One of my critique partners made several suggestions for writing during the holiday times. She asked on her 2009/12/27 blog (http://dramaquill.wordpress.com/) How do the holidays affect your writing habits? Besides being a friend, she’s a mind-reader, for I was thinking of blogging about the same thing. So… hey, what do you know? Here I go and do it, anyway, post-holiday.

I have always made family a priority. To me, nothing else (except my faith) could rate higher. If I were to spend so much time writing that I ignore my family, could I live with that decision? Family time these days is precious and wide-spaced in the year. I will never regret giving up “my writing time” to eat and laugh and play games and eat and tell family stories and eat some more, whenever they are present. It is not a hard decision for me. Besides, even in the best of times, with all my other commitments, I tend not to put in a 40-hour writing week. It is all about priorities.

So, in answer to my friend’s question, during the holidays, I take the time off writing to be with family. Then, when it’s all over (i.e., they leave), I go back to feeling guilty about postponing my writing for so long, take one last look at my company-clean house, and then plunge back into my normal, haphazard, unstructured (but productive) writing schedule.

(And now there’s a question for curious minds: Can a schedule be haphazard and unstructured?)