So after drawing inspiration from the commenters on my last post (thanks!), I managed to get my act together and was quite productive for a week, both in writing and in the day job.  I even spent some quality time with my boy, who had a four day weekend, and with myself: I  read the entire Hunger Games trilogy, because my husband was out of town and I could get away with pizza for dinner three days in a row.   

This past week, however, was another story.  I had every intention of getting writing done, but life got in the way, as it so often does.  My clients--I admit it, I am a lawyer by day--were making things challenging for themselves, and by extension, me.  My son played a lot of hockey. The dog had to go to the vet for the fourth time for the ear infection that just won’t die.  I played entirely too many games on Facebook, and I ventured onto Twitter. 

The most notable life event occurred on Tuesday.  I got in my car at 7:30 a.m. and it wouldn’t start.  Idly wondering which friend I could convince to take my son to school, I kept trying until it finally turned over.  Unfortunately, a whole bunch of lights then lit up the dashboard.  I ignored them until after I dropped off the kid, and then limped over to the car dealer.  Ninety minutes later, the service rep came over to me and gleefully reported that a rat had taken up residence on the engine.  She seemed to take a rather perverse delight in recounting, for everyone in the waiting room, the amount and type of rodent excrement that the mechanic found under the hood.  She even took pictures with her phone, just in case I didn’t believe her.

In the end, thankfully, my fears of thousands of dollars’ worth of unwarrantied repairs came to naught.  Either the rat didn’t particularly like Japanese automotive cuisine, or he just hadn’t been in there long enough to start dining.   I left the dealership only $25 poorer and with instructions to sprinkle crushed red pepper around the edges of the engine compartment.  Rats, apparently, hate pepper.

What, you may ask, does this eww-inspiring tale have to do with writing?  Nothing, really.  But it did make me realize that life--in all of its strange and wonderful variations--will always get in the way of writing if I let it.  There will always be crazy clients, kids, dogs, meals to make, and car trouble.   The goal, then, is to carve out writing time from all the other stuff, even if it’s just twenty minutes squeezed in during hockey practice.  I’m not quite there yet, but I’m getting better about it. 

I’d be interested to hear your strategies for ignoring life’s rich pageant and getting to work.  Disgusting rat stories are also welcome.