When you’re a mom and a writer, it isn’t always a straight-forward path. Balance is your greatest enemy because on one hand, you have tiny people around you wanting food, stories and cuddles — and the little fact that if you turn your back on them, they will climb over the neighbor’s fence to get to the pool next door. On the other hand, you have these ideas swelling in your head and it’s starting to get painful to ignore them.
Helpful/Unhelpful Advice Writing Moms get:
“Just write when they’re taking a nap.” Okay, so this sometimes works, except for the months and years when it doesn’t.
“Get up early before the kids wake up.” Again, this can be excellent advice — until you and the toddler have been up all night having what your husband calls a ‘party’. Har har. Oh, and did I mention the party lasts for a solid year?
“Hire a babysitter.” Hold on, hold on … I was laughing so hard I had to wipe my eyes.
“Put out some toys and write while they play.” Which is fine, if you’re writing an emoji to send to your friend. However, if you’re planning on going into deep concentration mode, I don’t actually recommend it.
My point is, the path for mommy writers isn’t always clear. Each one of us has to figure out what works and what doesn’t, not based on other’s experience, but on our own gut and instinct. For me, that meant there have been long months when I buried my need to write for the good of my babies, each time fearing that I’d never be able to write again. But if you’re a writer, your ideas have a way of coming back zombie-mode, rising from the depths in hideous strength. When that happens, you can’t hide. You don’t want to hide. You just drop the dirty dishes and run for your computer as fast as you can.
And that’s okay.
As nice as it would be to have a straight path to your finished manuscript, reality always ends up throwing in a bunch of twists and turns, and then (just to keep you in suspense), it likes to pour on a bunch of mist to keep things wonderfully obscure. For me, it takes faith to write. My brain tells me I’ll never finish, and even if I do, it won’t be anything good. But my heart tells me to try.
So I sneak upstairs while my kids are playing and get fifteen minutes of work done before they realize I’m gone. Or I write on my phone in the middle of the night so that I don’t wake anyone up. I brainstorm and dream while doing laundry and I read writing blogposts while the kids eat snacks.
It’s a crazy way to be a writer, but this is the path I’m on.
Comment below to tell me how you write around the edges.
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