Writing and Motherhood

My summer started with such good intentions.

The plan was to get up 1-2 hours earlier than my minions in hopes of getting a little writing done. Getting up early wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be, given that I'm not a morning person. I loved watching the sun rise and finishing the most important task of the day so early. 

The problem began when the minions started getting up even earlier than usual. I, in turn, got up even earlier and went to bed earlier to make up for it. It didn't help. With all the running around from activity to activity and all the meals (why must children eat so much?) I was exhausted. And cranky. In short, sleep won out.

Now, four weeks into summer break I'm back to the haphazard approach of stealing a few moments here and there. I'm just starting to fall behind on my rewriting schedule but trying my best to keep up. I'm attempting to embrace all that summer entails--the messy house, the up-ended schedule, the spontaneous opportunities for fun. All the while, though, my novel simmers on the back burner and I wonder if I'll ever finish by my self-imposed deadline. It's really important to me, so I keep plugging away.

I once met a writer whom I greatly admire and he asked me if I had any children. I told him about my twin girls and how it was difficult for me to be fully present for them and for my writing at the same time. This particular writer had several grown children and sympathized with my situation. "Raise your children first," he said, "then when they're in college, write like crazy."

This isn't the first time I've heard this advice. Over and over again I've been told to put my work aside and focus my energy on raising my girls. The writing, they say, can wait.

I'm sure the author (and others) meant well and had the best of intentions. Perhaps he even thought he was offering me a bit of comfort in the form of permission to not be so hard on myself. I'll admit that his advice did comfort me at first, but then I couldn't help thinking that had I been a male writer, he probably wouldn't have told me to put my career on hold for the next ten years.

Must I choose one over the other? I love being a mother and having the luxury of spending lots of time with my children. I also love being a writer. If I was forced to pick one over the other, I would choose my kids. Thankfully, I don't have to make that choice. Still, there has to be a way I can have both without feeling depleted every single day. Am I asking for too much? Was that author simply stating the truth and I just don't want to hear it?

How do you juggle a writing career and motherhood?

Getting Unstuck

I've spent the last few weeks moving forward with my stuck manuscript. I'm usually a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of writer, but since the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results I decided to try a new approach. Instead of just diving in with the umpteenth rewrite, I took a step back and did a little planning--something I almost never do.
I can't believe how much of a difference this approach has made.

Sometimes you have to do a 180 to get a fresh perspective. Do you have a stuck manuscript? Here are a few ideas to help you get back on track. They really worked for me.

Immerse Yourself in Other People's Words.  The best way to get inspiration is to read, read, read. Read classics, read contemporary authors, read non-fiction and poetry. Learn from others. I'll truly never understand writers who don't like to read or who say they avoid reading when they're working (What? You're not working all the time?).  I know I'm reading a great book when it makes me want to run to my computer and write. I love this quote from Lisa See: "Read a thousand books and your words will flow like a river." Amen.

Share Your Work With a Trusted Reader. When you don't know how to move forward with a piece, it's often a good idea to get a fresh perspective from someone who is an avid reader in your particular genre. He doesn't even have to have mad editorial skills to be helpful--the reader's reaction alone can be informative. Which scenes or characters stand out for him? What themes is he picking up? What piqued his attention? Where did it wane?

Write Out a Sketch of Each Character. How well do you know your characters? The more specific you get about each character the easier it's going to be to get to the heart of the story. Knowing your character goes far beyond superficial details. Even though I had a complete manuscript with well-developed characters I still sat down and wrote out everything I knew about them. What I discovered is that throughout the manuscript my characters' motivations and wants were a little cloudier than I thought. It's not enough to know what they're feeling--you have to know what's at stake for them and what they're willing to lose. I'll have more specifics on this in a future post.

Make an Outline. Most writers belong in one of two camps--outliners and wingers. Some need to plan out the entire plot in advance, while others--like me--follow wherever the characters  take them. I've been a longtime proponent of winging it, believing in Robert Frost's assertion "no surprises in the writer, no surprises in the reader" but I'm changing my tune a little bit. I've realized that part of the reason why my story wasn't working was that I'd failed to make some key decisions. The plot was chugging along, but since I didn't know my characters as well as I should have, their actions weren't specific enough. To remedy this problem, I went through the entire manuscript and wrote a summary of what needed to be accomplished in each scene. I also wrote summaries for scenes that appeared to be missing. As I did this, the story became much more focused. Now, as I'm rewriting, I'm able to approach each work day in a more relaxed way because I've already decided what each scene needs.

