"Had we but world enough, and time..."*

I was thinking this morning about how hard it is to do all the things I need to do each day. My to-do list is often left unfinished, as everyday chores, like cooking and laundry and cleaning and running after children, take up most of my time, leaving little for the other things that really need to be done around here, like organizing and weeding out clothes that no longer fit and attempting to unpack more of the boxes I put in the basement when I moved here years ago. Fitting in writing time is sometimes an even bigger challenge, but it's an important one--and also the topic of today's 100 words:

As a writer and a mom, one of the things I struggle most with is finding the time to write. I stay at home with my two very young kids, something I wouldn't trade for anything. I do some writing early in the morning before they get up and some late at night after they're in their beds; however, in both cases, I'm pretty tired and often unfocused. But to paraphrase Tim Gunn on Project Runway, I make it work. I have to. If I have to sacrifice something--sleep--to follow my dream, that's what I'll do.

*Opening lines of "To His Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvell

Writing isn't easy

I wrote this 100-words exercise earlier this week:

Sometimes I sit in front of my computer for quite a while before I think of something to write in this little white box. I don't know why it's so hard sometimes to pull words from my mind, draw them through my fingertips, and, like magic, it seems, make them appear on the screen. But as Anne Lamott and countless other writers have said (or written), writing is sometimes a struggle, and no matter how successful a person is, there will be days when writing a page, a paragraph, even a sentence is all that he or she can manage.

Flipping the switch

One of my biggest writing challenges is my struggle to make the transition from Mom mode to Writer mode. I schedule some of my writing time during my daughter's nap (my son has quiet playtime then), and I often have trouble leaving behind all of the stresses of the day in order to concentrate on my writing. Instead of working on my WIP, I'll find myself making a store list or doing laundry or just sitting in front of the computer thinking about the meltdown my kids had at storytime or what I need to do to get dinner on the table on time. All of these thoughts get tangled up with thoughts about my story and my characters, resulting in a snarl of ideas that seems impossible to sort out in those few precious moments of writing time.

Certainly this struggle isn't unusual, and I'm sure that all writers, whether they stay at home with their kids or work outside (or inside) their homes, have similar struggles. One thing I've been trying to do to ensure better productivity is to schedule more writing time early in the morning, when the house is still quiet and the stresses of the day haven't yet had a chance to become forefront in my mind. I've been scheduling this morning time since the beginning of April, and although it's been working well, I would like to be able to get even writing done at different times throughout the day. However, flipping that switch from Mommy mode to Writer mode is proving to be very difficult, and I'm not yet sure how to overcome that challenge.

I'm curious. How do you put aside other thoughts so that you can fully concentrate on your writing?