by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
Writing is one of those professions that you typically do from the comfort of your own home. I rarely get out of my house or, even, the room I’ve set aside for my writing—which is a small sitting area in my bedroom.
Every now and then I’ll get a wild hair and go for a walk and see the world, but I’m not really writing then, I’m just thinking or brainstorming. Or I’ll drive down to our local library, which has a pretty fantastic outdoor space if no one had the same idea I had (which is always the risk—and then I’ve wasted some of my really sparse time), and I’ll sit in a rocking chair, with nature humming around me, and create.
But because I typically hole up inside my bedroom and write, it’s really easy to get distracted. When you’re home all the time, of course there are other things that come knocking on our subconscious.
Remember that laundry you forgot to put in the dryer? You should go do that right now.
Remember that stack of dishes in the sink? You should probably do them before dinner.
Remember how you said you’d go to the grocery store today? Your pantry’s really bare, and the kids are about to be home from school, claiming they’re hungry.
The kids. There’s not even enough room to list here all the distractions kids can provide—all the papers that need to be signed, the pants that need to be tightened (because I have skinny kids), the stuffed animals that need mending, the never-ending questions that need answering, the attitudes that need curbing, the homework that needs supervising.
I probably don’t have to tell you how difficult it is to stay focused in an environment like this one.
So here are my best tips for taking your writing business from amateur to professional, at least on the production and focus side:
1. Set aside the time to write.
We’re not ever going to start writing if we don’t actually set aside the time to do it. This isn’t easy when we’re parents, because you know what is the only job from which you can’t take a break (unless you beg)? Parenting. There are always needs that our kids have, even when they’re away at school. I am constantly with my phone, because I never know when someone from the school might need to get in touch because a boy is sick or I forgot about early release or someone forgot their lunch and can I give permission for them to charge one.
But my point is that I have a space on my calendar, every day, that says this is my creating time. I don’t schedule anything else for that time, unless there’s an emergency that no one else can take care of.
2. Set up the space.
Like setting aside the time, if we don’t have a space set aside where we will actually do the work, we won’t do the work. Set up this space however you like it. I’ve set up a standing desk in my bedroom, right in front of my dresser. Every now and then, it’s a little freaky, because I get so lost in my words that I forget what I’m doing, and I look up at the mirror, and there’s this person staring at me. It takes me a minute to remember it’s me. So maybe don’t set your standing desk up in front of a mirror. It’s the only space I had for a standing desk, though, and it was important for me to stand for most of the hours of my day, instead of sitting.
On the tail hour of my work day, I’ll usually sit in my blue wing chair, with a couple of books on the coffee table in front of me, and work on things like editing or business items that need to be gotten done. My day is pretty crammed full, but my space, unless my kids have destroyed it (which is highly likely) is usually nice and ordered and relaxing.
3. Do the work.
This is probably the hardest thing of all, because there are a lot of things that will come against us. Some people call this Resistance.
Resistance, for me, comes in the form of crying children—especially my baby. He’s a mama’s boy through and through, because he’s the youngest, and I’m truly captivated by him, so when I hear him crying, which isn’t often, thank goodness, I feel my focus shatter. If I hear his voice, or if his daddy brings him in to see me, because he starts missing me about halfway through my creating time, I’ll smile and kiss him and snuggle for five minutes or so, and then he’s good and it’s time for me to get back to work. I wear headphones most of the time while I’m creating so I can’t hear the roar of noise my children make when they’re with their daddy.
Resistance can also come in the form of a stomach virus, trying to keep us in bed, or our kids latched to our side. It comes to us as laundry and dishes and all the things we should be doing instead of writing.
The trick to beating Resistance is doing it the first time (and, also, believing in the value of our work). After that, it becomes easier and easier to beat.
4. Get started.
You don’t have to get started on a 120,000-word novel. Start with 225 words in your morning pages (that’s about the equivalent of one page in a long-hand journal). Set a daily word count for yourself and constantly push yourself to attain it. Do some writing exercises to ease you into the writing. Record your progress and see how you’re doing.
5. Minimize the distractions as much as you can.
Like I said, there are so many of them when you’re a parent. But I’m not even talking about our kids. I’m talking about technology and Internet and, for me, books. Turn off the phone, close the Internet browser, keep the books on your shelves until you’ve written your word goal for the day. Those stories inside you will be glad you honored them.
