How I write

I like to share my updated writing process every once in a while since it’s fun, at least for me, to see how things change as my children grow.

Right now they are 5, 4, 2, and 16 months old.

I wake up in the mornings and do my bible study + prayer time. I always pray for my writing process along with many other things, and I keep a notebook right beside me because I often get hit with an overwhelming number of amazing ideas for my work during that time. If there is time before everyone is ready for breakfast (and there usually isn’t), I’ll work a little writing in here.

From there I feed my kids breakfast and do our “morning time” homeschool, which is usually our memory verse, a devotional, our sign language word of the week, and a picture book. Then I do a very fast workout DVD while they get dressed or we all go for a walk/have a dance party, some kind of exercise, and then we do a few daily chores together.

After that I sit down for a math lesson with my son while my girls play, do a quick preschool lesson with my four-year-old while he takes a play break, then do language arts. I make lunch while they all play together, then we sit at the table for lunch, our read-aloud, and a simple Spanish lesson based on our reading for the day.

I get everybody ready for naps and read them all a picture book, then my son does “quiet time” in his bed (a stack of books, puzzles, coloring, stationary for letter-writing, wipe-off workbooks, and a few miscellaneous quiet activities) while my girls nap.

I usually read a chapter of a review book while everyone settles down and then I crank out about two hours of writing time. I tend to have writing ideas pop into my head all day long so I’m usually pretty productive during this time. After writing time is over I try to work for 30 minutes on writing-related work… drafting emails, editing blog posts, plotting social media posts, etc.

Afternoons are kinda lazy, which is always really nice. I usually read them something while they eat their afternoon snack, then we do science Mondays and Wednesdays or history Tuesdays and Thursdays (and nature study Fridays), plus an elective. I try to give each kid a five-minute one-on-one date with Mom at this point (which is basically just one kid in my bed for a book/coloring/puzzle session while the other three stare at us from across the room) and then they play while I make dinner.

After dinner we hang out for a bit, usually play some kind of pretend game altogether (restaurant, house, acting out or putting on a puppet show of a book we read earlier in the day, etc) and then get ready for bed, bedtime book, tuck them in 30 times. Once a week I go out to do all my online work (scheduling blog posts and social media posts, answering emails, responding to comments, etc), and once a week I spend a night completing essays I plan to post on the blog. Other than that, who knows. Some nights I crank out a ton of great writing or research + notes while Ryan does his own thing. Some nights we just read separate books beside each other, some nights we hang out… some nights I write for 15 minutes before we read/hang out… you just never know.

I’m also about to try something new, a weekly working playdate with a sweet friend I don’t get to see nearly often enough. There are definitely disadvantages to this plan (the gas it takes to drive to her town, the way it alters our homeschool schedule, the way I’ll get time to do marketing/logistics work but not writing work during this time) but I am so excited to get to spend time with her and I am really looking forward to crossing several things off my list at once without having to go out late at night to do it!

All throughout the day I can also be found scribbling 1-10 word nuggets into a notebook I leave open at my laptop when I sit down to write.