Writing at 'Stupid O'clock': What Author Life Taught Me About Resilience and Priorities

Author life has taught me a lot about fitting my creative dreams around a busy day job and family life 👇🏽

Juggling creative dreams around a job and family life is hard. We all know it. And I often feel like there’s never enough time, to the point I envy Stephenie Meyer's vampires and their lack of need for sleep. 😅 But honestly, these years of writing around life’s demands have taught me some invaluable lessons, and I often get asked how I fit everything in.

So here's a quick run down of how I handle writing books around job and baby and exercise and ... [the list of need-to-dos goes on and on ...]

✨ Building resilience – There are days when the words just won’t come, or life gets in the way. But showing up anyway—even for a tiny step forward—has been my mantra. Each morning when my 'stupid o'clock' (according to my dad) alarm goes off, and it's cold and dark and I want to roll over, I tell myself 'this is my origin story' and I get up and run through my morning routine. Even if it's condensed. Even if it's just 10 minutes.

✨ Determination and saying 'no' – Carving out time for your dreams isn’t easy, but it’s worth it. I’ve learned to fight for what lights me up, even when it means saying 'no' to other things. And saying 'no' to other things is hard. It's not expected in this society. So that's a big lesson: think about what you're going to say 'no' to when you have something more important you want to do. Is it no TV? No alcohol? No weekend layins? You've got to be strict with yourself and prioritise.

✨ Matching my life to my values – Writing isn’t just something I do; it’s part of who I am. I feel odd on the days I can't do it. Aligning my daily choices with that has brought so much clarity and peace. It took YEARS to do. YEARS to action. YEARS to allow myself that. So what are your values?

Try this: If you need to google a giant list of values, write all the ones that resonate, and then trim them down to your top 5 values (this is what I did), then I recommend this. It gave a whole new perspective to my lifestyle.

✨ Scheduling personal priorities – I’ve made writing time as non-negotiable as work meetings or daycare pickups. It’s not always perfect, or 'enough' time, but it’s mine. What you put in your calendar is what you prioritise, so get it in there. Even if it's only 10 mins a day. You know what they say: 'Show me your calendar, and I'll show you what's important to you.' So I HAD to get creative work and exercise on my calendar.

✨ Waking up early – Early mornings have become my creative sanctuary. There’s something magical about working while the world sleeps (and, importantly, my son, because I'm sure all parents know no work gets done with a toddler climbing all over you!) and letting the words flow. Now, I know some people are night owls VS morning larks like me. That's okay. It took waking up at 'stupid o'clock' for me, but your creative time might be late. Find your creative time, and use it.

✨ Working little by little – Dreams aren’t built in one day. I’ve learned to celebrate the small wins—500 words here, an edited chapter there—because they all add up. I still have moments when I mourn long, beautiful writing time with lots of words. Still feel like a failure when I can only have ten minutes. But then I check myself, and remind myself that at least I'm still plodding forward. And over a year, that's still a lot of progress.

I'll throw in the old '0.1% progress every day' nudge here.

This life has its challenges, but it’s taught me that progress, not perfection, is the goal. It takes a while to learn. I still catch myself in the perfectionist mindset. But writing isn’t always glamorous—it’s messy and raw and sometimes exhausting—but it’s also deeply fulfilling.

And it'll be the same for whatever creative lifestyle you're seeking.

If you’re chasing your creative dreams, I hope you’ll give yourself grace. Work on them bit by bit, show up even when it’s hard, and keep your why close. It'll help you through the tough times.

So, take a moment today to reflect on your creative dreams. What small step can you take right now to move closer to them? I like to remind myself 'Just one thing a day'. What one thing can you do each day to shuffle towards your goals?

Remember: even the tiniest effort counts.

How about you? How do you balance your creative pursuits with the rest of life?

#AuthorLife #Creativity #DreamsAndGoals #Resilience #Determination

Make Time for Boredom: Creativity in the Idle Moments

In your busy day, do you make time for boredom?

I remember days that stretched on forever as a child, where I felt I ran out of things to do and lay on the floor staring at the ceiling, tracing patterns in the paintwork with my eyes and feeling like time would never end.

Those days, I daydreamed about so much, and I played make-believe with so many ideas my current writer self would envy.

I wondered how I had so much creativity back then, and it was only in reading advice to embrace boredom—to even create time for boredom—that I realised perhaps this was it.

One evening, instead of meditating (my mind was too chattery), I lay on my floor like a star and stared up at my ceiling.

I traced the cracks in the paintwork with my eyes, and looked at the different patches of white.

I let my mind wander as I stared, and I let the emptiness of the moment take over.

Embracing boredom.

If anyone ever told me lying on my floor and staring at the ceiling would be of benefit to me, I’d have raised a brow and stared at them as if they were odd.

But really, it was brilliant.

My mind chattered itself out.

Ideas returned.

My inner dialogue mulled over many things, including ideas for books, blogs, work I could be doing for my coaching.

People I wanted to speak with. Interviews I wanted to hold.

It reminds me of the advice Neil Gaiman shared in an interview with Tim Ferriss, about how his routine was to sit at his desk. He’d either stare at the wall, or he’d write.

“You don’t have to write. You have permission to not write, but you don’t have permission to do anything else.”—Neil Gaiman

He said at some point it got boring staring at the wall and so he’d end up writing.

“You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we’re doing it.”—Neil Gaiman

But do you give yourself that time to daydream, to be bored, to let ideas flow?

This is your sign. Your permission slip.

It’s not wasting time to embrace boredom.

To stare at the ceiling or the wall. Or lie on the grass and stare at the sky as the clouds scud past?

You don’t need to have a grand plan to create ideas and enhance your writing.

You just need to give yourself permission to be bored, and let your mind chatter away to itself.

And if an idea hits, let it keep running away with itself.

Perhaps keep a pen and paper beside you, just in case!