photo credit: JD Hancock via photopin cc

Does your life look like Stormtroopers have been playing Twister all over it?

A week and a half ago, I was the recipient of much thought, planning and love as I was whisked away to another city where I was proposed to. Yes, dear reader, I am engaged! (And there was much rejoicing in the land.) As we’ve opted for a short engagement (just under 9 weeks in total), my daily routine – my life – has completely turned upside down. Every spare moment is filled with Pinterest and research and phone calls, all the flurry of activity one would expect from a bride-to-be with a limited amount of time to plan a wedding.

Yep, that’s us! :)

My spare moments are not filled with writing. Or anything related. Like this blog or my social media and email communities. And I hate that niggly feeling that tells me I should still be making the kind of time for it that I did pre-engagement.

Stuff happens. You get married. Have a baby. Move to a new city (or country!). Start a new job. Lose a loved one. Become victimized in some way (God forbid!!). Life happens – the breathtakingly wonderful and the horrific alike – and sometimes you just have to hit the pause button on your writing to attend to it.

This is something that came up last weekend in my Writers Kick Start class. That we go through seasons. Obviously, in the age in which we live, life is generally busy and full. This post is not necessarily about the general busyness of the day to day where we can make an honest evaluation of our schedules and indeed make space for regular creating. This is about the seasons where life explodes a bit.

Can you still write when “life happens”? Totally. I chose to get up earlier so that I could say Yes to writing this post this morning, instead of saying Yes to one of the umpteen items on my wedding planning list. I don’t know if it’s realistic to choose that in the next couple of months, but I must say, the act of writing this blog post has eased that internal discomfort that comes when we have to put our creativity to the side.

So if it’s feasible for you, do something. You may not be able to sit down and bang out a chapter, but perhaps you can make some notes here and there. If you capture ten minutes somewhere in your day, three times a day, you have thirty minutes.

The choice is yours. If you need to hit the pause button for a time, do what you must. There’s no judgment here, nor should there be self-condemnation either! But if you can, in any way, keep going, you may find it not only therapeutic, but a welcome reprieve from your current state of crazy.

Since I’ve given myself only about 25 minutes to hammer out this post (and I’ve gone WAY over – ha!), to let you know what’s going on and why you may not hear from me much until after the honeymoon, I’ve found a few other posts for writers with perspective on this topic that are worth a look:

• Working in Chaos
• Writing Through the Chaos—Tips to Keep Moving Forward When Life Happens
• When Life Happens, Change Your Plans

Holly Lisle has a an inexpensive guide with lots of tips on this subject: 21 Ways to Get Yourself Writing When Your Life Has Just Exploded. I’ve gone through several of her courses and have found a lot of value from them.

What are your thoughts? Leave a comment below!