6. Run your own race.
It’s so tempting to look around at all the other authors who are doing so much better than we are, and to get distracted by that. Sometimes I find myself feeling jealous about this or that book deal, and I wonder why not me, because of course I’m entitled to what they got. I’m pretty good, too.
[Tweet “Our race is our own. No one else can run it for us. We owe the world our own journey.”]
And, also, we are all in this together. We can’t forget that.
7. Connect.
Writing can be a very solitary pursuit, and it seems to be filled with people who are naturally introverted and quiet. But something I’ve learned in recent months is that it’s so important for me to connect with other writers. I’ve recently joined a closed group of writers (you have to pay to get in, but the value you get just being in the same place as 1,500 other writers is pretty phenomenal). Not only do you learn so much from each other, but you also get to vent about the same things with people who understand.
Don’t become disconnected. Find a writer friend somewhere.
8. Don’t forget the business side of things.
As writers, we don’t like to think about the business side of things, like setting up an email list and having a presence on social media, but the truth is, those things are highly important to our connected world, and we’re going to have to look at them. And if we’re indie authors, there are a ton of other things that we’ll need to embrace in our business. I spend about five hours a week on business stuff, and that’s not nearly enough. So I’ll be making some changes once I meet my word goal for the year.
9. Put your systems in place.
By systems, I mean an editorial schedule for things like submissions and email newsletters and blogs, if you do them. It all depends on what we want to do with the business side of our writing career, but we have to put systems and routines in place that will make it easier to create consistently in the margins of our lives.
Systems also mean things like whatever makes it easy to create quicker and without interruptions. My systems include things like wearing headphones when I’m working and my husband is on duty with the kids, so when the kids accidentally wander into my bedroom (which is often), they see the headphones and know that Mama is working. I also have systems like batching, which means I work on business-related things on Thursdays, and I write fiction on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and I create all my blogs on Mondays and I edit manuscripts and brainstorm new ideas on Fridays.
[Tweet “In order to get the writing done in our short amount of time, we have to create systems.”]
It’s anything but easy to be a parent writer, but it’s most definitely possible. We just have to get into the groove of whatever schedule or routine we’ve worked out for ourselves, and that’s going to take some time. So be patient and kind to yourself. Adjust when you need to. Talk to your partner and kids when you need to.
And most of all, get creating.
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
We have this crazy expectation in our minds about what it looks like to be a writer. It means standing (or sitting—though I hope not!) at our computers all day and producing great pieces of literature several times a year. It means the only thing we do is focus on that literary masterpiece that’s been waiting for years to climb out our fingers. It means giving up unnecessary components of our lives so that we can focus on this one thing.
Well, yeah, some of it is like that, but if our expectations of being a legitimate writer are tied to whether or not we get to do it full-time, then we’re going to be sorely disappointed (and, also, we’ll never get that book finished).
Even writers who have their books published by large publishing houses are not always able to write full time. You hear about all the ones who do, but what you don’t hear about is all the other ones who work other jobs (or do other make-an-income things) while they’re trying to build a writing business and a back-list of books.
I’m incredibly fortunate to have a husband who supports my family in just a half-day of work, so I get to use the other half-day to create. This means our budget is superbly tight. We have six kids. It’s not an easy task for him to support us all, but he believes in what I’m doing and in what I’m building, and he’s willing to make that sacrifice while I’m working on a business that can help out.
But it wasn’t always like this. For eight years, I worked a full-time job and pursued my writing in small little patches on the side. I wrote three books like that, and it was hard work—harder work than I’m doing now, without the pressure of making money on my back.
So I guess what I’m trying to say is that it doesn’t matter whether you do this full-time or whether you’re working on it in the margins of your life, you are still a legitimate writer, because you put in the work.
[Tweet “There’s no one right way to be a writer. It looks different for all of us.”]
Some of us write in the morning, some of us late at night, after the kids are put in bed. Some of us write full-time, some of us for only fifteen minutes a day, but, hey, at least we’re trying. Some of us write novels, some of us write memoirs, some of us write self-help books, some of us prefer all things children’s literature. There’s no formula for being a writer.
Well, actually, there is a formula for being a writer, and it’s this: We do the work.
