by Rachel Toalson | Stuff Crash Test Kids say
That’s because you’re an alien
Jadon (8): “Real moms and dads don’t give their kids chores after dinner.”
Mama: “Huh. That’s weird. I guess Nonny wasn’t a real mom, because I had to do dishes after dinner all the time when I was a kid.”
Jadon: “That’s because you’re an alien. And she is too.”
Watch out for the fumes
Asa (6): “If you come over here, don’t you dare, because I just tooted.”
Thanks for the warning son, but I already walked right into it.
The fight club
The oldest was asking about going to a secret hideout he and his brothers have. Alone. We hesitated.
Jadon: “So, can we go by ourselves, Mama? We have excellent fighting moves.”
Mama: …
Please, please, please go outside
(Trying to cook dinner.)
Mama: “I’m going to send you all outside if you don’t get out of the kitchen.”
Asa: “But I’ll be sweating and I’ll be melted.”
Let something else speak for you
Mama: “So, Asa, what are you thankful for?”
Asa: “I’m thankful for my baby brother Asher. Except when he has a poopy diaper. Because then he smells like—”
(Asa’s booty): Pffffffttt
(Laughter, all around)
Hosea (5): “Asa! Your booty was talking for you!”
by Rachel Toalson | Fiction in Forty
Photo by London Scout.
It’s the last picture I have of them together. Darcy in her skeleton shoes, Lana in her heels. Taken outside my building, where they dropped me off after a lunch date.
On their way back to the car, they disappeared.
For more Fiction in Forty, visit my store, where my two latest books, Speak and Speak Again (compilations of Fiction in Forty) are available for free.
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
We live in a new day and age when it comes to publishing. We can publish at the click of a button now (well, as long as we do all the work beforehand). It’s really never been easier.
We no longer have to go through agents or editors at publishing houses or wait to hear whether our book idea has market potential, because we get to define that market in the first place.
In some ways, this is good. In others, it’s a little scary.
I recently shopped out a middle grade novel to six agents I specifically hand-picked, because I read that they were interested in a novel like mine. Four of them asked for the full manuscript. Two turned down representation because they didn’t have the right contacts for it but said they’d be surprised if I didn’t find representation.
I sent a full edited version to an agent at the beginning of June, and I’m still waiting to hear her verdict: will she represent, or will she pass?
It’s been three months since the first letter I sent. In that time I’ve almost finished two more middle grade novels (for two different series), put together two books I decided to sell on my own and started work on two additional projects.
I say all this to say that the traditional publishing world is a world that takes time. Even after gaining representation for a project (which could take years), an agent then has to sell the manuscript to an interested editor at a publishing house. This could take a year. Then an editor may or may not (most likely yes) have suggestions for revisions, which could take another year, or at least several months.
After that, once it’s on a publishing schedule, it might take another year to go to print, because there are many other factors that go into print publishing, like book art, layout, and fine editing.
While all that is happening, the author is hoping that no other publishing houses come out with a similar novel that might make sales tank.
One might think this is all the more reason just to bypass traditional publishing and focus on self-publishing. And we certainly have more freedom in self-publishing. I’ve got an adult novel I’ve written in poetry that I’ve been pitching to different agents for seven months. No one will take it, even though they call the writing “beautiful”—because it’s a novel written in poetry. It’s different. It’s not standard best-seller material. Publishing is, after all, a business. That one will be self-published (just as soon as I can find the time to get it ready).
But, still, it has always been my dream to publish something the traditional way.
Why? some might say.
Well, the answer isn’t really simple for me. I’ve always dreamed of my book on shelves. And the only way you’re going to get a book on the shelves of bookstores like Barnes & Noble or the local library is by going through a traditional publisher.
I want my book in as many hands as can get it, because I believe in the story.
I believe in the adult novel, too. But after seven months of work, I know I won’t be getting representation for it, at least not without changing it significantly (namely, taking it out of verse). So I’ll take matters into my own hands and release it on my own. And maybe that means it won’t see as many hands, but eventually the right people will discover it.
For me, this debate—to publish traditionally or to self-publish—is not really a debate at all. Mostly because I want to be a hybrid author. I want to publish some works in the traditional world and others in the self-publishing world. I want to grow my audience with authentic people who actually look forward to a new release from me, whether it’s a self-published release or a traditionally published release.
The point is that I’ll keep trying to gain representation for some and I’ll go straight to self-publishing for others. The traditional market is exactly that—traditional. It doesn’t often accept cutting-edge fiction or nonfiction, so when we’re writing work that falls into that category, it’s probably just better to save our time.
