I have difficulty writing mid-semester. This is the time when my careful scheduling leaps dramatically off a cliff, and I spent my time frantically playing catch-up with the various things that need my attention. Student queries and assignments, teacher problems and disputes, content development, assignment marking, plus the regular requirements of the other jobs and (this year) creating the editor's accreditation exam in conjunction with other editors.

It's not that I can't find time - I'm writing a blog post, clearly I have time to write. It's finding the mental space in the din of my clamouring ToDo list that's the issue. Finding a moment where I can devote more than (what feels like) surface-level attention to a story.

It took me a long time to learn to write in short bursts. When I was younger, I'd willingly write off an entire day, saying I "couldn't write" that day because I had a three hour retail shift from 10 until 1. To be honest, I don't understand that at all, now, but I do remember feeling something similar - that I didn't have the time or mental space to think about a story.

I'm somewhat used to it, now. I know that this time rolls around, and I have about six weeks just bailing with the bucket until things die down a little and I can get back to my oars. Doesn't make it any less frustrating - I have stories piling up in the backroom of my head, muttering in discontent at the holdup down the front, here - but it seems to be just a fact of the way I make my living at the moment. And it's something that I know I have to keep in mind when I'm deciding how I'll make my living in the future.

It's not just about time to write, it's about time and space to think, to play, to spread your story out across your mind and poke it with a stick. Without this, the fractions of story scribbled down in moments remain that - just fragments.