We are legitimate writers when we decide we’re legitimate. No one can make that call for us. We don’t have to get on the bestseller list before someone takes us seriously. We call ourselves a writer, and we do the work. We publish our own books, or we send them out in hopes that someone else will publish them—either way, we’re writers.
It’s not an easy task to be a writer, of course. It’s a solitary pursuit, for the most part, unless we can find a community of people who are working hard at doing it, too (because the other thing is this: we’re not in competition).
There are always people who tell me they want to write, once they’ve asked me what it is I do, or maybe they’ve seen me sitting on a picnic bench writing and ask about it later, when I run into them in a church cafeteria. They say they would like to write a book, but they don’t have the time. They’ll typically express their sadness that they aren’t pursuing what I’m pursuing, and I always think, Well, then, why not? We can always find time for the things we love, and, for me? Writing is like breathing. I’d die without it.
We decide to do the work of writing, and we make the time, and we’re the ones who will hold a book at the end of all those hours (and it will take many).
If we’re just making the excuse that we don’t have the time to write, because we don’t have hours-long stretches at our disposal, then of course we’re never going to get that book finished.
[Tweet “Sometimes a writing career has to begin at the tiny margins of our time.”]
I don’t have to get a great publishing deal to be a legitimate author. I don’t have to sell a certain number of books to be considered a legitimate writer. I am a legitimate writer because I put in the time and I do the work.
If you want to be a legitimate writer, you will too.
Takeaways at a glance:
1. We control when we consider ourselves a legitimate writer, not anyone else.
2. There’s always time to write. We just have to find it.
3. We are in charge of our lives. When we say we really want to write but we just don’t have the time, what we’re saying to writing is that sacrificing to find the time is not worth it. Writing time happens when we schedule it.
4. It’s not easy to be a writer. It’s actually hard, hard work to do it every day, no matter what. But it’s also worth work.
5. There is no one right way to be a writer, but millions of them. Run your own race. Do your own work.
Week’s prompt
Write whatever comes to mind when you read this quote:
“I shall give you hunger and pain, and sleepless nights. Also beauty, and satisfactions known to few, and glimpses of the heavenly life. None of these you shall have continually, and of their coming and going you shall not be foretold.”
-Howard Lindsay
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
As parent writers, we can often feel like we have to apologize for the work we do. Because work is taking us away from our children and our families, and it’s cutting into the time that we might spend together, and it’s distracting us from the thing we’re supposed to be doing, which is raising our kids, right?
I am not immune to apologizing for my work.
This usually happens when my husband and I are having a budgeting meeting, and we’re talking about all the budget needs that a family of eight can accrue, and we’re trying to see what’s what, and I realize, yet again, that what I’m doing, this writing thing, isn’t contributing a whole lot to that overall what-we-need number. I spend four hours a day writing and another half hour working on business things, and I find myself apologizing for that time I’m taking away from my husband, who is the real breadwinner at this point in our lives.
Fortunately, my husband is a pretty exceptional man who understands that if I’m not pursuing my passion, I’m not the best version of myself—but that doesn’t mean I stop apologizing.
There are times he’ll take me by the elbows and shake me a little bit and says, “What you’re doing is important,” but until I can do that for myself and really, really believe it, then I’m not going to stop apologizing.
I’m going to notice how the baby is being especially fussy this afternoon, and I really should be down there taking care of him instead of holed up in my room finishing this story, and I’m going to apologize for it when the dinner bell clangs and I snap my laptop shut. I’m going to hear how the 6-year-old needs some help with his homework and I’m his mother, and I should really be down there helping him, even though my husband is a competent caregiver and fully capable of helping him do first-grade homework, but I’m still going to apologize for not being there. I’m going to miss that little school assembly that didn’t really mean much at all, because I had a deadline I needed to meet, and I’m going to apologize for not being there.
When will we stop apologizing for our work?
[Tweet “Let’s stop apologizing for choosing work over every-second-presence with our kids. Our work is important.”]
Something I’ve learned in my full-time writing pursuit is that when I’m creating stories, when I’m mapping out my life on a page, when I’m crafting my essays that celebrate the crazy life I have with six boys, I’m a more whole version of myself. I’m a better person for my separate pursuit, and it doesn’t matter how much or how little money I make at it. That’s not the measure of a whole life. The measure of a whole life is what we’re doing to cultivate the passions and talents we’ve been given—mothering and writing and creating and contributing and teaching and (fill in your own blank).
