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10 Tips for Writing Through The Holidays
As you prepare for the holidays (and recover from NaNoWriMo), here are a few tips to keep your writing alive during the shopping, baking, and celebrating of the holidays.
1. Simplify. You can still have a meaningful season without killing yourself. Delegate, ask for help, or pare down your plans to prevent stress and overload.
2. Make a budget and stick to it. When you’ve met your list, stop shopping. Also, write first, shop second.
3. Schedule your writing time first, and your holiday obligations around those times.
4. Practice quality self-care during the season. Do things that help you relax, and stay centered.
5. Separate what you expect of yourself from what others expect of you. Decide what is important, and do that. Disregard the others with a friendly apology and, if needed, explain that there just wasn’t enough time.
6. Consider staying home for the holidays instead of traveling. If you do travel, leave plenty of open space in your itinerary for some writing time and quality down time.
7. Use time to write that you would normally not expect to use (lunch hours, getting up early, staying up an hour late, commuter rides, waiting for meetings to start, waiting for supper to cook).
8. Don’t feel obligated to accept every invitation or attend every function. Pick the ones you most enjoy and decline the rest with thanks.
9. Pare down your Christmas card mailing list. If you are one that writes a letter with each card, consider confining yourself to the space within the card this year.
10. Shop on line or have gifts mailed directly to the recipients instead of standing in line or braving the malls.
Above all, remember that quality time spent with family is never wasted, and working your writing time into the mix is doable.
The Sarcastic Muse 
I really like this. I never would have thought of some of these — and others like working through lunch/commuting are brilliant.
The other one I’d add is — if you can’t write, put your MS on your phone or other device you carry around, so you can review or re-read what you’ve got already.
Though I don’t have the whole thing on my phone, I do have a word program on there, so I can write and then upload to the computer. It’s brilliant and an awesome tip. Thanks!