In discussions about writing, and about being an aspiring writer, you'll see advice about protecting your writing time. This is mainly about finding a time you can devote to your writing, and trying as best you can to make it a regular thing. Because once you get in the habit of writing regularly it can become a hard habit to break. (If you do it for a long time, you get like me, where if you don't have anything to work on you get cranky and depressed.) In this sense, protecting your writing time means that you're protecting it from yourself, from your doubts, from the "I can't do this, I suck" voice in your head (get used to it, 'cause it never goes away), from the pressure of your life and your other commitments.

But in doing panels, and just hearing from people who write as a hobby or a vocation or both, I run into people who have friends or family members who will try to interrupt their writing time for reasons of their own. This is protecting your writing time from other people, and as a writer it's something you might have to watch out for.

And I'm not talking about people who have valid reasons to interrupt you (see above, other commitments).

Here's a classic example: When I was writing The Element of Fire, it was my first novel, I hadn't written a novel before, and hadn't been able to sell any short fiction. I got a lot of comments from people along the lines that everyone who thought she was a writer would obviously have a trunk full of failed novel attempts so obviously this was going to be a failed novel attempt. But the most obvious jab came from a roommate. I was in my room working on the book, and she came in to ask if I was going to some get-together with other friends. I said no, probably not, because I was working on the book and wanted to keep at it for a while. And she said, "Oh, you know you're never going to finish that."

(I can't imagine a circumstance where I'd say that to anybody about anything, but she was perfectly happy to say it to me, and not so much when I did finish the book and sell it.)

This is a situation everybody has to evaluate for themselves, but if it helps, it's not a unique situation.