Because this is, after all, a business, and the only way we can build a writing business is by constantly writing and constantly releasing. It’s hard to constantly release when the only method of release is a system that takes years to get through.
As writers who do the work, it’s smart to diversify.
Here are some questions I ask myself before considering traditional publishing or self-publishing.
1. Do I want this story to stay as-is, or would I be okay with some revision requests (sometimes very major ones)?
This is the question I asked when I received about 20 personal rejection letter (not the form ones) for my adult novel written in verse. Many said they’d take another look at it if I decided to take it out of poetry and add another 10,000 or so words. I thought about this for a while. Months. But I had another novel on deck, so, instead, I tried sending that one out and got some great response.
When it was time to revisit the adult novel, I didn’t feel like changing it at all. So I added it to my list of self-published titles, to be published soon.
2. Is this a story that I feel could withstand the long waiting period of traditional publishing?
This is sometimes a more important question for nonfiction than it is for fiction. I considered sending out a project where I did a whole year of examining family values and wrote in a diary-like fashion. Really, what it amounts to is nearly 300 essays about the family values we examined for a year. But I don’t know if that story will be able to withstand the publication schedule, because who knows how long this “trend” of intentional parenting will last? So I’ll be releasing that one as a 13-book series, beginning in November—on my own.
Some nonfiction will withstand the publication schedule because the projects are a little ahead of their time. This question helps sort out the waiting time for me.
3. Could I gain enough support through my own store than through a publisher’s store?
Some stories (like series) are much easier to sell as self-published authors. With series, there’s a natural lead-in to the other stories. But sometimes I don’t want to write series. Sometimes I just want to write a stand-alone novel (the middle grade one out with agents right now is a stand-alone).
Self-published authors have a much harder time selling their stand-alone novels, because they don’t exist in what’s called a funnel (a natural funnel to more sales). We can create funnels for them, but I didn’t want to do that with this one. Because of that, I most likely wouldn’t be able generate great sales as a self-published author.
So I continue to wait.
For writers, this debate can get pretty complicated. Some say self-publishing is the only way. Some say traditional publishing is the only way. But I don’t think it has to be one or the other. There are definite advantage to both processes (I’ll share those in next week’s post).
It’s worth it to ask ourselves which would be better, not for all our projects, but for one project at a time.
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
I used to be a perfect parent.
Well, actually, who am I kidding? I still am. Between the hours of 9:30 p.m. and 4:30 a.m.
Unless, of course, one of the kids wakes me up.
The rest of the time, (which is anytime my kids and I are awake at the same time, in case you didn’t catch that) I’m a less-than-stellar parent. I hate to admit this, because I really wanted to join the Perfect Parents (P.P. from here on out) club, and I know there will probably be a whole lot of P.P.s out there lamenting the fact that I have six boys who should probably only be trusted to P.P.s.
Well. I remember being one of those. I remember Husband and I would go out to eat before we had kids, and we would see a kid throwing a tantrum, right in the middle of the restaurant floor, and we would look at each, our eyes screaming it if our mouths couldn’t. Never, ever, they said. Not in a million years would we let a kid lose his mind like that.
I would meet a stay-at-home mom in her home to interview her for a news story I was working on, and her kid would be climbing all over the back of the couches and her head and the table while his mother was otherwise occupied, and I would leave thinking, My kid will never be that kid.
I would hear an 8-year-old talk back to his mother, and I would shake my head. Absolutely not.
I wish I could laugh in that clueless woman’s face.
So I had kids. I had a toddler who didn’t want to leave the park, so he took off running hyper-speed, screaming bloody murder, so people who didn’t know I was his mother probably thought I was kidnapping him against his will. I had the boy who thought it would be fun to jump off the upright piano onto the couch and nailed the landing so impressively I was too shocked to even correct him. I had a spirited 8-year-old.
The thing about P.P.s is they either have a really short memory or they don’t have kids at all—in which case they should stop talking about parenting.
None of us is a P.P. Sometimes we get really lucky with a kid who has an easy-going temperament (I’ve got two out of the six). The rest of them trade off being devils on an hour-by-hour basis.
It’s not because we’re bad parents. We’re about as perfect as we’re probably ever going to be. And that’s okay. It’s perfectly fine, in fact.
I’ve worked hard on my parenting over the years. I’ve read books. I’ve intentionally used the knowledge I’ve learned from them. I’ve worked every day to improve my connection with my kids.
But I’m still far from a P.P.
If perfect parenting means I have the privilege of getting on a forum and pontificating on the virtues of P.P.s who raise perfect children, then I’m not interested.
Perfect Parent: Oh, come on. You know you want to be in our club.
