Writing when there's no time

Have you ever felt like you had so much to do and not enough time to get it all done? That’s a feeling I come up against more often than not. And although I get up at the crack of dawn, seriously, my rooster, AJ, isn’t even up yet, some days I barely stand still long enough to watch the tail lights of Jim's truck disappear down the driveway.

Usually the early morning hours are my favorite time to write. Armed with hot coffee and swaddled in my comfy old robe, I find it easy to slip into my characters without the distractions that seep in with the sunlight.

Yesterday I'd spent time reexamining the situation I’d left my characters in and discovered new ways to torture them and looked forward to writing that scene.
But with everything I've got to do today it looks as if my writing will have to wait….

Hold on a minute! My characters won’t have to dangle precariously over the cliff or stay locked for days in some steamy embrace waiting breathelessly for me to write the perfect intrusion. Because even though I have a million things to do today, I can still work on my wip (work in progress).
It doesn’t matter if I’m driving across town or home scouring the bath tub- because although there’s nothing I’d rather be doing than writing- I learned early on ‘you can’t always get what you want.’ There is the next best thing.

I can continue to write even while completing all the mundane stuff that fill up my To-Do list. Okay, I may not be able to actually sit down at my favorite writing spot right this minute, but nothing can stop my mind from thinking about the story. Do you smell the smoke? Or maybe hear the gears grinding? That's the wheels spinning in my head while plotting out more sticky bumps in the road.

I'm busy darting to and fro like a nesting bird when my cell phone rang. It was my granddaughter who asked so sweetly if I could give her friend a ride home because she'd stayed after school to work on a project and had missed the bus. How could I say no? But, let me describe how rural we live. Cable and internet won’t be in our area for Years, so a kid riding a school bus around here has an awful long ride. Like hours. Seriously. And of course this lovely child lived at the end of the road. Yep. Some ten miles of hilly and but very scenic route in good old small town USA.

Cruising along with the window down my thoughts drift...I hadn’t been over this way in years.

Why didn’t I remember how lovely it was? And really, how can one rush when you’ve got two very bubbly girls in the back seat? I'm approaching a crossroad when suddenly golden rays dropped from the sky like a halo and rest upon a forgotten landmark. The perfect general store for my novel. Tucked neatly alongside that narrow backroad that twists through grape vineyard country.

The store is exactly as I pictured Harvey's Gas & Go would be. The front porch has gray weathered plank boards. Thick rusty sign and uneven slats of crooked steps that lead up to wide double-doors with dusty glass windows. (contentment) You bet. I swear I can smell licorice from a smudged candy counter.


Writing. Here or there...or anywhere. Just do it. : )