@Veena Sankar OOOh OOh, this made me think of another bit of advice ... although it's a mouthful. There's an assessment called The Six Types of Working Genius. Where the MBTI tells you about your personality and how to interact with others, Working Genius is about the work you do when time flows, work you do that energizes you vs draining you. The results can be used at the "team" level, helping to interact with others, but it can also be used at the "personal" level (my husband and I use the language all the time) and it has helped SIGNIFICANTLY with understanding how I move through different phases of work, what I crave, what I avoid, what I do because I must and why it's draining ... there's so much more. I could give a Ted Talk on this assessment. It's WILD. I've never had an assessment impact so many areas of my life in such a meaningful way. The assessment is $25 at www.workinggenius.com. If anyone ever takes this assessment and wants me to walk them through their results and all that it means (expect this to take a minimum of an hour, but I could really keep going and going LOL) just let me know. Also ... this isn't a sales pitch. I know it sounds like it. I get nothing from this other than hoping it impacts your life as much as it has mine. You could even check out their podcast without getting the assessment. It's a slower way to understand the model but it's free.

@Veena Sankar The whole reason I even went on that Working Genius tangent is that what you describe sounds like your day job is forcing you to work in your competencies or frustrations (assessment language), which is draining. Essentially, when you start writing, your tank is completely empty. If you "warm up your jets", it's like trickling enough gas to get the motor started and get yourself to the gas station. The more you work in your genius, you're filling that tank back up and feel more energized to do the work. I'd be very curious to hear how writing works for you on days when you start with "full energy"...

I've determined that the best way for me to make time is to make it part of my "co-working / body-doubling" business model. I started sharing my screen in Discord while I write ... and even though I'm not sharing my writing, I'm usually sharing a spotify screen with the music I listen to while I write, I still produce more words just "thinking" that someone could be watching me work. I've now translated this into a Twitch channel where I stream my writing sprints so there really are people watching me. There might be something wrong with me LOL

Just what I needed to hear as I've started to increase how much I'm posting on all my socials... Thank you

@Janelle Youngstrom Aww, thank you!

@JoAnne Maluti Thank you! I've already had a few writers in my discord tell me they look forward to the co-working sessions. It's nice to know that what helps me focus can also help others.