Okay, so I missed Thursday, my day to blog.  Not only did I miss it, but I didn’t realize until today that I missed it.  In the last two weeks I also missed two different appointments and went to one two hours early.  Now, I was moving to a new house, so my brain has been fried, but still this is not acceptable behavior for me.

These periods of out-of-controllness (I’m sure it’s a real word… if you ask Stephen Colbert) happens to all of us.  And I think most of us who write will say that our writing is one of the things that gets dropped when the rest of our life is out of control, and sometimes our writing itself gets out of control…

If you’re having a bit of deja vu, I think it’s because I come back to this theme quite a bit.  Any art reflects what is going on inside of us but also outside of us.  Most of us have to juggle writing with other responsibilities (read “paying the bills, raising our kids, fixing the leak in the basement, etc., etc.”) and how we’re feeling will affect our ability to produce that art and it might color the production of said art, even if we don’t think it will.

Sometimes I feel too overwhelmed to write.  Other things get in the way.  I might even just have cramps and want to eat ice cream and watch Doctor Who instead (that is specific enough that you might be wondering if it’s that time right now- it isn’t, but I like a plan).  Or, if I do write at that special time, I might just kill off half of my characters in a frenzy of hormones.

As Roseanne Rosannadanna often said, “It’s always something”  (I do a great Roseanne Rosannadanna, by the way).  As I’m writing this jumble of thoughts right now, I realize that my daughter and I sat down with our giant whiteboard calendar and planned out the next two weeks, and you know what?  I didn’t put down writing or this blog on it!

That’s how to get it together when it comes down to it, at least for me.  Writing has to be scheduled in like everything else.  We’d like to wait until our Muse calls and then with a flourish of the pen- a flourish of the keyboard?- it all flows out.  But, unless we make it one of our boring, regular chores, it won’t get done.  Life is just too messy for most of us.

That’s how I’m getting my act together, anyway.  I’m writing it on the giant whiteboard calendar in my kitchen.  You can use that for a metaphor if you’d like.