Monday, February 28, 2011

New Guest Post by Rebecca J Bradley

First of all I have to say a huge thank you to Nancy for asking me to come along and write a guest post for her blog. I was extremely flattered when she asked.

No sooner had she asked and I had agreed, than things started to go wrong. Nancy requested a personal type post, involving things such as my life, working, kids, mad female dogs with boy names and finding time to write and guess what? I let her down within the week simply because one of the other commitments got in the way of finding the time. Oh the irony.


But what does that say about my organisational skills? They do actually leave something to be desired, though I am working on them. Probably spending what little time I have, creating to-do lists that I then never find the time to do. Everything goes around in ever decreasing circles and I find I'm losing track of myself.


Maybe you think it's not very professional, but as of yet I'm not a professional writer. I do what I can when I can and the rest of the time life is there to kick me up the butt to remind me I'm not a fabulously wealthy best-seller yet.


The reason I had to let Nancy down in that first instance was a fairly important competition piece that had a deadline approaching and that I was no where near ready for. It was one of those competitions you wait all year for and give it your all. I had to focus hard on it and put in a lot of hours, but now it's done and it's gone and I have room to breathe again.


So time for writing and finding a balance with life, How do you do it? Well, I can give you plenty of examples of ways in which not to do it but I suppose the discussion point of this post is, how do we juggle life with aspirations to write and be published?


I work full time and have an hours travelling time each way to work and back. I then come home to a husband, two children, a female Springer Spaniel called Bob (it's actually Bobbie, but it's obviously just shortened to Bob) and a house that always looks in need of a tidy and all vying for attention.


As well as these, I have aspirations to write and have a crime novel be published. To help with this I have set myself a goal to read at least 40 books this year and put myself in for 12 writing competitions. I am attempting to build myself a platform by blogging and have a twitter and facebook account, then I have to find time to write. Typing all this up, I'm wondering myself how I'm going to manage this!


I multitask. A lot. I read in the bath, in bed and in my lunch break. I write blog posts on my phone when a thought comes to me and I read and comment on blogs while I'm eating my breakfast in a morning. I tend to work on my novel at weekends when the kids are playing with their friends and squeeze in another couple of hours through the week in an evening. I tweet on the move and facebook tends to come in last. It's exhausting trying to keep up with everything but I feel it's worth it. Writing is a massive dream I hope to one day achieve the goal of publication with, and for that, I must keep going.


How do you find time to do the day to day tasks and pursue your goals? And if anyone meets me coming backwards could you kindly point me back home.



You can find me on my blog at http://lifeinclarity.blogspot.com/
On twitter at http://twitter.com/rebeccajbradley
On goodreads http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/4694160-rebecca-bradley
And on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001747678931



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