Leanne Margaret

Today's post comes to you from an hour hauled from my overstuffed schedule. This year, I've tried to do it all: continue reweaving the tenth draft of my memoir, create writing class content, teach two writing classes at Coonara Community House , and teach a Majickal Bellydance class at Dashanti Yoga . And I have managed it all, except – if you're a writer you've probably guessed – the memoir almost slipped from the edges of my rapidly spinning world. But I grabbed it in time, by setting a deadline. Then I realised that if I wanted to meet the deadline I'd set with a writing mentor, something had to be compromised.  This means I'll be taking a little sabbatical from teaching Majickal Bellydance . I'll be back – I always come back. I've returned from several 'retirements.' So with that knowledge, the door isn't locked, just closed for a little while.  If you're a writer, you will know that writing a book takes enormous mental focus – free ...

There's nothing like a shiny new project to fire me up, and you're looking at the header design for my new newsletter. Every day I brace myself, ready to trawl through my email inbox – hoping to delete as many as possible, knowing that each one has the potential to leech away my writing time. Is it an introvert thing that I find it so difficult? I want to spend my days escaping into books, poems and manuscripts. Didn't I escape the admin when I fled my last office job? Nope, admin is everywhere. So the last thing I want to do is fill up people's inboxes with: more things to tick off, more things to read, more things to do, more things to manage, more. And yet I have. The first edition went out in summer. I'm entertaining the idea that perhaps not everyone is as overwhelmed with their to-do lists as I am. And another idea I'm willing to consider, is that people have just as much work to do as I do – in all likelihood much, much more – but they're just not let...