I had great plans to have my baseball novel done and published in time for the start of baseball season, or at least at the end of the first month of the season. Alas, I’m not going to make it. In fact, at this point I’d say I’ll be lucky to have it done by the first of August. So many interruptions, so many demands on my time. I have a new appreciation for young moms and dads who try to write when they have young children at home. I don’t know how they do it.

Here are the things that have prevented me from doing much writing on my novel this year. Some of these are writing or writing related.

• Reading with my wife. She has wanted us to read aloud together in the evenings. So on about five evenings a week, sometimes more, we’ve been reading aloud from the Harry Potter series. Now, I know, I know, I need to spend time with her. But being gone for work for 11 1/2 hours, including commuting, fighting traffic, coming home and having to pull something together for supper, I’m not really in a mood to take an hour out of the few evening hours for reading aloud. [/rant]
• Income taxes take a lot of time. Between our stock trading business, my writing business, and my mother-in-law’s taxes, it seems like weeks of my evening time between Jan 31 and April 15 are consumed by these d—— governments of ours. Even now, on tax deadline day, I get to the office with the m-i-l’s forms having been e-mailed here for printing, and I find one of the forms is blank. I also forgot to bring with me the copies of income statements I’m supposed to attach. So what do I do: drive 15 miles home and get the things I need, or file a quick extension? Either way I’ll have to go my my m-i-l’s place and have her sign something, then take it by the P.O. Last weekend lost tax documents that came in the mail couldn’t be found, so I had to generate the information from bank statements, taking hours for what should have taken 2 minutes. But, going home may be in the cards, because…
• The wife is sick, and we have our 3-year-old grandson staying with us. Yesterday I received an urgent call shortly after 1:00 p.m. She felt really bad, and could I come home and help watch Ezra. So I did, getting home around 2. Had I realized I hadn’t filled out that one tax form properly, or that I had never stuck those other documents in my portfolio to take to work, I could have used the time for that, but I didn’t realize it. And, just now, the urgent call has come in for today. It looks as if I have to leave work again. She was interrupted by another call, so I need to wait until she calls back to know for sure if I have to head home.
• Various publishing tasks have taken my time, mainly learning how to make my own book covers because hiring it done is too expensive, given how few sales I have, and one can only beg and borrow so many from people before you demean yourself. That includes a talented family member who could easily do them, but seems uninterested in my writing career. At least that’s writing related. Last night, in the few minutes I had to myself, I made another tweak to the cover for The Gutter Chronicles and uploaded it. Hopefully this time it will pass muster and the book will be added to the Smashwords premium catalog.
• Tomorrow I conduct a live webinar for the International Erosion Control Association. I’ll have an audience paying to hear what I have to say about erosion control. That is taking a lot of my time, and gives me no flexibility during the working hours. If I go home today, I’ll have to work on it from there, getting my last presentations done.

I could say a few more things, but it will come off as worse of a rant than it is. Maybe the second half of April will be better than January, February, March, and the first half of April. And, while this rant mentions family members, since none of them ever read my blog, I’m going to let it publish as is.