One of the questions I get the most is “How do you do it? How do you find time to write when you work full time and have young kids and…??”

Truthfully… 🤷‍♀️

My writing ebbs and flows. I go through what I call “dry spells” where I hardly put a word to the page. This can be weeks, even months. I used to beat myself up about this, ask myself what kind of author I was trying to be if I wasn’t writing every day. And then, in the last year, I learned to accept it.

My writing ebbs and flows.

That’s me. That’s how I write.

So when my writing is flowing, I quite literally “go with the flow.” I bring my notebook with me everywhere. I insist my husband drives us places so I can write. I stay up late, I wake up early, I read on my lunch break so I can write later. I sit in a chair while my kids play with their Lego and I zone into the music playing through my ear buds and just let the pen fly.

I quite literally “go with the flow.”

Because I know, eventually, the rush of words will slow to a trickle, and then that trickle will disappear as well, and I’m left “high and dry.”

So am I writing all the time? No. Even when I do, I take frequent writing breaks to read to my kids, or walk my dog, or bake (I LOVE to bake!). I am of the belief that the more I live, the more interesting my writing will be.

Yes, I write even while working full time with young kids. But I’ve fallen into a rhythm with my brain and the way I write: I take the times where the words are flowing and I write then, in every moment I can. And when my dry spell hits, which it always, inevitably, does…I hibernate and wait, keeping a notebook nearby for when I pick it up and start to write again.