TIME to WRITE

It's hard. Very hard.

The novelist Norma Curtis - and soon to be Chair of the Romantic Novelists Association - says after the most basic and immediate business of the day is done (getting up, brushing teeth, dressing, waving goodbye to husband/son - not necessarily in that order) she writes 1000 words BEFORE she allows herself to do anything else. 

They don't have to be a thousand good words. She may later cut 999 of them but she has to get them down.

That might not work for you. It hasn't worked for me and I've tried it. (The list of basic things just gets bigger and I say that as someone with a very high tolerance level to crumbs in the sink and day old coffee marinating in the coffee machine.)

So if 1000 words is impossible, how about 10 minutes and if you click on the title to this post you can go to a handy time setter. 

And if you really haven't had time to write this week, not even 10 tiny minutes, then I presume that you also haven't watched a soap, heard Lord Sugar yell 'you're fired!', or raised an eyebrow over the prices on Antiques Roadshow. It's not wrong to listen and watch other people's stories but you shouldn't do it at the expense of your own. 

That's how I write. Watching television is not my default activity. And I'm reluctant to just watch. I treat television like most of us listen to the radio... while doing something else...(although I may make an exception for Kevin McCloud on tonight's Grand Designs)