Sometimes choosing a whole life means not being in the audience of our kid’s reader awards, because there’s something we have to do, and, besides, we were there last year. Sometimes it means not volunteering at a school Christmas party, because Fridays are our busiest days and in order to stay on track, we really need to take this one as a work day. Sometimes it means working during Family Movie Night, because we need to get that one thing edited so we can get it out on the market. We don’t have to apologize for those times. We’re still spending time with our kids. We’re still nurturing, we’re still loving, we’re still present with them in all the ways that matter most.
Something my husband has told me over and over again is that it’s not about the quantity of time we spend with our kids, it’s about the quality. I know this. Fifteen minutes of quality time is much better than a whole hour of distracted time, and our kids notice the difference. So when I’m with my children, I’m with my children, and when I’m working, I’m working. I try to separate them as much as I possibly can, because if we’re always thinking about one when we’re doing the other, we’re not going to be great at either.
It’s not exactly easy to get over this apologizing habit, but it’s something we’re going to have to do if we want to ease into this writing and creating fully and completely. We’re going to have to believe that what we do, the work we produce and create, has value,and that it’s just as important to release out into the world as it is to raise our children. We have to nurture it and spend time with it and love it, too, just like we do our children.
And if we never make money or only sell a few copies of that book, or maybe none at all, we can still take comfort in the fact that we have at least brought value to one person in the world—ourselves.
[Tweet “We love best when we’re creating. That’s all the value our families need.”]
Some things to think about when guilt comes knocking, asking us to apologize:
1. What writing does for us.
For me, writing helps me clarify my world. It doesn’t take long for my world to get all fogged up with expectations and disappointments and to-do lists and things forgotten or remembered, and writing helps me take a step back and figure out what’s important and what’s really not. Writing has healing properties. It has many benefits beyond just the simple act of getting words out on a page. So one of the best ways to combat the need to apologize is to figure out just what writing does for us. I’m a more balanced person, a happier person, a more optimistic and hope-filled person when I’m creating. My kids get a better version of their mom when she holes up inside her room and creates.
2. The time we’re actually spending with our kids.
Sometimes we have an deflated sense of how much time we’re actually spending with our kids, but if we were to evaluate it, we’d see that we spend 10 minutes reading to one boy here and fifteen minutes snuggling with that one and five minutes looking into that one’s eyes in the mornings. Remember, it’s not the quantity, it’s the quality. So even if we evaluate that time and think we’re not spending enough of it with our kids, it’s important to evaluate whether that small amount of time is fully focused on our kids or fragmented with all the other things on our mind.
If we find we need to carve out more time, then put away the distractions, tuck away the to-do list, and just hang out.
3. The impossibility of “all things to all people.”
Our kids will always take more time if we’ll let them. They’ll ask us to come have lunch with them at school, and they’ll ask if we’re going to make it out to their end-of-school dance party, and they’ll ask if we can take them to the store this afternoon so they can buy that new book that just came out, but the reality is, even if we’re not making money at it, our creating time is our work time. It’s not easy to see it this way when we’re not going into an actual office, when they can just knock on the office door or (more likely) barge right in, but we wouldn’t leave a normal 9-5 in the middle of the day so we could take our kid to the store. We shouldn’t do it for our creative pursuit, either.
This will make us want to apologize. But if we can remember that waiting is a necessary skill for our child to learn, maybe we won’t feel quite so guilty about it. Rushing out to give our kids everything they want at the drop of a word doesn’t teach them about things like patience and perseverance and ingenuity.
We’re going to have to miss some things along the way. We can’t be all things to all people. We can’t be everywhere at once. No one else can, either, so we can take the pressure off ourselves.
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
It’s not easy to call ourselves what we really are: writer.
Mostly because there are so many things we think we have to do first. We have to get a book deal, with a large publisher. We have to get a thousand or ten thousand followers. We have to make it to a bestseller list and see our name in print in all the literary magazines, and we have to snag all the best interviews and do the work of being a big wig. We have to become something before we have the privilege of being a writer. We have to have an agent, we have to have a book in the bookstores, we have to check off all these boxes before we can really call ourselves a writer.
