Meg Waite Clayton
Thanks to author, and Escape guest, Meg Waite Clayton for contributing this post.
The story of my writing starts with a ubiquitous Mom Tool: a little brown paper lunch bag, the kind my sons took their sandwiches and Oreo cookies to school in whenever they’d left their plastic Power Rangers lunch boxes behind the day before. I’ve been raising children all the years I’ve been writing, as the Wednesday Sisters in my novel do. But the lunchbag that started my writing career wasn’t being filled with peanut butter and jelly (Chris’s favorite, but Nick says “yuck”). Rather, it was being emptied over a table at which sixteen aspiring writers gathered to learn the craft.
“Writers write,” the teacher, author Jennifer Allen, informed us. And she directed us to pick one of the interesting things that spilled from lunch bag to table, and write for five minutes – just five – about whatever it brought to mind.
Where were my children in this picture? The-child-who-was-to-be-Nick was with me in the form the telltale six-months-pregnant-tummy bulge. But Chris was at home with a sitter.
Bad mother! Yes: guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt. I was leaving my child with someone else to do something for myself?
But this was my Dream, to be a novelist. My Dream with a capital D. That one thing I’d wanted to do ever since I was ten, the thing I’d left the practice of law to do. Isn’t a dream worth a few hours of sitter-time on a Wednesday afternoon?
Of course, few dreams are reachable solely on two hours of class time each week. And with late-pregnancy non-sleep and new-baby no-sleep, getting up early to write wasn’t always an option. So I became a master of fitting writing time in whenever it presented itself. I began writing in many of the same places my fictional moms in The Wednesday Sistersdo: at the steering wheel of my car in the preschool parking lot after drop-off any time Nick fell asleep in his car seat; nestling with my two sons – and my beloved laptop – while they watched Barnie or Sesame Street.
As my sons got just a little older, I had a secret weapon the Wednesday Sisters never did: Chuck E Cheese. It’s an impossibly loud place, it’s true, but my children could play happily (ecstatically!) in a place they could not leave without my little matching wrist band. And I could write, sometimes for hours at a stretch. It’s amazing how much high volume noise you can ignore if you really want to write.
I remember the guilty pleasure when my youngest started preschool: three hours of uninterrupted writing time three days a week! Yes, there were a million things to do (laundry, grocery shopping…), but by then, none of those was important to me as my writing. Let’s see, do I want to be known for my clean and lovely house, or for my clean and lovely prose?
I claimed the time for myself, declared it sacred, sat down to write the minute I got home from morning drop off and did not so much as answer the phone until pick-up time – although I did listen to the answering machine, just in case something had happened at school. And it turns out kids – or young ones, anyway – like doing all the things I think are drudge: folding laundry or sweeping floors or going to the grocery store. If it takes a little longer with their “help,” well, it’s quality time with my kids.
Did I still bring cupcakes to class on my sons’ birthdays, and even do the occasional field trips drive or costume sewing circle? Yes, of course. But I also developed a talent for saying “no” to most of those other “opportunities” moms (but, oddly, seldom dads – what’s with that?) feel compelled to give their precious few spare minutes to: heading the PTA, say, or organizing the end-of-year party. I learned to take the easy route, sending Oreos in when it was my son’s day for bringing cookies, providing the much-needed paper plates or cups for the party rather than the homemade snacks, donating cash instead of time when that was a choice. The fact that I wasn’t making money as a writer, I decided, shouldn’t make it any less important an avocation as practicing law had been, and I certainly would never have told a client I couldn’t be at a meeting because I had a hundred and thirty-two cookies to make for the Holiday Sing-Along.
Have I felt my fair share of guilt over the years? To be honest, I even got over feeling selfish for claiming time and the occasional babysitter dollars for myself. It’s nearly impossible to find time in a manic mommy life for our own dreams – whatever they may be – without doing so. Writers write. People who reach their dreams do so by reaching, and it takes time to reach. And even my own homemade-cookie-baking mom will tell you a happy mom is a better mom.
And, really, can you make a homemade cookie that is half as fun as twisting that Oreo open and licking the cream out first?
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9 Responses to Guest post: When mom writes a book
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I, too, am venturing into writing as a possible profession one day. I found that I enjoy writing more than any of my degrees that I have been educated in. You never know where life, and your passions take you! I applaud your desire to meet your goals and enjoy your newly found passion! And I look forward to meeting you on the Escape!
Wow that post spoke to me on every level. I am pursuing a career in Voice Acting, and I have felt endlessly guilty over not seeing my kids two nights a week as I left for acting class. However, a Dream is worth a little mommy guilt. After all, a happy mommy is a better mommy, and if I continued to have my existence be solely my soul-crushing job as a software engineer by day, and my kids’ caretaker by night, I would lose myself completely in a sea of depression.
Thank you so much for this post. It is good to know that I am not the only “selfish” mommy out there who is cashing in some mommy points to go after a Dream!
>a Dream is worth a little mommy guilt.
Amen, Amy! I really do think reaching for our dreams makes us better moms, not worse.
And I’ll look forward to meeting you, too, Cara!
My life motto is ‘continued growth’ – don’t sit on the sideline and watch life pass you by. It’s so much more fun to live it!
Listening to the podcast I have felt a little guilt for having my son always buy hot lunch… I don’t remember anyone bringing lunch in the 90′s though. I’m going to get other this and not let myself feel guilty
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Can wait to meet everyone next week, Mari
Thanks so much for an inspiring post. I especially appreciated when you said you claimed the time when your youngest started preschool and made it sacred to your goal. I work from home and get so distracted sometimes – what a great reminder to keep my focus on my dream and not on the chaos surrounding me!
>I work from home and get so distracted sometimes
It is so easy to. For me, it’s a bit like opening the Halloween candy before Halloween: if I don’t allow myself the possibility of anyone or anything intruding on my writing time, I write. But if I open that bag even for just one tiny little piece of non-writing chore, the whole bag is gone before I know it.
For better or worse, the dusting and bill-paying does wait for me.
Your words, approach & experiences couldn’t have been timed more perfectly for me and ever since I read them they keep poping up in my brain.
I began a couple weeks ago implementing a similar approach to gain just a bit of regular mommy mojo/free time. Now I want to expand my approach by really blocking out all the to-do’s and thoughts of responsibilities during those me moments. But I can’t help but wonder what you do with all those thoughts that pop up as your writing. The thoughts about needing to…. coordinate carpool, buying that birthday gift, write the note out for school, search for that lost item, etc. Those all flow into my brain every time I take time for myself. One leads to the next and the next and before I know it I’ve stepped away from me time and am doing parenting tasks again. Then I feel deflated because I didn’t really apply myself to the me time, my me time is over and my list of to-do’s is even longer and will never be complete. It’s so disheartening.
So how do you really not interrupt your writing time? What skills or tactics do you use?
>One leads to the next and the next and before I know it I’ve stepped away from me time and am doing parenting tasks again.
For me, the trick is to never allow myself to step away. It was hard to do at first, but like all things, practice helps. I do listen to the answering machine just in case one of my sons needs me on an emergency basis, but beyond that, I simply don’t allow myself to get up from the chair. Well … except for chocolate.
I should say one of the things I did when I started – because I started writing after leaving the practice of law – was ask myself what one of my clients would have thought if I’d ever said their billion deal contract would have to wait while I, say, did the laundry or bought Cheereos. I tried hard to push back thoughts that a “job” I was making no money at made it less than a job I was paid well for. Writing even still – with some measure of success now – doesn’t pay as much as practicing law did. But that certainly doesn’t make it a less worthy calling.