You Do What You Can

From the Speakers: BURIED MYSELF ALIVE by The Used

It sucks, but sometimes the day job gets in the way of your writing. This was something I was loathe to believe just a few short weeks ago when I was a student, and then later when I had the summer off, waiting to start my new career. One thing I always had a lot of was time, and one thing I had few of was obligations. All that free time was great for being productive on the page.

But now that I've started working, that routine I was used to is a thing of the past. Today, after work, I had about an hour and a half to get home and do whatever before going to the gym, after which I had to eat dinner and get my stuff together for work the next day.

I sat down at my computer and had to face reality. I didn't have the time I needed to get jazzed and write two thousand words on the next chapter of the novel I'm writing, or even to finish the half-completed short story that's been begging my for completion. Soon, I'll have to work twelve hour shifts, and my conclusion is that no (or very little) writing will get done those days. I wanted to forget about it then, maybe crawl in bed or nap or pick up a book and relax for a while when I had the chance.

But I'm sure very few great writers became great this way. They did what they could when they could. So that's what I did--I worked on two short-short pieces, one of which I wrote after performing the exercises discussed yesterday--and managed to submit one to a magazine I've been looking at for a while. Keep your fingers crossed--hopefully I'll have more links for you guys to check out before long. Until then, I'll keep doing what I can.

Hope you're doing the same in your lives, whatever that might be.