I’m going to piggy back this week from my Toronto Romance Writers’ Group. Our discussion this week: “What Kind of Writer Are You?”
In the book “Time to Write” by Kelly L. Stone, the author lists 7 different writing schedules or categories that successful authors’ writing habits tend to fall into. The titles are Stone’s but the explanations have been changed/shortened.

1. EARLY MORNING WRITER – you get up a number of hours before the family wakes up or before you have to go to work (your day job).
2. THE AFTER HOURS WRITER – you work best after sunset or when the family is asleep.
3. OFFICE WORKER [or Workplace Worker]- You arrive at the office (or wherever your day job is) before your shift starts, to write. You write again during your regular breaks (like lunchtime). You stay an hour or two longer at the office/factory to write.
4. THE BLITZ WRITER – You write longer in one sitting but less frequently.
5. THE MINIBLOCKS-OF-TIME WRITER – You write a minimum of one sentence a day. Your writing time can be as low as several minutes. It can be as high as 30 minutes to an hour.
6. THE COMMUTING WRITER – You write while commuting on the “GO Train”, bus, subway, etc.
7. THE ANY-OPPORTUNITY OR COMBO WRITER – You write as soon as there is a spare moment so it can be a combination of the above schedules.

So What am I?

I guess I fall into the Any-Opportunity and Blitz Writer categories. Oh, I wish I could actually dedicate 30 minutes a day or a couple of hours a week, but life doesn’t work that way in this house. (That is also my excuse for not getting to the gym, too, and what makes that worse is that my husband and I own three Snap Fitness gyms!)

Our Daughters are with our respective “exes” every other weekend, and I try to schedule a few hours every other Sunday to get some writing in, but there is always so much to do and if I get 3 hours in every 2 weeks, I consider that a win. Once The Daughter goes away to university (2.5 years away) then I’ll be going crazy trying to fill up the 8 – 18 hours a week I currently spend at gyms watching volleyball. Of course, with the pile of unread print books on my shelves, 100s of e-books on my kindle, and dozens of unfinished crafts in the closet, I probably still won’t find as much time as I want for writing or getting to the gym. But one can always dream!