Sorry, My Novel Nudged Out My Blog This Week

© Can Stock Photo / Neirfy

Sometimes you have to pick your priorities. Correction: you ALWAYS have to choose your priorities.

This week, my new novel was a higher priority than this blog.

At first, I felt guilty about not being able to work on both the novel and this blog, then I realized that choosing to put my primary writing (my novel) before my secondary writing (this blog) is something to be proud of.

Commitments in other parts of my life required more of my time and attention, so I gave less time to writing. Less time, not no time.

It doesn’t serve us as writers to think we have to choose between family and writing. We all have multiple roles that are essential to the totality of who we are. Your roles might include parent, friend, church choir member, golfer, gardener, political activist, volunteer, amateur astronomer.

We can’t be truly happy and gratified if we pit one essential role (writer) against another essential role (parent). The best strategy is to choose priorities within a role, not between roles. Ask yourself “What’s my most important writing task?” not “Is it more important to be a writer or a mom?”.

So you’re getting an abbreviated post here this week. But you still have something excellent to read because I’m sending you to Kristen Lamb’s blog to read The Priority Parallax: Everything is Not as Important as It Appears, which made me laugh, made me wince and reminded me that making everything a priority means nothing is a priority.

Before you go, ask yourself what parts of your writing life are primary and what parts are secondary. What secondary tasks might need to take a back seat from time to time to keep your primary priority humming along?