That’s not true.
Now. I’m not suggesting we swing to the other side of the pendulum, which I’ve noticed has happened lately. We can’t really call ourselves a writer if we’re just sending out random emails every few days. We can’t really call ourselves a writer if we sporadically send a letter to one of our family members once a month or so. The most important prerequisite for calling ourselves a writer is doing the work, every day.
[Tweet “What really makes us a writer is, at its simplest, the work.”]
Maybe this will help us get over our fear that we’re not really a writer, that we’re some imposter who still needs to do this or that before we’re considered professional.
Doubt can creep in when we use the W word to describe ourselves when someone asks us what we do. There have been times in my life when I’ve told someone what it is I do, because I do it for at least three hours every day, and they look at me with their eyes glazed over in disbelief, because, you know, everybody is a writer now. But you know what? I do the work. Every single week I crank out between 40,000 and 60,000 words. I’m a writer.
You are, too. Even if you’re cranking out 10,000 words a week, or 1,000 words a day or 500 or 250 words a day, you are a writer. If you’re doing the work every single day (or every writing day we’ve scheduled–because it takes a schedule to make it happen), then you can call yourself a writer, too.
See, we don’t have to have everything perfectly in place. We don’t have to prove that we’re a legitimate writer by having a publishing deal to show for all our work or checking off the list the world thinks we have to finish before we’re legit; we just have to do the work.
You know what’s going to happen if we’re doing the work? We’re going to get better and better, because we’re always practicing, we’re always inviting in the muse and then exercising it. And we’re going to be better at the end of that year we wrote 250 words a day than we were when we started.
This means, of course, that many of us are writers and don’t even know it. Some of us write for publications, and we call ourselves journalists, but we’re really writers. I called myself by the wrong name for years. I thought I was just regurgitating the facts and not using any of my own creativity, but that wasn’t true. I used as much of my creativity then as I do now, except I was telling true stories, and it gave me the priceless practice of telling the true stories of my life (because when you’re a journalist, there’s not room for exaggeration or untruth)—great training for memoir.
I know it’s not easy. Calling yourself a writer is sort of a scary thing, because people don’t really understand what it means, and they have their own expectations. The follow-up question that I typically hear when I mention that I’m a writer is, oh, have I heard of your books? And I have to say, Probably not, because most of them are out in submission and some of them have been self-published and only sold a handful of copies. But I’m getting there. I’m building a writing career, and soon, maybe, I’ll have more popular books. It doesn’t matter if I do or don’t. I’m still a writer, because every day, between the hours of 12:30 and 3:30 p.m., I stand in front of my standing desk, and I write. That’s enough. I’m a writer.
So what building a business as a writer really comes down to is the commitment. Are we willing to commit to the work of being a writer? Will we write every day (or at least most days)? Will we do it regardless of how we feel? Last week my family and I were hit by “The Plague”—our name for a stomach virus, because with a family of eight, it recurs in delightful cycles—and I still worked. (Sat down, though. Every time I stood up, my insides started climbing out. I know you wanted to know that.)
The other day I was taking my kids to the church nursery, and there was a new person working. She and I got to talking, because she was noticing my 3-year-old twins and she’s always been fascinated with twins (as the 3-year-olds ran in and destroyed the room in five seconds). She asked if I stayed home with them all. I told her, no, I’m a writer. She asked what kind of writing, and I told her. I’ve had lots of practice with this script, believe me, but still I found that my words were coming out sort of apologetically. Now. This has a little to do with the large family thing, and people expecting that a mom of a large family stays home with her kids, but some of it also has to do with not really believing that I’m a writer.
Even now, even after pursing this writing thing for more than a year, I had to remind myself: I’m a writer because I do the work.
Like I said, it’s not easy.
But we can remind ourselves, in those moments when doubt peeks over our shoulders, that we’re writers because we’re doing the work. And if we’re not doing the work? Then take out the schedule, mark off the time and get to work.
How to get started:
1. Start with some morning pages.
I do this every morning. I write exactly three pages on whatever I want in a composition book. What this usually amounts to is a brain dump—all the things that are swirling in my mind, leftover dreams or worries or things I need to do for the day. I don’t try to be creative with it. I just write. Sometimes I write about what I did the day before. Sometimes I write about the argument I had with my husband. Sometimes I write about how I’m worried about the 9-year-old and his attitude lately. This is not something intended for anyone else’s eyes, though sometimes I find the beginnings of a blog or a story in it.
