Writing around your job vs Writing as your job

This is how I began my day today. No hands (not really).

I am on holiday from work and am in a state of bliss.

Because I have TIME.

Sweet, elusive TIME.

I love teaching but I want to write as my career. I want it bad.

This is why.

Day in my life normally

• Get up - run downstairs write notes on novel ideas I dreamt last night.
• Provide breakfast (or sit daydreaming and trying to wake-up while Super Husband (SH) provides it, as it's still hellishly early and I was up hellishly late writing)
• Get ready, get two small ones ready.
• Survive school run gauntlet.
• Drive to work - here all good ideas come. Characters actually speak to me, plot holes are mended, new ideas only arrive when I'm doing something else - ideally moving.
• E-mail myself in the car park with ideas from the drive.
• Teach for the day. Full on. I love it but it is FULL ON.
• Drive home. More ideas in notebook. Write them up whilst cooking (see blog post on Burnt Peas).
• Eat with family. Sometimes fully there - sometimes in a fictional world.
• Communicate with loved ones then bath and Bed for small people. When I was first drafting, Super did this nearly every night so I could tap tappity tap My Precious.
• Teaching work/House chores. As quickly as possible. Desperate to start tapping now.
• WRITE. 4/5 hours usually. No TV, ignore phone and friends in quest for my dream. Sometimes exercise on indoor bike so I can catch up with latest YA fiction and not become hugely fat.
• Bed. Reading time. Then 6 hoursish sleep.
• REPEAT for 8 months. In school holidays write in mornings for 3 hours as well.

Day in my life if I become professional (ie today as I am on holiday now)

• Get up to school run the same except not as tired.
• An hour out on my bike (see photo). Exercise and ideas time all in one. Thought up this blog post today.
• WRITE 4/5 whole hours of uninterrupted writing time. By myself in the house. Take some breaks to play guitar, put washing on line. Get loads done as my mind is sparkling fresh.
• School run, take offspring to the beach and play with them thereby becoming Proper Mummy rather than strange hunched Gollum creature.
• Cook edible un-burnt food.
• Cuddle and speak to Super H and help with bath and bed. Mummy and Wife roles fully operational.
• WRITE. 2/3 hours is enough. Or see long-suffering friends. Or - shock horror - watch TV for an hour with a glass of wine.

So.
That is why I want to do this professionally. I love it. I'm obsessed. But I want to be a mum and wife and friend too. Not a Gollum hunkering over my precious - well OK, but only when I'm first drafting.

Me at 3.20 today