30 November 2009
by 
These weeks leading up to Christmas seem to always devolve into chaos. Have you been struggling to keep your life and work in balance? With the mayhem around me growing increasingly frustrating I dug back through my archives for a piece I remembered writing in March of 2007. We had survived the holiday upheavals, the kids had gone back to school and life was falling back into some semblance of order.
I need to remember how I accomplished that. How did I keep my mother-writer aspects from overpowering me? I’m sure many of you, even those who aren’t mothers (Hey writer-dads!) or parents are feeling the strain as they try to co-ordinate their work, their family, and their social lives. So, the wisdom of nearly three years comes to surface again.
Are you a Writer-Dad? I’d love to share a male perspective of the work-from-home challenge. Please share your comment or consider contributing your own post to WRA.
As a mother of two and a full-time writer, I understand how challenging it can be to have two very intense careers and try to blend them together. Women are remarkable beings, capable of doing multiple things. They have the ability nurture a sick child and an infant novel at the same time.
When it comes to being a mother, there is more involved than making sure the children don’t drown in the bathtub or burn themselves on a hot stove. Parenting includes house work, entertaining, educating, doctoring, supervision and management, social administration, courier services, dressmaking, hairdressing, sanitation monitoring, nutritional advise and chef… The list could go on and on. Only a mother could possibly understand everything that goes into the day to day living of raising little people.
Writing is an equally busy and time consuming career. As a parent, especially a single mother, it’s impossible to disappear into the study for hours and surface with bags under our eyes, coffee-stained teeth, frazzled hair and a satisfied, although exhausted, smile on our faces. Writing time involves rare snippets between kissing boo-boos, getting kids to school, cooking dinner, and changing diapers.
Being a writer and being a mother require many of the same skills. The most important elements to make a successful mother/writer are imagination, creativity, intuition, patience, and understanding. It’s also vital to have a fantastic sense of self-worth. Without it you will constantly find the family’s slightest needs come before your writing. Understanding the value of what you do and being able to remember why you love it and why it’s worth making sacrifices is vital.
A few tips to remember:
- Develop a Routine!
If you have set times dedicated to meals, housework, homework, baths, and bed you are a huge step toward minimal chaos in your home and work life. Routine can go a step further than this and create a greater sense of calm if you also plan your writing times to suit your average day. I schedule a few hours each night, after tucking kids into bed, to write. This is the pen-to-paper (or words-to-screen) writing that involves concentration and focus. Research, planning, listing, plotting, chatting, character development, reviewing, editing, and short pieces can be slotted in at other times during the day but you need to have a set time dedicated to your writing regularly (daily if possible). - Be Flexible!
While you have a routine it’s important to know how to bend the rules a little. Things are going to come up that you hadn’t planned for. You need to be able to bend your routine and schedule to suit. If the school calls up because your daughter is sick you slot a doctor visit into your afternoon and adjust your writing tasks. If your three-year-old got creative while you both cooked lunch together and is covered in flour you need to fit a bath in before you eat. Raising children, without going insane, requires flexibility. - Learn to Prioritize!
Know that some stages need to be completed before others. Make sure writing is one of your high priorities but forgive yourself if you have to take the night off to attend your son’s soccer game (you could schedule that in), or daughter’s dance recital. Understand that changing a dirty diaper has an immediate deadline and your article due tomorrow can wait the few minutes it takes to change the diaper. Do the projects that are most important first and don’t leave things to the last minute. - Keep Lists!
Shopping lists, project lists, idea lists, activity lists, school friends’ names, books borrowed from the library, actions to take for this or that article, character traits from your current novel, markets, budgets… The list of lists can be fairly endless but they are a great way to stay present with every aspect of your life. As a mother you’re going to be in multiple places at once in your mind. It creates a jumble to your memory functions. Lists help us keep information near to hand and jotting a list helps us remember. - Love what you do!