Me: Thanks for asking, P.P. It’s just that I’m washing my hair. Yes, every night this week. For all the evening hours. What’s that? No, it’s just that I have dirty hair, because my kids like to play with it. And, well, do you know how many nasty things live on kids’ hands?
Perfect Parent: But don’t you want a kid like mine? My kid NEVER did THAT.
Me: Oh, I know what’s going on, P.P. Your kid was so bad your memory blocked out the trauma of whole years. Well, I don’t blame you. I don’t remember the first year of having infant twins, it was so hellish.
Here’s the thing. Memories are often faulty. Looking back, we don’t usually remember the hardest parts of parenting, the everyday stuff like tantrums over the blue plate instead of the orange one or the way he totally went all dramatic-crying on us when he stepped on a LEGO we’ve stepped on a million times and we had to stop the demonic laugh (ours) and the words it carried “YOU SEE? YOU SEE HOW IT FEELS?” We just remember the good stuff, the way he was such a good sleeper, the way he could stay buried in a book for hours at a time but couldn’t keep his attention on a math worksheet for two minutes. We remember those moments just before sleep, when he’d sneak back into our room (even though he was told not to) and give us “just one more kiss and hug.”
We remember life much better than it actually was. This is a good thing. When I look back over my journals recording my first year with twins, they are filled with desperate cries for help. But what I actually remember from that time is a sweet little baby sleeping on my chest while I tried to quick-clean the living room because the dust on the shelves was an inch thick. What I remember is watching them sit in their Bumbo seats and the way they’d laugh because it was just like looking in a mirror. What I remember most is the way they would smile when any of their brothers came into view.
Perfect Parent: My memory’s rock-solid, because, well, I’m perfect. My kid always did whatever he was told.
Me: Hey, I didn’t know it was opposite day! Well, in that case, my memory’s rock-solid, too, AND my kid always does whatever he’s told.
Also, on the off-chance that you’re not speaking in opposite-day language, that’s a lot of absolutes, P.P. I don’t like to speak in absolutes, personally. I do make an exception for this one, though: There is absolutely, positively no kid who does everything he’s told every single second. Absolutely. Positively. No way.
The easy kid who today will clean up all the Pattern Play blocks he got out at Quiet Time is the same kid who tomorrow will spend the whole of Quiet Time planning how he’s going to run away because he doesn’t want to clean up the LEGOs he dumped all over the floor. The kid who says this hour you’re the best mom in the whole wide world because you let him color in his coloring book is the same kid who, two hours later, will call you the worst parent in the whole wide world because you said it wasn’t time to turn flips off the couch while you’re reading stories together. The kid who wants to do a puzzle with you right now is the same kid who, come bedtime, won’t even want to kiss and hug you because he doesn’t want to be anywhere near you.
Parenting is full of paradoxes like these.
Perfect Parent: I guess we’re just meant to disagree. But you really should (fill in the blank).
Me: Nope.
Not interested, P.P. Not interested in what perfect parents say I should do. Not interested in who they think I should be instead. Just.not.interested.
Here’s the thing, P.P. There is no such thing as a perfect kid. There is no such thing as a perfect parent, either.
The sooner we can wrap our heads around that, the better.
We’re all just doing the best we can, m’kay, sweet pea? I make mistakes. I do better. I love.
And today I made it through all the hours without thinking about putting them on Craigslist.
At the end of the day, that’s really all anyone can ask.
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
We’ve been trying. We really have.
Fold your hands in your lap until everyone has been served and we’re done praying. Eat slowly and chew every bite. Don’t inhale food or you’ll choke. No, you can’t have fourths when someone else is still on firsts and they might want more. No, you may not stick your hand in the pot of mashed potatoes and serve yourself with your dirt-crusted fingers. Use your napkin.
Use your napkin!
USE YOUR NAPKIN!
Teaching kids table manners, especially when they’re hungry kids, is my biggest challenge this summer (well, besides bedtime. But I didn’t volunteer for that one.). Mostly because kids don’t really care about table manners.
They don’t care what they get all over their face. They don’t care that this shirt that has bean juice dripped all down the front, needs to be passed down to five additional brothers. They don’t care that they just used their pants as a napkin and now have fashionable oil-marks on their thighs. They don’t care that they’ve got a big glob of spaghetti in their hair (don’t ask.).
They just care about shoving that food in their mouths as fast as they can so they can beat their brothers to seconds.
Our boys actually aren’t that bad until pizza night.
This is the night when they help their daddy make homemade pizza and lay out the pepperoni and sprinkle the cheese. This is the night they run around the table until dinner is served because they’re just so excited. Just so excited.
