The first question that I am asked when I tell people I have an almost three-year-old is: “How did you find time to write your novel?” I tell them I wrote my novel when she slept in the afternoons and evenings. However, I had the luxury of staying home with her until she was a year and a half old. While I stayed home I kept myself on a schedule, but more importantly, I mapped out the plot of my story and did extensive brainstorming before I began writing the novel. The luxury I did not have was wasting time by facing a blank Word document and tinkering around with ideas.
In many ways finding time to write now is much more difficult since I returned to teaching. Now I pick up my daughter from daycare after work, come home, play with her, make dinner, try to tidy up the house and sometimes put her to bed if my husband is working late. After that I write. But not always. Sometimes I literally have to bark orders at myself to go into my office and at the very least, re-read a story I am working on to find the kinks and tidy it up.
During the weekends I revert to the same routine as when I was home with my daughter – she naps, I write. It’s certainly not enough time. But being a teacher, I am afforded holiday breaks – like this week, for example. Guiltily, I drop her off at daycare as I do when I go to work, but then I come home and pour a second cup of coffee and write.
In my last blog post I talked about the process of writing a third novel and why it is so much more difficult. The point I’d like to make here, admittedly a tangential one, is that I can only write anything worthwhile when I am alone and the house is quiet. These conditions are difficult to come by when my husband is downstairs with my child and she screaming to watch the Wizard of Oz while I’m in my office trying to start, continue or finish a story. It’s the same sensation of re-reading the same sentence in a book because you’re constantly being interrupted.
Did I mention that I couldn’t write at all if I didn’t have my husband? He is, and has always been, my champion. Some husbands sulk or passive-aggressively make comments when their wives are busy with aspirations that are not tied to family. To praise him here would divert the purpose of this blog entry. But to avoid recognizing that he is one of the sole reasons my writing has to come to fruition would be a gross oversight.
And let’s not forget the grandmothers. Because they will come babysit when I have to host my reading, or read my work for a reading, or meet writer friends to discuss and critique work we have swapped for feedback……. There is no end to the invaluable support they provide.
How I write as a mother: finding snippets of time, leaning hard on my husband, mother and mother-in-law, and sitting down with the clearest of intentions.