Writing When You're Not Writing

As evidenced by the sudden slowing on posts on here, I've been pretty busy lately. I keep forgetting that when I assign my students essays to write, I've got to sometime grade them all, and I do tend to put boring parts of my job (grading) to the very end.

So, I've been doing a lot of things other than writing, which kinda sucks. I graded most of last week and the week before (stupid essays), and I had to clean the house because the dog fur had carpeted the hardwood floors, and that's just gross. And our pears are finally ready to be picked, and that means next weekend = canning.

All that to say that I have really had no time or opportunity to write. But that doesn't mean I've not been working on writing.

See, some of my best writing happens when I'm not writing at all. I've got a forty minute drive to work (each way), and that leaves me with a lot of time to think. And what I'm thinking about is my writing. I think about things like characterization, about scenes and where I should put them, about the next book I want to write.

Some of the best writing I've ever done was when I was going 70 miles per hour down the road at 6:30am.

So, if you find yourself (like me) with the situation where you want to write and just can't, don't beat yourself up for not having a chance to write. Don't forget that writing is more than sitting at your desk and putting words on paper. Writing is also thinking, plotting, developing in your own mind--and writing every day includes all those mental words and scenes you construct.