They’re not excited about the pizza, per se. It’s the ranch. My boys have a weakness for ranch dressing.
Everyone, on pizza night, gets his own tiny cup of ranch.
This night, the oldest poured his own ranch, all the way up to the brim, and when it threatened to pour over the sides, he sucked it right up so it didn’t.
Problem solved.
“Son,” I said, between gags. “Please stop.”
“What?” he said. “I like ranch.”
Obviously.
The boys asked for more ranch before they’d even finished their first piece of pizza. They had it all over their faces, all over their clothes, all over their hands. It was like they’d taken a bath in ranch dressing.
All our progress, gone in one dinner. They were back to eating like animals.
Oh, well. They’ve been asking for a dog. I’ll just tell them we already have six.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
It’s been seven years since you left us.
Well, seven years since you died. You left us six months before you died.
I remember the day clearly, because we were coming up on my firstborn’s birthday, and I got the call right when we were taking him out of the bath. Mom said you’d had a bad fall, that you’d bled yourself to death while nurses and doctors watched, or didn’t watch, maybe. They gave you so much blood to make up for the losing, enough blood for a whole new body.
You died on the table. And they brought you back. Except you didn’t get a new body. You just got your old one, now ruined.
That’s what did it. That’s what beckoned your dying.
Because it wasn’t really you they brought back. It was a smaller version of you. A you who couldn’t walk, a you who couldn’t talk, a you who lay shrunken in a hospital bed with an oxygen mask over your face for the times you forgot how to breathe.
And what kind of life is that?
I remember the first time I saw you after that fall. I took the day off, drove all the way to Houston, all the way to a hospital I never wanted to visit, and then I walked in, holding the hand of my almost-1-year-old. And while he played in the waiting room where all the family members smiled over how cute and smart and aware he was, I went inside a room that smelled like death and held your hand instead. You looked at me. I looked at you. I cried. You cried. I prayed, out loud where you could hear, and you made noises, like you understood, like you agreed with the words I called down from heaven.
I leaned down close. “You’re going to make it, Memaw,” I said.
“Yes,” you said.
“You’re going to try?”
“Yes,” you said.
I swear you talked. I will swear it forever, even if the doctors say there’s no physical way you could have spoken any words, because you were frozen inside your body. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t say any words after that. It didn’t matter that it was not medically possible.
I knew the possibility of miracle. I’d heard it. And I believed it. You would get better. You would.
Except all those days passed and you didn’t get better. No one tried to figure it out, just accepted it as fact, just chalked it up to another victim of stroke and blood loss and all those things that can take a life while we aren’t looking.
We weren’t looking. Or at least I wasn’t.
Sure, we knew it could happen, because it’s what took your mother, too. But so soon? So young? So fast?
Doctors urged you to change your eating ways. Reduce your cholesterol. Eat fewer hamburgers fried up at 11 p.m. when you finished that challenging crossword puzzle and discovered you were hungry because you’d worked right through dinner. Get rid of the chocolate covered raisins you kept in the green jar beside your dining room table.
But you were always so stubborn. So resilient. So focused and determined and right.
So of course you kept your eating ways. And who can you blame you? You lived out your last days in pleasure. At least there is that.
It’s just that I wish you were here. I wish you could have seen that little boy you only got to hold once while you were well. I wish you could have seen the look on his face when his baby brother came home from the hospital and he threw the most epic tantrum in the history of tantrums because he didn’t want another baby in the house. I know what you would have done. You would have pulled him into your arms and held him until he stopped crying. I know because it’s what you did to me, all my life, even when I was too big for a lap. You would hold me with words, then.
I wish you would have been around to see number 3 and the twins and this last one. You would have been as shocked by the large family I decided to have as I am myself.
“Rachel,” you would have said. “Who would ever have thought?” And then you would have smiled at them all, and your eyes. It was always your eyes that spoke the most. They would have said, Love. Proud. Joy.
It was on the way home from a worship retreat in New Mexico when Mom called to say you’d passed peacefully. I cried the rest of those 643 miles home. Every time I looked out at the dunes and thought about how you would have loved to hear the little boy singing in the back seat. Every time I saw a fast-food chicken place and thought of Hartz, your favorite. Every time I saw the color purple.
Your funeral was two days before Valentine’s Day, a celebration of a life well lived, even in the midst of heartache and sorrow and so much disappointment. There was a failed marriage and the single life thereafter, and there was a lifelong career crunching numbers at the local school district. There were coworkers who cried and family who cried, and you couldn’t really tell who was who, because they were all family to you. They all knew you the same. They all called you stubborn and immovable but also kind and generous.
