Briar WestMy life isn’t run by a beautifully color-coded planner. I don’t get up at 4:30 every morning and crank out three thousand words before work. Most days feel a lot more like controlled madness than some perfectly optimized routine, and there are plenty of evenings where I look around wondering what, exactly, I accomplished with the last twelve hours.
Believe me, I’ve tried to become one of those organized planner people.
I’ve bought the planners. The fancy pens. The stickers. The tabs. Every year I’m convinced that this planner is going to be the one that changes my life.
It never is.
Three weeks later, it looks like it survived a natural disaster. Half the pages are blank, the other half are crammed with scribbled notes, grocery lists, book ideas, reminders I forgot to cross off, and at least one phone number with absolutely no indication of whose it is. By February I’ve usually admitted defeat and gone back to whatever system my brain invents that week.
That’s just who I am.
For anyone who’s new here, here’s the condensed version: I work a full-time day job. I homeschool my two kids, who thankfully are incredibly independent with their coursework. I write romance novels whenever I can carve out the time. We have two German Shorthaired Pointers who firmly believe every lap belongs to them, one cat with enough opinions for the entire household (but she really IS my fuzzy little princess, most days LOL), and a husband who has never once questioned another one of my “I have an idea…” conversations. Somewhere in the middle of all that, I’m also supposed to remember things like drinking enough water, folding laundry before I have to fluff it for the third time, and responding to text messages (yea, i’m really bad at that).
Even with all of that going on, I’ve somehow managed to keep writing books.
Not because I’ve figured out the secret to balance, but because I finally stopped waiting for life to feel balanced before I sat down and worked.
The Biggest Misconception I Ever Had About Writing
For the longest time, I assumed professional writers just…had more time than everyone else.
I don’t know where I got that idea, but I blame social media.
If social media is to be believed, every author has a gorgeous office, a perfectly styled desk, a hot cup of coffee that never gets cold, and enough uninterrupted hours to wait for inspiration to wander in whenever it feels like making an appearance.
My writing life looks absolutely nothing like that.
Most of the time I’m squeezing words into whatever pockets of the day I can find. Sometimes that’s after work. Sometimes it’s while dinner is in the oven. Sometimes it’s late enough that the house is finally quiet, but I’m negotiating with myself over whether I have another scene left in me or whether my pillow is about to win the argument.
Some weeks I don’t write nearly as much as I wanted to. Other weeks I look up and realize I’ve somehow written several thousand words without noticing where the evening went. Most nights land somewhere in between, and that’s usually enough.
I’ve stopped measuring a successful day by how many words I wrote. Some days the writing moves forward because I actually write. Other days it moves forward because I solve a plot problem, plan the next chapter, or finally figure out why a scene hasn’t been working.
My House Runs on ViBeS
People are usually surprised when they find out we homeschool our kids.
The funny thing is, homeschooling is probably one of the easier parts of our day.
They’re both in self-paced programs, they’ve always been great at working independently, and they’re old enough now that they don’t need me hovering over every assignment. Of course, there are still plenty of questions, snack requests, and conversations that somehow start with math and end with Minecraft, Disney, or whatever random rabbit hole they’ve discovered that week, but we’ve found a rhythm that works really well for our family.
When I clock out from my day job, that’s when I finally get to work on my books.
My husband built me the prettiest pastel blue PC, and I still catch myself smiling when I sit down in front of it. Every evening starts the same way: Okay. Tonight we’re making progress. Whether that means finishing a chapter, wrestling a stubborn plot into submission, or outlining scenes for a book that’s still a long way off, I always sit down expecting to move the story forward.
And then there are the nights where I open the manuscript, stare at it for a minute, and somehow decide that reorganizing folders, color-coding character notes I’ll probably never look at again, checking Facebook “real quick,” or falling into a twenty-minute research spiral about something completely unrelated is obviously the most urgent thing I could possibly be doing.
Avoidance is a talent, and unfortunately, I happen to be VERY good at it.
