I had a rhythm for writing in the first six months of 2013. My day had a nice natural, even divide of before and after lunch. I had time to write and read and generally fuck around if I felt like it.

Then summer, with trips away and people visiting happened.

Then September and kindergarten happened.

I do not know the genius who thought that having kindergarten in New Brunswick end at quarter to two in the afternoon was a good idea. If it ended at lunch, then I could find afternoon activities for Tesfa. If it ended at four, like Montessori, then day over. But Tesfa gets home by quarter after two and by the time I calm her down (walking home from the bus stop this year has caused no end of tears regarding the speed of my walking – too fast, too slow, why won’t I stand with my sneakers in a puddle with her, etc.), have a snack, and wait for her to decompress, it’s still only two thirty and I have not yet obtained the ability to tell Tesfa that I am writing and she needs to leave me alone – or I guess I have but I haven’t managed to get a serious business enough voice for her to believe me.

So now I find mornings frantic – trying to write as much as I can before lunch. And my course – which is rewriting and no fun and makes me sad and sometimes all I can do is fix one paragraph all morning – everything slows down.

Most of my back-catalogue of stories have been published. So I need to write new ones to keep my name out there, but I’m fading. Too much rewriting of my course story and I don’t even want to think about writing something new because it means at some point in the future, I’ll have to rewrite whatever new I write as well.

I finally sat down yesterday and began typing up faerie story. Two hours and ten pages. I need to type faster. Let’s not even think about how the story stops partway through because I ran out of time to write anymore and nothing is resolved as to how I’m going to get from where I stopped due to time constraints to where I want to go.

Other people are much better time managers than I am. I understand that. But I have some issue with time now, like an alien abductee, where chunks of time just get lost.

So, in 2014, I will do the following:

1. get dressed, bra included, (exceptions: birthday and days I am sick) so that I feel like a real worker bee every day;
2. exercise AFTER writing (this is to help me get more morning time. Equally, Tesfa likes watching me pedal on the exercise bicycle, so that’s keeping her entertained after school, right?);
3. when my course is done, waste no more time on Come From Away story until 2015 at least (barring something amazing happening, like my mentor suddenly being completely enamored with my story and sending me her agent’s info, publishing house details, etc. This is a funny joke. I need a smiley emoticon laughing so hard it vomits);
4. finish a first draft of faerie story;
5. write at least three short stories;
6. not writing related, but I am going to ascend in Nethack this year.

In 2014, I am going to write something good.