A cousin shared about how much she would miss you. We listened to your favorite hymn. Your grandson-in-law read a poem I’d written about your purple slippers and candy jars and books of crossword puzzles stacked in the corner of a dining room. And then we all gathered to eat casseroles and fried chicken and mashed potatoes covered in southern gravy.
You would have loved it, I think.
They say years heal wounds. But it’s not so much that they heal those wounds as they make them easier to bear. Because now, even after seven years, there is still a giant hole where you used to be. I know because last year, as we crept up to what would have been your 80th birthday, right at the tail end of summer, I found my throat tightening. Still. After all these years. Thinking about how we’d thrown that 80th birthday party for your mother and it was like a giant family reunion with everyone showing up we hadn’t seen in years and years and years, even though Nana was confined to a wheelchair and lobbed a lopsided smile at everyone and hardly knew who was who.
I know because this year we’ve been creeping up on your 81st, and I’ve found myself missing you when I look at my oldest and wish I could tell you what he says he wants to be when he grows up and about the handwritten books he leaves lying around everywhere and the way he talks about his future, so we could laugh about how he’s just like me. Missing you when I look at the second boy and think about how you might have exclaimed over those brilliant blue eyes that haven’t been seen in our family for a while. Missing you when I look at the third one and see your eyes and smile and the stubborn will you passed along without even knowing it.
Missing you when I think about how we used to talk.
But what I miss most are all the little things. The way you’d argue that Vince Gill was the greatest country singer in the world, but Garth Brooks was a fake, and how I hardly knew what you were talking about because I didn’t listen to country music. How you’d beat an argument to death because you knew what you thought, and no one was going to change your mind. The way you’d laugh until the sound just disappeared and then you would shake the laughter out of your eyes and we all worried you’d pass out.
I miss those nights playing Trivial Pursuit around a raucous table that me and my brother and sister and cousins weren’t invited to, as persistently as we asked, how you’d argue over those answers, because everyone wanted to win, how we’d laugh just to watch.
The sound of the news you’d watch every evening at 6, without fail, and the way you’d curse the remote when you accidentally switched the channel and couldn’t figure out how to get it back.
I miss your wrinkled hand in mine. I miss those brown eyes so full of laughter and love and the smile that could set the whole world right again. I miss your notes, written on yellow paper in all caps, because that’s how you liked it. I miss your e-mails. I miss talking. I miss just sitting, you pulling out the local newspaper, me pulling out the latest Victoria Holt novel I’d found at the library.
I miss who you were to me. I miss who I was to you.
My memories with you are filled with bright yellow, and some of them are piercing blue, and others are foggy gray, but in and out and through the years there is something that was woven undoubtedly into all the days and hours and minutes.
Love.
You loved like it was all that mattered in life. You taught us how to love like that, too.
Thank you.
I wish you could have seen this.
I wish I could have asked you what you might have done.
I wish you could have read this thing I wrote.
I wish you could have met him. Known him. Loved him.
I wish my boys could know you. I wish they could learn from you. I wish they could be held by you as I was held by you.
But you live on.
Every now and then, when my boys are looking through the photo albums that line the top of our bookshelves, they’ll see a picture of you (not enough of them, of course. But who ever knows the day you won’t be around to fill albums?). “Tell me about Memaw,” they’ll say, and the first thing I say, every time, is, “You would have loved her.”
Because most people did.
And then they’ll settle in, snuggling closer, because they know a story’s coming. And they know it’s a good one.
You live on in these stories.
I miss you. Happy birthday. We’ll have a hell of a celebration when I see you again.
by Rachel Toalson | On My Shelf
On my shelf this week:
Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving and Finding the Church, by Rachel Held Evans
Peaceful Parents, Happy Siblings: How to Stop Fighting and Raise Friends for Life, by Dr. Laura Markham
Go Set a Watchman, by Harper Lee
This week I’ve got all brand new books on my shelf: the newest from Evans (which is VERY good), the latest parenting book from Markham (which is also VERY good) and the controversial novel from Lee (controversial because some say it shouldn’t have been published, others say it was okay).
Best quotes so far:
“We all long for someone to tell us who we are. The great struggle of the Christian life is to take God’s name for us, to believe we are beloved and to believe that is enough.”
Rachel Held Evans
“We millennials have been advertised to our entire lives, so we can smell b.s. from a mile away. The church is the last place we want to be sold another product, the last place we want to be entertained.”
Rachel Held Evans
“When parents have a better relationship with their children, those children have happier relationships with each other. When parents have more negative and punitive relationships with each child, the children behave more aggressively and selfishly with each other.
