My husband and I have slowly replaced all of our loudly ticking wall clocks with silent ones. The announcement of quickly passing seconds was freaking me out.

We all have too much to do, between family life, working and chores, not to mention trying to find time to read, draft, edit, revise and submit. Instead of “trying to find time” and considering my art a luxury, I’ve moved it to the top of the list and I make time for it, just as I do for grading student papers and reading books to my son.

In the memoir writing workshop I teach at Politics & Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C., I ask the beginning writers to make a clear plan for their projects. Try to answer these questions yourself:

How much time do you have a day, week and month?

When is your energy the clearest and strongest?

When can you (realistically) write?

What do you want to accomplish in each segment of time that you have?

As you answer these questions, be reasonable. Maybe it will take 15 years to finish a manuscript. Or maybe you can sneak away to a residency for a month and finish it quickly. It is important to set reasonable deadlines that you can meet.

I tend to get overly excited about my time and imagine I can finish eighteen times what is possible. And then I end up sad and frustrated. We need to be kind to ourselves and reasonable about goals.

I can’t do as much writing as I did pre-motherhood, and I don’t want to. I don’t want to be away for weeks at a residency. I want to be home and be a part of his bedtime routine. And that closeness, attention to life and him in particular drives my writing.

I have two online writing groups that share weekly work. With that deadline and goal, I try to finish a poem a week. I usually make it. And when I don’t, I promise to try again the next week. On particularly busy days, sometimes it is only a line of poetry repeating itself in my head as I pull the eye mask over my face to sleep.

And that’s ok, too.