The Ultimate – Ramona Heikel

In my usual schedule, the drive to compose sometimes results in a 5 AM creative inspiration, quickly typed, causing me to be a bit late for work, but smiling.  Other times I spend an entire Saturday morning writing (get away from me, laundry basket!), or, in a rare blessing, I have energy left at the end of a day to write coherently.  Of course, I cherish a dream of waking up each day knowing I have the luxury of writing as many hours as I want.  But what if that dream came true?

I’ve had tastes of what that would be like.  In fact, I’m still on a school holiday, which has been an opportunity to live the writing life for a few weeks.  But although living the writer’s dream, I still want to spend time with family and friends, and there are still chores and errands.  These things do a real ADHD number on me, fragmenting my schedule, and worse than that, my mind.  But with a year off, I’d definitely make some helpful changes.

The first change I’d make if I had a year to focus on writing would be to spend more time praying over my writing, and meditating on related scriptures.  Sad to say, when I’m sneaking in some precious minutes of creativity, I don’t stop to do that.

I would work on one of the drafts of my novels, or start a new novel.  Longer, in-depth plots are the most natural for me to write, but I find that with so many interruptions it is far less frustrating to write smaller pieces.

I would try to find an agent to represent me.  I come to a grinding halt when I enter the moving target of the marketing world.  In addition to an agent, with financial resources as part of the dream, I would hire a writing coach.  As self-motivated as I am mentally, I don’t always walk myself over to my pen and paper to get started.  I envision someone like Kristi Holl from the Writer’s First Aid website knocking on my door from time to time and gently, humorously, forcing me to do the hard work.

And finally, I would hire a cook and maid, and use the freed-up time get exercise with walks in the fresh air, while the thoughts and planning of my writing continue to work themselves out in my head.  For the winter I would have a treadmill or elliptical with the capability of having my laptop at my fingertips, which would require me to move into a larger place.  Which, if I was going to do that, I may as well find myself a cottage out of town…with a view of the mountains…and a babbling brook…or a beach house…?

And you?  I look forward to hearing about your writing year!

Posted by Ramona

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