Dr. Laura Markham
“Children learn what they live.”
Dr. Laura Markham
“The way you discipline your child becomes her model for working out inter-personal problems.”
Dr. Laura Markham
“Children need love the most when they deserve it the least.”
Dr. Laura Markham
“A man can condemn his enemies, but it’s wiser to know them.”
Harper Lee
“Don’t you study about other folks’s business till you take care of your own.”
Harper Lee
Read any of these? Tell us what you thought.
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life, This Writer Life Featured
I’ve had some trouble getting a handle on my schedule lately.
Part of it is because my boys are al home for the summer, so the time I normally have to work while they’re in school is virtually nonexistent. I still have large chunks of writing time, because my husband and I trade off kid-watching shifts so both of us can do our creative work, but I haven’t been maximizing the time in the most efficient way.
I write a crazy amount of content for all my blogs every week. Most of the blogging takes a total of three days (or workable hours for those days—which is about four hours a day). That’s a huge amount of time.
But I’ve been breaking up those blog writings into all five days of available work time. Which didn’t seem very efficient.
When we’re parents, we’re not often given huge amounts of time to write, which means we need to do whatever it takes to maximize our time. I didn’t want to just be producing content for my weekly posts. I wanted to also be getting somewhere on a couple of the books I have in the works, and just having four hours at the end of the week was not cutting it.
So I decided to reevaluate my time.
I looked at where I was spending time and what all I was doing each week to see if I could group like things together (like a blog day and a newsletter day and a “pitching stories” day).
And then I tried an experiment.
Here’s a sample of what my schedule looked like:
12:30-1:45 p.m.: Write story roughs
1:45-2 p.m.: Post on social media (platform work)
2-2:30 p.m.: Write Messy Monday post
2:30-3 p.m.: Submit Huff Post blog
3-4 p.m.: Write/schedule This Writer Life blog
4-5 p.m.: Write/schedule Crash Test Parents blog
5-5:30 p.m.: Read.
I had the highest word count I’d ever logged in a week (nearly 25,000 words).
It was much more efficient than my old schedule.
I’m a proponent for working in whatever time you have, even the short bursts, which is what I used to do before my time opened up a little more. I believe we can train ourselves to work in those short bursts and in the margins of time we have as parents.
But when our time does open up, why wouldn’t we wan to reevaluate and see if we could streamline our time so it’s most efficient for the season we’re in?
Schedules are critically important to write, because if we don’t have writing time scheduled, chances are we aren’t going to get it done. So much can come in the way of our writing—kids who need something that’s not necessary right this minute, other people asking us to do things for them (especially if we work from home when a spouse is at home), phone calls or social media that could wait until later, when we’re not so pressed for time.
My old schedule also left little room for margin. So when something unexpected did happen—a boy interrupting and I’d get thrown off what I was saying in the final draft of an essay—I would run over the scheduled time for that particular writing. And because everything was lined back-to-back (to ensure the most efficient use of time), ending a task late meant I would start the next task late.
So I worked in some margin. (Generally it doesn’t take me a whole hour to write an essay. Maybe 50 minutes, which left an extra 10 minutes for the unexpected.)
When we find a schedule we like, reevaluation is not the first thing we think about doing. But it’s a practice we should work in, because every season of life changes. Our schedules need to be fluid to keep up with those ever-changing seasons.
When my boys go back to school, my time will feel a little more like mine, again, and the schedule will shift accordingly.
Here are some questions we can ask ourselves in the evaluating of our schedules:
1. Am I wasting any time?
Sometimes we don’t like to admit to this one. I know I don’t. But the truth is, sometimes a story feels really hard for now. Sometimes I need to take it back to the drawing board or let it sit. Evaluating those things help us assess where we might be pushing something that doesn’t want to be pushed just yet.
Other places we waste our time tends to be social media or the Internet. My husband likes to watch YouTube videos. The problem is, one video leads to another, and pretty soon you’ve wasted half an hour just watching videos.
The way I combat this tendency is to schedule “break” time and set a timer. The rest of the time, I focus only on work and close out all my Internet tabs.
My time is too precious to spend it clicking the next most interesting thing that comes along.
2. Is what I’m doing working?
This was the question I had to ask when I noticed how spread out my weekly blogs were. An hour here, an hour there, and I didn’t have any large chunks where I could just be writing my fiction stories. So I grouped all those blogs together, and now I have large chunks for fiction writing. I get to write my way into a state of flow and just stay there a while.
