I’m a full time writer! well sort of

For the next two weeks, I’m a full time writer. I’ve taken vacation from my day job, since the judge is out of town and I don’t have to worry about missing court hearings or finding coverage it is the best time for me to take vacation as well. Of course, I will have a rather large pile on my desk and I’m will be walking back into four trials in four weeks, but you gotta get it when you can.

Over the weekend, I went shopping and cleaned house so that I wouldn’t have to worry about those two things during the week and I could focus on writing. I also decided that I would need a schedule or some sort of structure to my day otherwise I would just waste away unfocused and accomplishing little.

My goal is to finish the first draft of my epic fantasy novel, Syrain’s Marrow, by January 1, 2015. Given that this is my primary goal, I knew that I needed to dedicate a significant amount of my day to working on that manuscript.

I’m also editing my memoir, Fighting for a Chance to Dream, which has been sitting since the end of April trying to be forgotten. Thus, this would be my secondary goal. Finally, because I like three’s and a triangle is the strongest shape, decided I would work on the outline for my serial novel, A Vigil for Justice, as my third goal.

The schedule I’ve worked out is that I will spend four to five hours working on Syrain’s Marrow each day. I will spend one hour editing Fighting for a Chance to Dream and one hour on the outline for A Vigil for Justice.

This shouldn’t be too difficult, so long as I fight the urge to check Twitter, email, Pinterest, Facebook, and Goodreads.Right. Hmmmm. Okay. How do I deal with that urge? Yeah I put it into the schedule too. One hour for social media.

I’m a morning person, so I’m out of bed by 6:00 am at the latest every day. From there, I head out to swim, bike or run depending on the day and voila the rest of the day can be dedicated to writing and taking care of my boys.

The house is eerily quiet other than my fingers on the keyboard, the blowing of the swamp cooler, and occasional barking of beasty little dogs needing to go out into the sun.

“Boys,” I call into the empty house. Oh yeah, Sky went camping with his grandparents for the week and Jazz, well he’s seventeen, has a social life, and this is after all the last week of summer vacation.

I happily wish Jazz a great day and tell him not to worry I will have an excellent time. He is a bit disturbed by the fact that I am perfectly content to spend my vacation alone, but for the voices in my head.