I was off to a wonderful start in September. I wrote every day. Then a big project came up and I got very little written for a few days. Went back to it, then some stress from every day life made me lose focus. It's easy to say "write every day!" but it's so hard to do.
Now here are the unpopular words.
I notice that a lot of the time when someone advocates writing every single day no matter what, it tends to be men. Going off traditional roles and stereotypes (because sometimes I can't help myself!) I notice that it's mainly men who seem to find that kind of time every day. They also say it's easy to write a book in the evenings after work.
What I'd like to know from the men who say this specifically is who does your laundry? Who cleans the bathroom at your house? Who picks up after you and keeps the kids quiet while you're writing?
Yet I know many writers with families. I can think of one in particular where both people in the couple want to write. She makes time for him to write and he plays on the computer instead. He never makes time for her to write.
I've only come across two female writers in my life who have a spouse, kids, and a job. One of them take months or years to complete a novel.
We look at this like it's a long process, then feel shamed because (and half the time it's men!) will say something like they can whip out a novel in a month. One of the guys in my writing group says he goes from planning to completion in two weeks and that it shouldn't take too much longer if you plan well. Excuse me, sir, but you are single, you are retired, and you don't have any kids visiting.
The point I'm getting around to; there is a certain amount of shaming from both other writers and people who don't write at all. They all want you to whip up a novel and have it perfect, ready for viewing in a month or two and figure if you just toss out a few queries, you'll have that income so stop complaining about money already and just do it.
My experience
It may be different to other experiences. I actually still have it pretty easy. I am responsible for keeping the house in a reasonable level of lived-in-but-not-cluttered state. There are the usual laundry, dishes, and cleaning for which I am responsible. Despite having a great kid who can help clean and is quite responsible, the one place I've fallen short is allowing her and my husband to think I'm the cleanup fairy. Every day I walk around the house picking up garbage, putting dishes in the sink, wiping up little messes made, and that sort of thing.
The other major responsibility is thinking about everything that no one else wants to think about. When anything goes south (and because our household income is modest, everything that isn't planned ahead of time such as car repairs, sick pets, and leaky faucets become "south") I'm the one who researches, fixes, comes up with answers, and makes the decision. I try to involve the spouse, but he responds with "I don't know" and heads off to work.
This is actually a female epidemic. Do you wonder why most receptionists are women? Because women see the holes and are willing to fill them up. Men just say "I don't know" and hand it off. I've observed this a lot over the years. It's not just women stuck to cleaning the house. Even in the supposedly equal working world, they are the ones picking up the pieces because men don't seem interested in that little bit of extra work. Pass it off rather than follow through.
Disclaimer: I realize this isn't always true of the male/female dynamic. I'm not a man hating beast who always pigeon holes the roles, but I really have had a lot of situations to observe between receptionist roles at male dominated companies, working in more female dominated companies, and living in a subculture where stay-at-home mom is much more highly encouraged (and working moms are shamed more than typical)
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