2. Write to a prompt.
If you’re having trouble getting started, try writing to a prompt. I have a folder filled with one-word writing prompts. I’m actually using them to write a memoir right now. I take a word and write on it for as long as I need to (you can set a timer if you want and come back to it later). It’s amazing how many memories of mine are associated with the word “snake.” Prompts are great for drawing out what’s in our subconscious without much pressure on us.
I use other prompts, too. This year I challenged myself to write a poem a day, and I’ve been using quotes from authors for that one. I have a fiction project that I wrote based on the pictures a friend of mine sent me. Photos are great for stirring up creativity, at least for me. It’s probably my favorite prompt to use.
3. Call yourself what you are.
Next time someone asks you what you do, try out, “I write,” even if you don’t make a living from it. It’ll feel weird at first (and they’ll have a whole bunch of questions), but you’ll get used to it. But you’ll never have the opportunity to get used to it if you never say the words in the first place.
Week’s prompt:
Photos have an amazing ability to unlock our creativity. So write on this photo for as long as you want. Write what you see, write what it makes you think about, write what you feel. Just write.
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
The most asked question I get when I tell people I’m an author who is also the mom of six children is this: “How do you do it all?”
[Tweet “The important truth we have to learn when we’re writers who are parents: We can’t do it all.”]
I mean, we can try. But we’re going to end up frustrated and burned out and exhausted from the trying.
It’s taken me a long, long time to learn this truth—not just in my writing projects but also in the interior of my life. There are so many projects that come to me on a monthly and weekly and daily basis, and I have them all written down in a massive brainstorm binder, where I let them sit and flesh out, if they want to, while I’m not looking. Sometimes it’s just a phrase jotted down on a piece of notebook paper. Sometimes it’s the opening line for a book or a story or a poem. Sometimes it’s a whole paragraph of information about a character who’s insisting that I write about him or that I explore her story.
I can’t get to all of them at the same time, that’s easy enough to see.
But what’s not quite as easy to see is that I will also not be able to get to all the other things in my life. This “you won’t be able to do it all” applies to something larger than just my writing career. It applies to my life as a mother and wife and volunteer and friend and sister and daughter.
I can’t tell you how many times I go somewhere or hear from someone who enjoys my work, and usually the second thing they say after “I enjoyed that essay about (fill in the blank)” is “I don’t know how you do it all.”
It’s indicative of our society to notice that this is a universal comment that comes to me on a regular basis. I get it. It’s because I’m the mom of six kids, and yet I still manage to produce tens of thousands of words every week. How in the world do I do it all?
Well, you should see my house.
The thing is, when we’re parent writers, we will reach that point where we have to ask ourselves, “Is this something that’s important to do right now, or can it wait?” This is the question I ask most often of my responsibilities around the house. Things like laundry, cooking dinner, tidying the house, those are nonnegotiable for me. Kids have to be clothed, they have to eat, and I function best in a (mostly) tidy house. But things like scrubbing the baseboards and cleaning the insides of counters and moving the stove so I can mop the floor underneath it? Those are negotiable.
I recently missed my oldest’s third-grade field trip, the first one I’ve missed in the years he’s been in school. I was all torn up about it, until I remembered that we’re not going to be able to volunteer at every school event with our kids, just like we’re not going to be able to have a perfectly spotless house and we’re not gong to be able to have meetings with those people we used to meet with every day of the week if we’re really serious about using our time to make a career out of this writing thing.
I stay home with my kids half the day, and the other half of the day I have roped off for working. Writing. That means I don’t schedule meetings with friends and I don’t volunteer at my kids’ school, unless it’s a week where I can afford to take some time away.
Our society demands a whole lot from us. I’m a mom of kids in school, and that means there are parties to volunteer for, programs to attend, end-of-year-parties and playdates and all kinds of things that will creep into my work time if I let it. It’s not easy to look at our schedules and know how to label one thing negotiable and one thing non-negotiable, but it has to be done.
[Tweet “If we don’t schedule our writing time like it’s work time, we’ll never finish our book.”]