The Biggest Thing I Have to Manage Isn’t My Time
If I’m being completely honest, the biggest obstacle most days isn’t my job or homeschooling or trying to juggle everything else life throws at me.
It’s me.
For a long time I convinced myself that if I just had more free time, I’d write more books. Then life got a little quieter in some areas, and I realized I was still finding ways to stay busy without actually making progress. I can spend an embarrassing amount of time thinking about a chapter before I’ve written the first sentence, convincing myself I need to figure out one more plot point, answer one more email, or wait until tomorrow because I’ll be in a better headspace. Tomorrow, of course, usually tells me the exact same thing.
The frustrating part is that I already know exactly how it’s going to play out.
On the nights when I stop arguing with myself, open the manuscript, and start typing, I almost always fall into the work faster than I expected to. Half the battle is getting out of my own way, and I still haven’t figured out why that’s so much harder than actually writing the book.
Today happened to be one of the good days. I finished my work, sat down at my desk, and did what I’d been planning to do all along. There wasn’t some burst of inspiration waiting for me, and I didn’t suddenly become more disciplined than I was yesterday. I just quit giving myself reasons to put it off, and it turns out that was enough.
Consistency Has Always Been More Reliable Than Inspiration
I love the nights when everything clicks and the story seems to carry itself. Those are the evenings where I sit down intending to write for an hour, glance at the clock what feels like five minutes later, and realize half the night has disappeared. The dialogue comes easily, the scenes unfold the way I hoped they would, and I start wondering why writing ever feels difficult in the first place.
The problem is that I can’t count on those nights showing up when I need them.
If I’d waited until I felt inspired every time I sat down to write, All the Quiet Things would probably still be sitting in a folder on my computer instead of on readers’ bookshelves. Most of my books have been written in ordinary evenings after work, when I was tired, when the house was noisy, or when I’d rather have convinced myself that one skipped night wouldn’t make any difference.
Some nights I make a lot of progress, and other nights the only thing I accomplish is untangling one stubborn scene or making enough notes that tomorrow’s writing will come a little easier. I’ve learned to stop treating those evenings like they don’t count, because they’re all part of the same book. Every chapter I’ve published exists because of dozens of late nights where I simply kept coming back to my stories, even when it felt like I wasn’t getting very far.
My Goals Keep Getting Bigger
One thing I’ve noticed is that goals have a funny way of moving the finish line.
When I published my first book, I was convinced I’d finally feel like I’d made it. Instead, I almost immediately started thinking about the next one. Then the next series. Then bigger projects, better systems, and bigger dreams. I don’t think that feeling ever really goes away, and honestly, I’m okay with that.
These days, I’d love to reach the point where we’re publishing four books a year. Saying that out loud still feels a little wild when I think about everything else life already asks of me, but it doesn’t feel impossible anymore.
A huge part of that shift has been writing with my husband. We each have different strengths, and working together has changed the way we approach storytelling. We’ve also started using dictation, which has made a HUGE difference. I still do plenty of sitting at my desk wrestling with sentences, but being able to capture scenes, dialogue, or ideas the moment they happen means a lot less gets lost before I have a chance to write it down.
The more authors I meet, the more I realize there’s always someone doing something that makes me stop and think, Huh…maybe I could do that too. I don’t look at those people and feel discouraged. If anything, they remind me that there’s always another way to improve, another process to learn, or another goal worth chasing.
At the end of the day, I just want to spend more of my life telling stories. If finding a better workflow means I get to write more books for readers, that’s a goal I’ll happily keep chasing.
I don’t know if I’ll ever feel like I’ve completely figured this whole writing thing out. Every book teaches me something different, every deadline humbles me in a new way, and every time I think I’ve found the perfect routine, life changes it again.
What I do know is that I still love sitting down in front of a blank page. Some nights it’s exciting, some nights it’s frustrating, and some nights I’d rather do just about anything else. And every time I wander away from it, I end up right back at my pretty pink and wonderfully clicky keyboard.
With So Much Love,
Briar