So my daughter will turn 1 on May 9th. It’s been since January 2016 that I was able to focus on my writing. (After that I focused more on the fact that we were having a kid in a few months and then the kid was here and the first 6 months I didn’t sleep and the almost 6 months after that has been devoted to catching up from the first 6 months.) Being a mom is off the chain. I love it. But there are aspects that are difficult. I’d love to list them all for you now, but instead, I’ll tell you the success I’ve had with my writing this past week.

Since somewhere around October I’ve made a goal of writing 500 words per day. For the first month, I did pretty well. But then the piece I was working on wasn’t working for me or what I want to write and it fell apart. I’ve written here or there, but I wasn’t making that 500 words per day goal. A couple issues contributed my failure. And a couple things have contributed its correction.

One of these solutions is that for my 30th birthday my husband and family pitched in to get me a laptop of my own. It’s the coolest and all my writing has somewhere to land. Game changer.

Another factor is I’ve started using Scrivener. And now I’m one of the hordes of writers who is like, “Holy mother of God, this thing is legit.” I’m going to try and not become some sort of advertisement but I do suggest doing their 30-day free trial. Watch a YouTube video on how to use it. I’ll share the link to one that I watched. If you don’t like it, then keep using the word processor you’ve been using and no harm no foul.

A big reason for my recent success is the ability to time manage better. This is possible because my daughter is more independent now. I’ve made adjustments with breastfeeding, which has been a difficult experience for me. And I’ve set personal rules on my own nonwriting related screen time. There is a lot of research showing the addictiveness of screens. It’s creepy stuff. If you are wasting hours of your life staring at a game or social media, then you might benefit from self-regulating as well. If you’d like to know how I’m managing this, let me know I’ll write a post about it.

The moral of the story is I have been averaging 700 words per day. I’m also excited with how my writing is shaping into something I’ll be proud of some day. I hope your writing progress has been in upward motion. Good luck and write on!