Something will always compete for our time. It might be the kids, who want a ride to the store so they can spend that $5 they got in the mail yesterday. It might be a friend, calling just to talk. It might be the floors and all those spots, reminding you it’s been way too long since it was mopped.
We’re not going to be able to do it all, writers. What’s more important: mopping a floor or writing a story?
I know which one I’d choose.
We’re not going to be able to do it all. We’re not.
Sometimes this will bother us. Sometimes I regret that I didn’t volunteer at my second son’s kindergarten Christmas party, like I had volunteered at his big brother’s, because work was too busy. So we adjust. This year I made accommodations and finished up a project early so I could do volunteer at his first-grade party instead. Because sometimes, we can justify the break, when we know we’ve been working hard all year and now we deserve to take a day off. But when I look around my house and see the dust an inch thick on my bookshelves and tables, I don’t feel the least bit guilty. Because my writing time is worth sacrificing that one little thing so that I have a few more minutes to change a life or two.
We have to be able to rid ourselves of the pressure to do it all. Society doesn’t make it easy, but we have to do it. We have to look at all the things we could set aside, even if it’s just for a season, just until we get this one manuscript finished, that’s all we’re asking, and then we have to make sure we’re okay with that decision.
[Tweet “We’ll never be able to be the best at anything if we’re trying to do it all.”]
How to combat the urge to do it all:
1. Hire someone.
If it’s in your budget to hire someone to help out with something, then do it. If you need a sitter for a couple of months until you can finish something pressing and get it out into the world, do it. If you need a house cleaner because you’re not that great at cleaning anyway, then do it. If you need a lawn team to take care of yours, hire them. There are reasons these services exist, and what you’re really doing is buying yourself time and energy.
2. Discuss with your spouse and children what you might be able to let slide for a season.
Sometimes you’ll let the cleaning stuff slide, sometimes you’ll let the cooking slide and just eat picnic dinners for a season, sometimes you won’t be the one signing all the school papers. Sometimes you won’t worry about organizing the garage right now, because there’s too much on your plate anyway. Sometimes you’ll stop attending that Wednesday night meeting because you need the time elsewhere. It’s okay to let some things slide for a time.
Do I need to say it again? It’s okay to let some things slide. You don’t have to do it all.
3. Delegate.
Some of the tasks that are on our plates we can delegate to others. My boys know how to hold a dusting wand, which means they can start doing this job for me. It may not look like I want it to look when it’s all said and done, but that’s okay. Help is help. And they’re helping me pursue my dream by taking my place dusting, whatever that looks like.
4. Make a “no” list.
This is helpful when you’re a yes person like me. Here’s the typical formula: If someone asks me to do something for them, I answer yes. I don’t like disappointing people. I have a hard time saying no. If you make a list of all the things to which you’d have to answer “no,” if asked, the list will help guide your decisions in every situation. Goals can also help with this, if you’re not so keen on making a “no” list.
5. Take a day off.
Determine whether a day off here and there is something you can do and still get back into the rhythm of creating. (We don’t have to say no to everything that doesn’t serve our purpose. There’s room for fun.)
Like I said, at the end of last year, I decided that I was going to volunteer at my boys’ Christmas parties. There were three of them in school at the time, and I had to divide my time among the three of them, but we had a grand time. I was able to plan for that volunteering and then adjust my workload accordingly. It meant I had to work a little harder on the week before, but it was totally worth it.
Week’s prompt:
Write a poem that is really a wish list for all the things you feel like you need in order to launch a writing career.
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
We have such a vault of stories as parents. Every day we are interacting with our kids, and we are listening in on conversations, and we are growing more and more as storytellers, because we get to be immersed in stories all the time.
I only have to take a look around at my kids to know that we are immersed in stories at every hour of every day. Not only are they constantly talking, but they are constantly telling me stories about their lives, if I am brave enough (and patient enough) to listen.
One of my novels came out of a conversation with my 9-year-old about these Power Buddies he had created. They have elemental powers, and he would play with kids on the playground, pretending to be Power Buddies, and he had all their backstories figured out, how they became Power Buddies, and then we decided to brainstorm nine of them, and write a trilogy about how they saved the world. My 9-year-old is one of the most creative people I’ve ever brainstormed with, because he had absolutely no inhibition at all. He didn’t know rules, so he would just toss out random plot twists, and I took notes on them all. It was amazing the way I could connect them after I had sat with them for a time.