Keep the Momentum Going by Setting Goals. When you feel ready to tackle your rewrite, set a deadline and tell others about it to hold yourself accountable. I've chosen August 31st as my deadline (with you , dear blog reader, as my witness). In order to stay on track, I've divided the number of days until my deadline by the number of chapters. I need to edit a chapter every three days in order to keep on track. I have written each chapter deadline on my calendar so I know where I stand. Currently, I'm three days ahead of schedule--yay me!

Write Every Day. Until now, I've given myself weekends off. I'll probably go back to that schedule eventually, but right now I can't imagine letting a day go by without doing a little editing. It's been tough with summer break and the kids being home. I have to steal my writing time any way I can. The confidence I'm feeling right now is a brittle, fragile thing. I can't afford to let myself get stuck again.


What do you do to get unstuck?

Care About the Work, Not the Result

One of the best books I've read recently is comedienne Amy Poehler's Yes, Please. Part memoir, part advice book, it's chock-full of wisdom for anyone in a creative field. One of my favorite lines in the book is: CARE ABOUT THE WORK, NOT THE RESULT.

Creativity, Poehler says, is where we find our joy and comfort. We need to put our effort into making the highest quality art that we can. This is THE WORK. It's what sustains us, nurtures our soul. It's what we'd want to do even if we weren't getting paid for it. The work is what is in our control.

THE RESULT is something else entirely. It is how our work is received. The result is agents and publishers and bestseller lists and awards. It's our career--and much of it is outside our control. Poehler describes career as "a bad boyfriend" who "ignores you and doesn't call, who flirts with other people right in front of you. With a bad boyfriend, you're never satisfied." You'll always want more.
The best way to handle a career, like a bad boyfriend, Poehler says, is to ignore it. If you ignore it, it will come to you.

While this approach may work with bad boyfriends, it's easy to wonder if the analogy is truly apt for writing careers. How can we ignore our careers? We all know that in a crowded marketplace we have no hope of getting noticed if we sit idly by. It seems easy for Poehler to say 'ignore it' when she's among the most famous comedians of her generation. She can afford to ignore it, while the rest of us can't.

'Ignore' is perhaps the wrong word here, though I think her sentiment is essentially correct. Poehler references Buddhism many times throughout the book and what I think she's trying to espouse is the Buddhist concept of non-attachment. Yes, we must do all of those things required of us to bring attention to our work, but we need to free ourselves from caring about what happens afterwards. For instance, we should definitely schedule author appearances but try not to be upset if the crowd is small. We do what we can and then recognize the rest is out of our hands. We should promote our work to the best of our ability, but not be disheartened if it doesn't hit the bestseller list.

The hard truth is that fame and fortune in any creative field is a crap shoot. While we'd like to believe that if we work hard enough we can make ourselves successful in the most conventional sense of the word, luck and timing have a great deal to do with it. It's impossible to know what will strike a chord with the public. Just look at what is popular in current culture right now. What we choose to elevate as a culture is funny and unpredictable.

My daughters both participate in a computer programming community on the web. The most popular program? A three-second animated loop of dancing yams. Thousands of people like it. Personally, I don't get it--they look like orange polar bears to me. The point is, it's impossible to predict what is going to take off. I doubt even the kid who created up the program could have dreamed it would receive so much attention. [Actually, if you look at his comments in the sidebar, he's just as surprised as anyone.]

Instead of being discouraged by outcomes, we need to put our energy not into what we can't control but into the work itself--the very thing that sustains us. Do it for yourself and no one else. Take pride in creating your very best work, then let the rest go. The work must be its own reward.

Down Time

Right now, I'm in the midst of some serious downtime.

It's not exactly of my choosing. In early May, I sent off my finished manuscript to my agent and I'm still waiting to hear back. It's been a month and a half and I'm trying to be patient. Book Expo America happened somewhere in the middle and I'm sure he was busy with that. He has other clients. It takes a long times to read 156,000 word document.

But I'm trying to be patient. I'm dying to hear what he thinks.

I might just send him an e-mail in a week or two if I don't hear back, but I know I haven't been forgotten. This, my friends, is the nature of the publishing business. It's S-L-O-W. If we do manage to find a publisher, I know that my book won't hit the shelves until about two years from now. At least. If it takes a client two months to hear from an agent, you can maybe understand why unsigned writers wait upwards of 3-6 months to hear anything.

