot really.
When you have destinations as beautiful as Traquair House it’s hard to sit home and read. http://www.traquair.co.uk
And so I embraced my break. From time-to-time I entertained some thoughts about blog posts and novel scenes in my head and I picked at a few more pages of the aforementioned book but beyond that I did nothing, zilch, nada, other than enjoy seeing my toddler with the family that she gets to see way too infrequently. But now we are home and back to ‘normality’ – although little of that will be seen until the jet lag wears off and the smallest member of the household starts sleeping past 5.30am again. We also have a soggy basement to content with and a garden that has turned into a jungle in our absence – but after all that is dealt with it is back to normal. Except I want to find a slightly altered version of ‘normal’.
One piece of advise I hear over and over again from established authors is if you want to be the best writer you can be, then you have to make writing part of your daily routine. I’ve always thought that was a worthy desire but not one that I could realistically fit into my life at the moment. But why isn’t it? Am I just too bloody lazy to make it happen? In truth I don’t have a busy life. I have a great, relaxed life. I’m at home with my little one and we don’t have a demanding schedule. We get up in the morning and see what we feel like doing that day – it might involve spending all day playing in our pjs, or hanging out with many of our wonderful friends in the neighbourhood, or a trip to the zoo or art museum – but there are very few days we have to be anywhere at a specific time. So, why can’t I find time to be a Mum, do householdy-stuff, take classes and write at least once a day? Others manage to juggle far more grueling schedules and still come up with the goods so the very least I can do is try!
Morag Hastie 