Would that have happened if this amazing 9-year-old was not in my life? Would there be such thing as a Power Buddies series (still in the rough draft stages)? I don’t know.
We have all sorts of stories living inside us, begging to get out. We have stories about childbirth or child disappointment or child victory or child rearing or child struggling. We have stories about the way a boy feels about homework and the way a house smells when it’s filled with sweaty boys and the way we feel when we look at them.
[Tweet “So much of life could live in our writing if we looked at the world through a child’s eyes.”]
So much of my life ends up in my stories, partly because I write mostly kid-lit, but also because the most interesting parts of my life are the relationships my boys have with each other and the way they sometimes love a brother and sometimes don’t and the things they say to each other and the dreams they have and the imaginations they carry.
Sometimes, when I’m eavesdropping, my kids will say something that makes me want to write an essay. Sometimes they are the inspiration behind an entire book (last year’s NaNoWriMo came out of a conversation with my first-grader about a kid in his class who drools and doesn’t say much.). Sometimes they give me little snippets of real life that I’ll insert into a story to make it funny or authentic or interesting.
As parents, we are surrounded by stories, and sometimes that can get really hard to see, because of all the logistics—all the baths and all the dinners and all the caring for these children. The logistics can pulls us into that place where it feels like we’re doing nothing else but taking care of them; how could we possibly write with all these responsibilities?
But would our writing be better without our children?
I don’t think mine would.
I tried to write novels before I had my children, and, yeah, I was younger and less experienced, but children opened in me a depth of understanding and joy that I’ve never known. I learned how to really get into the shoes of another person, where before I just entertained the idea. I learned how to see the beauty of the world, where before it was clouded behind familiarity. I learned how to see from the heart and eyes of a child, and this has made my writing richer.
My children have made me brave. They have made me more compassionate. They have changed me in ways that are hard to explain. And the stories and writing I did before I had children are nothing compared to the kind I do now.
So don’t ever believe the lie that you could do more if you’d had more time to write yesterday instead of going to your son’s school play. Because the time we get to spend with our children is time that will translate into richer words and better stories and deeper understanding.
[Tweet “Our art is made richer by our children and our engagement with children.”]
We have an endless well of stories as parents, and no one else is going to tell it exactly like we would. The world needs our stories as much as it needs anyone’s.
So let’s tell them.
How to pull the stories from your life
1. Glean from journals.
I journal every day. Whether it’s a memory that has flared up, or whether it’s just a mundane writing about what we did today, I record it all. Journaling is so great for stories, because it’s authentic. We don’t even have to tell the stories as if they’re true; we can use our experience for our fiction stories, too. Just craft a story around an event, something that made an impact on you emotionally. Tell the truth and watch the world be changed by the way you tell it.
2. Sit down with children and have a storytelling war.
Kids are the greatest when it comes to telling stories. Our family has these storytelling cubes called Story Cubes that we often break out after dinner’s over and we sit around the table telling stories. Sometimes I jot down premises that I think would make great stories, and they aren’t always just from me. Sometimes they’re from my children. Sometimes I help them write their own stories.
Storytelling is a great practice for family life. Not only does it strengthen the bonds between parents and their children, but it challenges everyone to use their creativity and tell the most gripping tale, together.
3. Next time you have a late night or someone can’t sleep or a baby is demanding a lot of attention, write a story about it.
We can help heal ourselves and all our feelings—of frustration or fear or disappointment—by writing. We can share those writings we craft in the heat of an emotion, or we can keep them private and safe. It doesn’t matter. The very act of writing is a healing act.
4. Write a scene from a real-life parenting scene.
Mine would be a comedy. What would yours be?
Use your scene in a book. Some of the best characters we can craft are ones who have stories like ours, and we can use our experiences in these books to make them more realistic. When I think of Judy Blume’s Fudge books, the character Fudge was one of the most believable characters, because I had seen him in my kids a thousand times. Mischievous and lovable. Playful and matter-of-fact. Blume was clearly soaking up the children in her life (he was based on her son, Lawrence).
This week’s prompt:
Write an essay about the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word snake.
