The Creator's Juggle

Oftentimes, being a creative person entails being a juggler. This is true for me in two ways. Firstly, I have to manage my creative endeavours alongside the rest of my life (work, exercise, social life, family time, etc.). Additionally, I have to navigate between the plethora of my creative outlets and passions.

Here are just a few of the things I like to do in my spare time that I feel fall into the category of creative pursuits:

• Writing

  • Planning

  • Writing itself

  • Editing/revising

  • Generating and submitting queries

  • Researching alternative publishing methods

  • Maintaining this blog

• Visual/Tactile Art

  • Painting

  • Digital art

  • Sculpting

  • Knitting

• Other Hobbies

  • Reading

  • Colouring

  • Researching

  • Gaming (mainly the collecting and customization ones)

I'd like to think that I have strong time management skills, and I do, but just as often, I "manage" my activities by bouncing between them via my completely disorganized "hyperfiction rotation" method.

This nifty process involves being overly focused on one of the above activities for a span of time (anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of months) and then abandoning it for varying periods of time while I pick up something else. I'm currently fixated on playing the Sims as I await the new Life and Death expansion. I was fixated nicely on writing Book 2 for a while, but started to feel a little burnt out. Coupled with the discouragement of two rejections since starting this round of querying, I've written little over the past week. I'm hoping to turn this around soon.

How do you manage life? Is there a secret that will completely change my way of existing? Do let me know if there is. Gatekeeping such a treasure would be truly diabolical.