Easier said than done

Even though I made my decision to start splitting my time between freelancing and fiction writing a couple of weeks ago, I'm struggling with the realization that nothing has changed yet.  I'm still doing a lot of freelance work, and I'm still struggling with motivation.  About the only thing that has changed is that I've started doing some research, which basically consists of reading a few chapters here and there of a nonfiction book on the time period I'll be writing about.

What I'm struggling with is giving myself "permission" to take my time with my transition.  I should have known that I wouldn't be able to switch to part-time novel writing overnight, yet somehow that's what I had pictured.  (And of course, in my fantasy, it fixed my motivation problems right away, too.)  I still have some deadlines to meet, and therefore, some work to get out of the way before I start working on fiction in earnest.

The tough thing to get my head around is that, since I will still be freelancing part-time, the presence of client deadlines won't change — I'm going to have to get used to setting aside time to work on fiction, despite the deadlines.  I feel like it is going to take some time to transition to a half-and-half schedule, and to learn how to juggle both freelancing and fiction at the same time, and that frustrates me a little.

Obviously, the first step needs to be to meet all the current deadlines; from there, I need to make sure I consider my workload every time I accept a freelance assignment.  Staying on top of my freelance deadlines will also be important, in order to preserve the balance in my workload.

What I'm realizing is that it's going to be a tougher road than snapping my fingers and saying, "I'm going to write fiction now!"  I'll keep you posted on my progress, and hopefully pretty soon here you'll see some updates on my sidebar.