Ah, Mother’s Day Eve.
Tomorrow, after the kids climb into my bed smiling those sweet little grins when they present me with a plate of French toast they helped prepare, I will hug them and thank them, and feel thankful for them, and then I will shoo them away for a few hours to work, likely some much needed freewriting on my second novel.
What? you ask. Aren’t you spending the entire day basking in the adoration of the fruit of your loins? Nope, sorry. I bask every day, you see. I get plenty of basking around here. Recognizing that I need a little time to be creative, and demanding that time for myself (within reason) is what gives me the strength to be an okay parent. When days go by without any writing time, I am a cranky mommy indeed. How can the kids say they love me? By playing nicely and quietly with Dad while I do something I love.
I recently applied for a grant specifically for writers who are parents of young children. That such a grant even exists filled me with joy. And it seems more such programs are being added all the time, programs that recognize it’s difficult to be creative while assuming full-time parenting duties, whether from a monetary standpoint, from the standpoint of not-enough-time, or just from the emotional standpoint of giving yourself permission to care about someone else (fictional people, in my case!) very deeply and with the kind of attention that you usually reserve for real, flesh-and-blood family members.
As part of my application, I had to write about how being a parent informed my work. What an impossible question that was! How could I tease apart my life as a mom from my life as a writer? Was it even possible? And would I even want to? I know I couldn’t have written my first book if I wasn’t a parent.
How does being a parent affect my day-to-day writing life? Well, I could write faster pre-kids, right? The answer should be “yes,” but it’s not. I wasted a lot of time, surfing cat pictures on the Internet and whatnot… Being busier means I have to do a better job of prioritizing than I ever did pre-kids. It means I have to be better about setting professional goals, making deadlines and meeting them.
Tonight, like many nights, I’ve got one ear tuned to hear footsteps on the stairs, the other tuned to the voices in my head. I’m writing like a mother, the only way I know how.