The past few months have been my first experience with trying to write fiction during a full-blown holiday season and while juggling a couple of really big projects at work. The result? The only thing fictional was my progress writing fiction. Not that I have cause to complain. I had a great holiday and I love spending time with my wife and daughter. I like my day job a lot, to the point that only Dan Brown-esque success would prompt me to think of leaving. I have friends and hobbies and home ownership stuff and, well, I’m good with all of it.
Maybe it’s a discipline issue that I have to bull through, or maybe I really have been that busy over the past couple months. I actually think it’s the latter, because I’ve proven that I have the discipline to write a novel; that would be the one in my agent’s capable hands. And it’s not an idea issue, because the sequel to Spacebuckler is all plotted and swimming in awesomeness and involves Napoleon Bonaparte and aliens and a future space voyage to Saturn and its moons. There’s also my NaNo project, which is somewhat back to the drawing board after my first attempt after the voice just wasn’t hitting the mark for me. And there’s always going to be a couple of ideas in the what-if pile. A communist A.I. in a future dystopia? You betcha. A cold-war thriller with goetic summonings? Sweet.
Clearly, I need to plant my butt in a chair and write fiction. More importantly, I need to find the time to do this. So…how do you all, gentle readers, find your time? Are you disciplined once-a-day writers? Do you wait for inspiration to hit and closet yourself off for a week? Do you write in spurts or like clockwork? Can you write meaningfully in 30 minute chunks when you have those moments, or does it have to be at least an hour or more? Throw me some ideas in the comments section or on Twitter.
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Michael J. Martinez 
Well, right now I work at a Country Club and in South Jersey the winter makes for a shortened work week. The days that the club is closed, I force myself to complete a chapter. Usually leads to about one completed, proofread chapter a week. When I am working a more demanding schedule, I just write when I can. A lot of my notes and future chapter story boards are sometimes written on napkins, scraps of paper and receipts, or saved to my phone. I hope that helps! Good luck!
Don’t sleep, and lots of music.
I’m somewhat in the same boat as you, at the moment. Not so much with the holidays, I came out of them stomping the guts out of 2k words per day. Then I got sidelined with my other passion which involved being out of town for four days, and suddenly I’m behind in everything and can’t seem to get caught up. Outside of tieing myself to a chair and getting my rythm back, I don’t know what the answer is. Now, the time I used for writing, I’m line editing in hopes of querying agents shortly. At least I’m being productive in the right vein.