What to do in the meantime?

The smart thing to do is to roll right into another project, to get so excited about something new that I forget I'm waiting to hear back, but I'm finding that to be difficult. The kids are out of school. The neglected corners of my life need some attention. I've been re-reading a few abandoned pieces and the novel I started a few years ago--but my bookshelf, stocked with all that delicious summer reading, seems much more appealing. I'm gardening, cooking, enjoying my children, and just taking a moment to exhale. In the vernacular of Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, I'm filling the well.

When I was a ghostwriter my schedule required that I produce a 250-page book every six weeks, with an additional two weeks for revisions. Even with an outline, even with such light material as comedic teenage angst, it was a tough schedule. On my own, now with considerably more responsibilities and subject matter requiring a bit more thought, I'm on track to produce a book every 5-10 years. My writing is slow, thoughtful, deliberate. I often berate myself for being so slow. I know I could work harder, put in more hours, but writing isn't my everything. And I feel almost apologetic about it.

In April, I had the chance to meet the extraordinary writer, Andre Dubus III. In the few minutes we spoke, I sensed he was also an extraordinary human being. He asked me what I did for work and I told him I was a writer. I told him I was on the verge of completing my second adult novel, which took me nearly nine years to write. I was a little embarrassed by this, citing my twin girls as one of the reasons it took me so long. I admitted I found it hard to work as much as I'd like given the demands of family life. Writing, for me, takes quiet and concentration. Family life is noisy, complicated, messy. (For example, in the forty-five minutes that I've been writing this blog post, I've been interrupted about once every five minutes.)

Mr. Dubus looked up from the book he was signing and said with the utmost sincerity, "Your life comes first. Enjoy your daughters. Wait until they're all grown up, then you can write a million books."

I wish it were that simple, but the sentiment was certainly a relief to hear. I think of it often. When I grow old, will I regret not publishing more often? Probably not. But I would definitely regret missing out on my daughters' childhoods. What's the point of writing if there's no life to write about?

Maybe This Cookie Will Help Me Write...

My previous post about the difficulty of filling the blank page reminds me of a conversation I once had with an agent about a certain superstar of the graphic novel world. The writer apparently told her that one of the biggest struggles he faced every day was forcing himself to sit down and work. Hearing that procrastination is a problem for someone of his caliber has been a great source of comfort to me over the years.

I’m one of those writers for whom settling down to work involves a lot of avoidance and no small amount of superstition. I liken it to a professional baseball player up at bat, with all the spitting, helmet-and-elbow-touching, dirt kicking and glove adjusting that needs to take place before he feels psychologically and physically comfortable enough to swing. In order for me to work, I need a glass of water and a comfortable room temperature. The house needs to be completely quiet. The weather can’t be too nice or I’ll want to be outside instead. I can’t be too tired or even a little sick. Then, if all these conditions are right, I have to check my e-mail, my favorite blogs, and do an online crossword. Then I might check the weather, and then my e-mail again. If no one has written to me or I haven’t received notice of a sale at one of my favorite stores, I’m good to go.

Once I begin writing, if I get stuck on a word, I find myself “write walking”--a phenomenon closely related to sleep walking, in which a writer gets up from her desk and suddenly finds herself standing before her open refrigerator with no recollection of how she ended up there. This occurrence is usually followed with an unhealthy snack and a wave of guilt, and can sometimes be repeated several times during the writing of a particularly difficult passage.

If writing is one of my great passions in life, why is it so hard to be disciplined? The best answer I can come up with is fear of failure. When I’ve written nothing, that nebulous masterpiece floating in my head retains all of its perfection; the moment I try to write I realize just how far my work is from my vision. Yet this should never be a deterrent, for it is extremely rare for a work to perfectly echo one’s vision. I wonder if artists in other mediums have the same problem with procrastination. I can certainly see songwriters having similar angst, but what about painters and sculptors or performance artists? Does fear of facing their limitations put them off, too?

Today, I might get down one good sentence if I’m lucky. Or maybe a particular word choice might sing. Or maybe it’ll all sound stiff and boring. So be it. Tomorrow I’ll sit down at my desk, with my water and silence and optimal room temperature, check my e-mail and play my word puzzles. And when all is right I’ll settle down to work and try again.