When life drowns the writing

Hoh boy. This week on SFF Seven we're talking about how to stay motivated when life "spirals downward" (<-- poetic way of putting it, yes?).

If you have suggestions, please do feel free to pass them along.

Truth is, I'm a bit under water right now -- family health emergencies, pre-teen drama, pet emergencies, home repair problems, kind of you name it and I'm dealing with it. (You don't want to hear the litany of despair. You really don't.) It would be amazing if I could say the writing was keeping me going or even that I have been able to write whole stories despite.

But it's not and I haven't.

I wake up in the morning with stories in my brain. Sometimes I scribble in the notebook beside my bed. Sometimes I thumb-type dialogue on my phone while I'm waiting in a doctor's office or hospital room or vet clinic or school pick-up line. Back when the words were coming and life was being kind, I got used to assigning a multi-hour stack of time for writing, during which I could deep dive into the story, but nowadays I'm having to train myself to take stories piecemeal, scribbles here and emailed snippets there. It's like I'm rewiring the whole structure of how I work.

And honestly? If this goes well, if I manage to train myself to write books on the run like this, that will be a perfect kind of magic.

Because I don't want to make writing the center point of my universe. My family is already there, I love them, and I have made promises to them. Comparatively, I've promised writing very little -- I have no contracts or deadlines and very few expectant readers, and I can choose either to be depressed about that lack or to be grateful I don't have yet another competing commitment.

I choose to be grateful. Because managing the spiral is about understanding your priorities, and right now, writing is not my priority.