The thought behind my original disjointed schedule was that I didn’t want to become stale on those weekly blogs, so I needed to spread them out all on different days. But they’re all so different, written in different character and tone, that there wasn’t any danger that they would start sounding like each other.
It’s always important to reevaluate what’s working and what’s not. I do this at the end of every week, by comparing my word count and thinking back through the week to see where I could have been more efficient. If we want our writing to become more than just a hobby, it’s a good practice to have.
3. What could I do differently that might result in a larger word count?
I hadn’t really been paying attention to word counts until fairly recently. I usually write everything by hand, so I don’t tend to write all that fast when it comes to rough drafts.
I went back and calculated word counts for the week where my schedule was not as streamlined as it was this week, and the word count was about 7,000 words lower. That’s a pretty significant amount—enough to make me realize that I needed to do something to increase it.
Grouping like writings together had a significant impact on how many words I could turn out in a week, and that was helpful to see. I will continuously experiment to see what might result in the largest word counts (and not just word counts—but also the best kind of writing. Because large word counts doesn’t always mean good word counts.).
As parents with limited writing time, it’s necessary for us to continue streamlining our schedules and figuring out what works best for us in the season we’re in. Seasons change, and our schedules should, too.
Don’t be afraid to experiment. Don’t be afraid to streamline and change things up just because it’s worked for you all this time. You might just find that changing things up significantly increases your production.
But you’ll never know until you evaluate.
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
Some thoughts on seeing this laid out so neatly on the kitchen table:
1. What the…
2. Who in the world…
3. Why?
4. Is this the same tie…
5. Those are some really straight cutting lines.
This morning, twin B came downstairs to breakfast wearing this tie. It looked humorously out-of-place with his skin-tight pajama pants and blue-striped pajama shirt.
It all got even more humorous when he opened his mouth.
“I can’t get this off, Daddy,” he said.
“You know you’re not supposed to get into your ties,” I reminded him.
He looked at me for a minute and then turned to his daddy. “Can you get it off for me?” he said.
Husband knelt down beside him. “I can,” he said. “But you shouldn’t play with your ties.”
“Okay,” B said, like he really meant it.
Husband tried for several minutes, because he’s a very patient, persistent person, to get the tie off. He tried unclasping it. He tried slipping it over B’s head (which was about fifteen times bigger than the neck strap). He tried unclasping it again.
“Wow. It really is stuck,” he said. “Want to try?” He turned to me.
Not really. But I did, anyway. I spent fewer minutes on the task than he did, because I’d already seen him fail, and I’m not as persistent when it’s a losing battle. I tried unclasping it and then slipping it over B’s head and then unclasping it again.
“Guess we’ll have to cut it,” I said.
“I don’t want to cut it,” Husband said. “It’s a perfectly good tie. I’ll just get it back over his head.”
Husband wrestled that thing for half an hour. B’s lips were all squished and then his nose was squished and then his eyes and eyebrows were squished while the tie inched its way up. He looked pretty traumatized when it was all said and done. Husband comforted him, while I draped the tie over the banister so I’d remember to take it back upstairs when I went up to settle everyone for naps.
Of course I forgot, because who has a brain when they’re raising children?
Poor perfectly good tie. The next time we saw it, this is what it looked like. All that work and traumatizing for absolutely nothing. We had to throw it away anyway.
Yet another of the ironies of parenting.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
I met you early in life.
I was just a girl. Just a girl looking for life. Just a girl looking for perfect.
Just the right kind of girl for you.
You whispered your lies in my ear one night when a crack split right down the middle of our family.
Make him love you, you said.
Make him come back, you said.
Make him choose you, you said.
I did not know then that there is no easy answer for divorce. So I took your hand.
I skipped lunch that first day, sat out by the picnic tables with those friends who always brought their lunches so I didn’t have to smell the chicken noodle soup and cheese sticks inside the cafeteria.
I forgot mine, I’d say when they asked. The truth is, I was poor enough to qualify for free cafeteria lunches, poor enough not to have anything in the refrigerator at home to even pack. But they didn’t know that.
They’d offer to share theirs, because we were all trying to have the best body, even then, and maybe if we all ate the same thing one of us would not be skinnier than another.
No thanks, I’d say.
I was only 11, back from a year spent in a state 1,000 miles away from my home one, and now we were back, except it was all different, all broken, because it was middle school where looks mattered, and there was no dad telling me how beautiful I was.
Would I have believed him anyway?
I don’t know.
What I do know is that you made it easy to believe you. And once I did, you had me.
Our love affair began slow, with a stomach rumbling over lunch. But a stomach gets used to the hole after a while, and it didn’t take long before it just stopped talking about the better way I pretended didn’t exist.