Whatever it is you’re doing at any given moment, LOVE doing it! It’s the only way to stay sane when you have to shift from task to task. Remember that everything you do serves an important purpose. Spending time with your children and your home reinforces a sacred bond and keeps you connected with the most important aspects of life. Every moment is precious, and no matter what you are doing, love being alive in that moment and know that every step is toward a brighter future.
The final thing to remember is to ‘communicate‘. Tell your loved ones what you need from them. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Share yourself, your dreams and ambitions, cry on a friend’s shoulder when it gets hard, leave the kids with a baby-sitter and go out for a night on the town with your girlfriends, give your heart and mind to others with commitment and honesty. Tell yourself, others and the universe what it is you want with confidence. When you do, you’ll find the world acting to accommodate you.
Being a writer and a parent is not impossible. You will learn more tips and tricks as you do it day to day. You will come to understand what works for you and what doesn’t. Try everything and learn to adapt to the needs of your unique family.
It’s challenging but also very exciting. You gain so much from sharing your life with children and with writing. You can touch the world, change people, create life and inspire others and truly love yourself doing it. Smile, stand up tall and proud, and truly realize how amazing and incredible you are. Live it, love it, and write about it.
Originally published on Writing.Com. Reprinted for Write-From-Home and Helium.
What tips can you share about how you keep the your writing life in balance with your other hats?
Excellent topic and I am so with you on the tips! I found that the only way I could realistically get writing done was to schedule in my day and keep to it. As a mother of five, I need to be flexible but I have also found that they are very good at adapting to my working time when I don the Cone of Silence headphones.
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Great article! I’ve been a WFHD for 2 1/2 years now, doing the freelance writing thing.
Couldn’t agree more, prioritizing and loving what you do are key.
In fact, all your tips were right on!
I’ll get you a possible blog post to consider asap. Thanks for offering!
-Perry
http://www.pdxdads.com
The Cone of Silence is a great idea, Stacey.
Sometimes, when I’m having trouble pulling my focus together I done headphones too, but run a playlist of music that drowns out the outside world but doesn’t distract me from the world inside my mind.
A mother of five! Congratulations on still being able to do anything you enjoy with that many underfoot.
One of the rules I’ve learned since writing this article in 2007 is to be firm with myself. I have to commit to making time for my career, for my writing. If I remain steadfast and determined my family falls into step, if I waver, they’ll walk all over my resolve. Self-discipline comes first, and with self-discipline I’ve found I have a lot less child discipline to do.
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Great tips all!
Thanks,
-Perry
Hi Perry! Welcome to WRA and thanks for praise. I’m glad you enjoyed them.
Rebecca Laffar-Smith shares: Blog a lot? Build an editorial calendar.
This couldn’t be more true! I have two little girls myself, and as much as I want to spend more time with them, my writing calls. It puts food on the table, and yet, it takes time from them. It’s a tough balance, which is why it is so necessary to just make time to spend with them, no matter what.
Thanks for this post! I needed that!
~Kim
Kimberlee Ferrell shares: Tarot for the Tired, or Yes, Another Energy Spread
Very enlightening…
You are the freaken cup…
Probably doesn’t make sense until you read the following…
Have you ever wondered what makes some people capable of doing extraordinary, sometimes impossible looking things? What makes that person jump into the water to save a drowning victim, while others stand by and watch? What makes another person stand up for a cause they believe in, against what appears to be amazing odds? I’ve asked myself questions like these most of my life. Even as a child, I wondered why people do the things they do.
Perhaps the bigger question is why don’t people do the things they can do?
The answer begins with exploring what keeps people stuck. The first place we commonly go to is that we’re missing something, we don’t have what we need. We need more of everything – you name it, we need it: more time, money, energy, information, certainty, resources. Without these, we tell ourselves, we can’t do what we want to do.
That is the greatest lie of our times – this underlying assumption that we don’t have what we need (or think we need, I suffer from this very badly). This perception of lack is the biggest source of unhappiness and dissatisfaction in the world today. It causes us to dream about “becoming†something, to hold out for doing that one big, audacious thing that is so big and audacious that we can’t see a way to do it!
