I usually go to bed at a decent time and sleep through the night. But there comes a point near the end of a draft of a novel when my sleep pattern changes. My sleep also changes with the seasons. I think one of the many reasons I prefer autumn and winter to spring and […]

Today, this little blog turns nine years old. In that time, I’ve been laid off from a long-term job that shut down most of a department. I freelanced with an airline in Guam and edited maintenance work cards for a major airline. I worked at a massive bank during the mortgage crisis, and have had […]

I’m still here. It’s been a busy time with work…and a busy time writing. (Also, it’s been remarkably rainy for August in Texas.) I cannot complain…especially about the rain and being busy writing. A Change in Schedule I normally wake up very early to write. I still wake up early, but I’ve not been writing […]

It’s not that I don’t take time off from work, but it’s rare that I take full weeks off. Long weekends happen somewhat frequently, but in over 5 1/2 years where I work, most weeks off have been stacked around Thanksgiving. Taking last week off [I think] was the first time I’ve taken a week […]

I try not to use The Juggling Writer to complain about things. Sure, I talk about work sometimes cutting in line before writing and other things like that, but…it is a blog about all the things in life competing for time with writing. But I’m going to complain in this entry. Hell, I might even […]

A few things going on, lately… HEAR Now Festival A story I wrote was accepted as an official listening selection for the The HEAR Now Audio Fiction and Arts Festival. A bit more about that over on the Not About Lumberjacks blog. Writing Retreat I wrote about the writing retreat that was planned for early […]

When a story breaks about someone on YouTube earning a lot of money from making videos, it’s almost inevitable: someone’s going to say, “I’m gonna start making YouTube videos and making millions…” It’s usually said in such a manner that the person saying it is offended someone who gives a large part of their lives […]

In movies, roommates leave a bevvy of items on doorknobs to tell their roommate, “Hey, I have things going on in here, and I would appreciate it if you found another place to crash tonight…” I consider myself fortunate that the one roommate I had after high school was more likely to say, “Hey, I’m […]

There’s a line in Radiohead’s song “Creep” that always settled somewhere deep within me: I don’t belong here… It’s a feeling I’ve struggled with for decades. There have been times, even among close friends, that I’ve felt like I don’t belong. I know part of it goes back to being heavily picked on when I […]

On July 6, I gave myself 80s days to finish the current draft of the latest novel-in-progress. On July 31, the company where I work went through [another] large layoff. I was spared, but another technical writer in my group wasn’t. And guess who got his job on top of all the regular writing tasks […]