RTW: Finding Balance

It’s Road Trip Wednesday time again, and, as you might be aware, this is a particularly busy week, what with Thanksgiving, Black Friday shopping, and, for a bunch of us, NaNoWriMo. The prompt from YA Highway is quite timely:

With Thanksgiving on the horizon we want to know how you balance hectic times like the holidays with your writing schedule.

My answer? My honest answer? I don’t really think about it. The way I deal with the holidays is how I deal with life: prioritize. It would take far too long, and bore you all to distraction, if I were to go through the entire process of how I prioritize. Suffice to say, I have some absolutes that I will do no matter what else happens. For the Doctor Who fans, think of those like fixed points in time. Everything else works around them in their own series of priorities, which may change according to circumstance. When I know a time is coming when I will want to spend more time with family, I make sure the other things are taken care of in advance.

A good example of this is NaNoWriMo. I knew I wouldn’t want to do much, if any, NaNo writing on Thanksgiving Day, but I also know that if I stop for a day, there’s a danger I’ll lose momentum. So I set myself the challenge of hitting the 50,000 word mark before this Thursday, and then try to finish the novel before the end of the month. If I make both goals, that will be excellent. If I only make the first one, then at least I can say I successfully completed the NaNo challenge, and I will finish the novel as soon as I can. This has meant making NaNo a priority for me above other things: this blog, Twitter, and even reading (which is a shame because the book I’m reading is excellent). Not to say I totally give up those things, but I would only give time to them once I have worked sufficiently on my NaNo project each day.

How am I doing? Look at the widget on the right. As you can see, I’m quite happy with progress so far. Thank you to all those who have been cheering me on, whether on Twitter, on this blog, or even just seeing my progress and saying a silent “yay!” for me. I really would like to finish by the end of the month, while I have the NaNo momentum going. I have a lot of words yet to write, but at least I know where the story’s going–it’s just a matter of getting it all down.

How do you work around holidays, or special times? Not everyone is celebrating Thanksgiving this week, but I’m sure you all know what it’s like to have to balance time with family and friends, time at work, time for non-writing get-aways, and writing time. How do you do it? You can answer here, or at the YA Highway blog, where you’ll find details on how to participate.