We have fallen in love with the idea of becoming and it is keeping us small. We are on an endless search for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, all the while not realizing that we are standing on the pot of gold. Many people travel their entire lives on this journey, longing to find themselves out there, when, in fact where they’ve really lost themselves is in here (me).
You are the Significance you’ve been waiting for as in you yourself (matt knows this and shows it).
Nobody’s going to bring it to you, solve it for you, or make it all better. Ultimately, we are the ones we have been waiting for. It is up to us to be who we are.
And when is there ever a time when being yourself doesn’t matter? The reason people find themselves getting stuck is because they don’t think who they are ~ is enough – enough to get that promotion, enough to close that next big account, enough to be financially independent. This scarcity causes resistance and any time we are stuck, we are resisting the way things are in one way or another.
When I talk about doing what we can do, I don’t mean rolling out of bed in the morning and living life like normal. I’m talking about living into our greatness — being fully, completely, vibrantly alive. I’m talking about doing the thing you were born to do. Being your greatest self is the gift you give to the world. Not being your greatest self deprives the world of what you are here to give. There’s nothing sexy or glamorous about that.
Possessing these traits is more than believing that there is enough to go around. Here is an analogy:
People living in scarcity see the cup as half empty.
People who are positive thinkers see the cup as half full.
People living abundantly see the cup as overflowing.
But people Living into their Greatness ARE the cup.
What’s keeping you from seeing yourself as “The Cup”?
@Perry: Seems your first comment got munched on a little by Akismet but I’ve salvaged it.
Thank you again for taking the time to comment. It’s wonderful to find WAHD’s amongst our freelance community. I’m looking forward to your post and hope to get to know you better.
@Kimberlee: It sure is tough to balance. I think, because we work from home, it is too easy to blur the lines. It is easy to spend more time ‘working’ than playing because the work is always right there.
Some freelancers recommend setting official business hours and putting a closed sign on their office door to remind them of those hours. It’s not realistic for me (and I suspect most writers) because I need to work when the energy for it is high. But it does mean I have to be more conscious of the time I spend amongst the family.
On thing I’ve found, is the more time I spend doing things like housework and spending time with the kids the more energy, enthusiasm, and inspiration I have for my work.
Speaking of ‘Craving Balance’, my friend and favorite life coach, Lisa Gates launched her “Craving Balance Learning Community“. If you’ve been struggling with the juggling act you’ll love this community. If you join up make sure you friend me there.
Rebecca Laffar-Smith shares: A Time To Be Thankful
Great article! I work a full-time job, am a husband, father of three and write freelance. When the Mrs. and I decided that it was time for her to commit to being at home with the children I was working a lot of freelance hours in addition to my full-time job. When that freelance work in my current profession dried up I had to get creative and have been working as a writer to supplement my full-time income.
It definitely isn’t easy and thankfully I have a job which has decent amount of downtime and allows me to write during those quieter moments. I’m not an extremely organized individual, but I’m working on keeping better lists and I have a wonderful wife who really supports me and enables me to work and write. Also, my children are all in school during the day so I do the majority of my writing then and at night when they’re asleep. I’m still finding my routine, but articles like this help me stay focused on becoming more efficient.
Yay! Another Writer-Dad. Thank you for adding your thoughts Tshaka. I think ‘efficiency’ is something we all continue to work at. I know I’ve been creating more systems and routines and altering existing ones as the family dynamic grows and changes. As children get older they take on more responsibility around the home and the way we interact changes too.
Like you, I get a lot of my work done when they’re at school or after they’re in bed at night. Sometimes, routines seem to find me rather than the other way around. I’ve found I naturally seem to do more around the house in the morning and find my desk later in the day.
I love reading about what others are doing to work despite challenges of children, family, or even disability. It helps us put perspective on our own situation and to realize, we can do anything with the right commitment to purpose.
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