You moved into the empty space. You gave me three years of skipped lunch, and then there was high school and early morning volleyball practice, and you threw out that innocent question: You don’t really feel like eating in the morning after those intense practices, do you? Wasting all those calories you worked off?
I started “forgetting” my breakfast at home.
There came a day, an early-morning tournament day, when a coach brought homemade monkey bread to give us an extra boost. I could smell the honey and the cinnamon, and it was all the things I loved most. She handed everyone a plate. All my teammates ate while I excused myself, left my plate on a counter and sat on the toilet until I was sure they’d all finished and I could pretend I’d forgotten where I’d set down my plate.
No one even noticed.
It was really too easy.
I had energy reserves. I told them eating right after an intense workout made me sick. I told them eating right before an intense workout—like the 12:30 p.m. athletics class—would make me sick.
I was sick. But no one knew about you.
Mostly because my mother saw me eat. My friends saw me missing. I didn’t waste away, because there was still dinner. You and I covered all the bases.
After graduation, when those stories started rolling in about the Freshman Fifteen, the extra pounds most freshmen come home with after their first year of college, my heart thrashed.
Don’t worry, you said. We won’t let that happen.
And we didn’t. Because college meant fewer eyes watching for when I should eat. It meant abnormal (or nonexistent) eating hours. It meant freedom to hold your hand and run away.
“Two hundred meals will be enough, right?” my mother said. “Two hundred fifty?”
“Two hundred will be fine,” I said.
I ended that semester with one hundred seventy-three meals left on my student ID card.
Mostly because you fascinated me. I enjoyed the me you carved from who I had been. The thin legs that had always been a little thigh-heavy. The arms that had always been a little tricep-flabby. The chin that was never as defined as I wanted it to be.
The new me was almost just a little bit maybe pretty.
So I let you keep doing your work. And when my college roommate noticed all my clothes sagging and dragged me to the cafeteria with her and the girl across the hall, I let your sister slip in for a time. We conducted our clandestine affair in the dorm bathroom, where I’d get rid of the chocolate cake and the mint chocolate chip ice cream and the pepperoni pizza and the enchilada casserole and the mashed potatoes with brown gravy and the hot rolls with a stick of a finger or the swallow of a pill, even the night that cute baseball player came looking for me and I forgot my toothbrush.
That year ended and I came home not only without the Freshman Fifteen but without another twenty-five. I looked good. So I cut ties with you for a while, mostly because I lived with my grandmother that summer, and she cooked for me every night when I got home from my city job. I felt guilty not eating. And I couldn’t purge, because the living room was right next to the bathroom, and she would hear. She was smart enough to know. I could see it by the way she looked at me.
A year, two, three passed, and then you came back ready to play the summer before I got married.
I didn’t give up eating completely, because I was more interested in health this time around, but that interest in health didn’t stop me from packing my lunch of one cucumber and calling myself satisfied at the end of it.
“That all you eat for lunch?” a coworker once asked.
“I eat a big breakfast,” I said. Eight large strawberries was a big breakfast, in my book.
And then came marriage to a man who actually cared whether or not I ate and you and I lost touch for a time. You came to visit sporadically over the years, after the first baby, when I was appalled that my body did not immediately shrink back to its former acceptable proportions; after the third in four years, when baby weight stacked itself like it was going to stay.
After this last one and a broken foot.
It happens quickly, that sliding back into your arms.
I told myself it wasn’t going to matter this time. I told myself I would be unaffected. I told myself I was better than you.
And yet the six-week scale told a story I didn’t want to read, and those weeks after the weighing with a broken foot and a walking cast that made burning calories next to impossible I found myself skipping lunch because “I forgot” or because “the kids eat so early and I’m just not hungry when they eat” or because “I’m working and can’t really spare the time right this minute…”
Because “…”
So this last week I scheduled time to eat, and I ate. You looked on. You sneered. You shook your head. You pointed out the pooch. You laughed at my legs. You reminded me of the scale number.
But I ate.
You have been in and out of my years, whispering your untruths, pointing to your solutions that aren’t really solutions at all, luring me in.
Making me stronger.
Because, you see, every time I look you in the eye and say, “No. You cannot have me today” is another day I get stronger. You didn’t count on this.
I don’t know how many times you will visit me in my lifetime.
I don’t know if I will ever look in a mirror and completely like—or love—what I see.
I don’t know.
But there is something I do know: You will not win.
I am stronger than I used to be when you came knocking. You don’t look quite so attractive anymore. Or fascinating. Or worthwhile.
Keep trying (I know you will), and I will keep saying no.
No.
NO.
For as long as it takes.
