Yes…my name is something starting with “I” and it has been 21 days since my last blog post.

I am a bad monkey.

It’s not so much that I haven’t had anything to post about, in fact, Co-Consul, 7yo, 6yo, 3yo & I just spent 10 days in Asia partying like it’s 1989, but rather while myself and my family are overseas I tend not to like to post about it. I’m not sure if I’m so much a private person or whether it’s more the relentless fear my parents drummed into me regarding being broken into & robbed which prevents me from blogging about or while on holidays, but either way, I put a ban on it. The utterly shite WiFi in some of the hotels we stayed in* was also a minor factor.

But here I am! Back to the land of Oz, rather a lot colder than I was in Singapore, Malaysia or Thailand, but all the better for having travelled.

Before we left I was feeling tired, stressed, overwhelmed and I wasn’t writing very much at all because I felt so tired, stressed and overwhelmed. Yes, yes – I know I should just keep going, but it’s very hard to do that when there is approximately 1 hour per week in which you can just keep going. My life seemed to have scheduled writing out of it and not being able to find time to write was part of what had me so stressed.

While we were away it was even more difficult with the kids sleeping in the same room as us, the timezone changes throwing us all out juuuuust enough to be annoying and there being SO MUCH to do during the days that the nights consisted of putting the kids to bed, then sleeping. But I got to thinking: I need to write, I WANT to write, I LOVE to write, so why don’t I just write? Why don’t I actively schedule in some writing time and just ignore everything else for those periods?

So here’s the plan:

• Monday: Write on the bus + Monday Night Games (optional blogging when MNG goes tits-up…you know like tonight)
• Tuesday: Write/Edit from 8 – 10
• Wednesday: 5am Writers Club (yes – ouch. But it’s SOOOOO good)
• Thursday: 5am Writers Club + 30 min blog window which could be filled with Writing/Editing
• Friday: Party night. No writing unless Co-Consul is out, then it’s WriteClub!!
• Saturday: 30 min blog window which could be filled with Writing/Editing
• Sunday: 5am Writers Club + Write/Edit 8 – 10

So let’s see how this goes, but if I can actually DO this, it should give me around 8-9 hours writing time per week. Which is around 7-8 hours more than I’m getting at the moment and means I should have Bifrost’s second draft finished by the time I can draw a pension. HUZZAH!

Yes, I’ll write a travel blog post soon.

— IEK

*Not LEGOLand – its WiFi was solid