Category Archives: Writing

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Ditch the Prologue (For Now)

Writing

Writing (Photo credit: jjpacres)

In January, I wrote about my quandary over whether I should keep the prologue of my middle grade novel or scrap it. (Read that post here.) At the time, I decided it could stay. After all, the very literary agent and author who brought this issue to my attention read the opening of my book and said it was a strong start. I figured it would be silly to mess with a sure thing.

Content with my decision, I honed my query letter to a quirky perfection and sent it out to the masses. I received rejections, which I expected. What discouraged me, however, was the number of agents who did not respond at all. It’s normal to a point, even for agents to throw away SASE’s, but even the agents who invited writers to query again if there was no response didn’t respond to my reminders.

It’s hard to face the truth sometimes, especially when it meant that the book I’d poured myself into for ten-plus years didn’t even merit a “no, thank you.” And I did everything I was supposed to, following submission guidelines to a T, never sending attachments, the whole bit. The only thing that left was the story itself: something had to be wrong with it.

I mulled over this issue a lot but felt too discouraged to sit down and make any more changes. And I’ve been busy, too. But while I’ve gone about my life, the whole prologue or not issue has continued to percolate. You see, when I first wrote the book, there was no prologue, so I should be able to go back and just cut it out, right?   But the thing my readers liked when I added the prologue was that is answered some of their questions while still keeping the characters in the dark. My problem became: if I go back to starting with Chapter One, how will I keep my readers happy? I don’t want to bog the story down with too much background information up front. Prologues are great for plunging readers into the world of the story. On the flip side, they’re notorious for hiding very tedious first chapters.

I’ve considered my favorite books and the methods their authors employ. Michael Crichton’s books often have introductions as well as prologues, sometimes involving characters that don’t appear at all in the greater book. They do pack an early punch, but he had a knack for introducing facts in a way that don’t interrupt the story. Now, I am no Michael Crichton, so I should probably not write a prologue just because he did.

Stephenie Meyer, author of The Twilight Saga Collection, also uses prologues, and although I love her books, I can see how her prologues are literary devices, meant to pull readers in. To be honest, I read them but immediately forgot about them. They are poor teasers that really do not add to the story.

When put in that light, I suppose prologues are somewhat expendable. Or even if they’re not, people may read them as such. I don’t want to turn off an agent by having the word “Prologue” at the beginning of my novel.   Which is where Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Book 1) comes in. Often, prologues pre-date the story with an important bit of backstory, so when this particular book opens ten years before the rest of the book, it could easily be labeled a prologue – yet author J.K. Rowling calls it “Chapter One” instead. This makes a difference, although it’s a subtle one: by calling it the first chapter, I think that Rowling makes a statement about how readers should approach the story. In essence, she says, “Listen up! The story is starting.”

Hmm… I wonder if this works on literary agents, too.

Of course, it doesn’t mean I’m going to simply change “Prologue” to “Chapter One” in my own book and have done with it. There are still some prologue-y things about it that need to change, which include making a smooth transition into the next chapter, along with spreading out any possible info dumping to make it more palatable. I have my work cut out for me. But after letting my novel sit so long, I think I am ready to make these difficult changes and send it out again. Maybe it will grab someone’s attention this time.

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What Comes After NaNoWriMo? (One Year Later)

Okay, Wrimos, did you finish? This time last year, I thought you all were crazy. Either that, or you had a lot of time on your hands, not to mention a good dose of stick-to-it-ive-ness. In fact, I blogged about it (read it here), asking for participants’ feedback, and what I heard was intriguing. Not enough to make me want to sign up but still intriguing.

If you had told me that I, too, would sign up this year, I would have laughed and thought, When? How could I possibly think I would have the time? Actually, I would have thought that two months ago. And even after I had my initial spark of inspiration and figured I might as well take the plunge – otherwise, when else would I ever have the courage? – I still didn’t think that I would finish. If you’re a regular reader, you know that I hit 50,000 words on day 14 (read about that here), and since then, I’ve continued plugging away.

Like I said last year, November is a busy month, and this year was no exception. Actually, I think it was a little busier. It’s been an emotional month, too. The thing about NaNo and how it intersects with life is that life will never stop and be turbulence-free just because you have something to do. Or maybe I’m just speaking for myself, but I have the feeling it’s like that for most everyone. I signed up, not because I thought that I would write the next bestseller (although I wouldn’t complain if I did) but because my life is not complete without writing fiction, and even though it can look very boring and passive to someone watching me while I work, it gives me an outlet – and makes me a happier person when I can pour my soul out through a fictional character. It can be lonely, but it can also be the safest way to meet and interact with new people, if you’re an introvert like me.

I know some non-writers will get done reading that and think, Yep, she’s crazy. She lost it somewhere back in October. I suppose I did, and I’m glad of it. To answer my own question from last year, what comes next is that I finish my book. My personal goal (after hitting 50,000 words) was to make it to 80,000 by the end of the month. I did, and I’m still nowhere close to the end. So my new goal is to write until it’s finished. It will be crap, I know, but then I can begin chipping or hacking away until something like the story it’s meant to be begins to take shape.

My biggest incentive for this is that CreateSpace is offering two free copies of every NaNoWriMo winner’s novel (check it out), and I have until the end of June to place my order. I think that’s enough time to finish it and edit – maybe even ask a couple of my awesome reader friends for some honest feedback.

Another thing that I didn’t know until I browsed nanowrimo.org is that there have been some pretty well-known novels that were published after the authors wrote them during NaNoWriMo. They include Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants: A Novel, Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus, and Hugh Howey’s Wool. When I read The Night Circus earlier this year, I was impressed with how well the author handled the story jumping back and forth in time. I aspire to write like that, but I can promise you that her first draft wasn’t nearly so fluid. It seems like there could be some hope for me, after all.

So with November gone and another busy month ahead of me, I can not only say that I have absolutely no regrets, but it was the best writing decision I have ever made. I have no idea what next November will bring, but my writing high from the last 30 days could easily last until then, anyway.

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How to Write 50,000 Words in 14 Days

Writing

Writing (Photo credit: jjpacres)

Wait a minute – you thought that the goal of NaNoWriMo was to write 50,000 words in the month of November, which last you checked still has 30 days, not 14. And if you thought that, you’re absolutely right. When I decided, on a whim, to participate in NaNo this year, I thought that there was no way I would be able to write so much. To stay ahead of the game, it’s smart to write 2000 words a day. That’s a lot. Sometimes, in the throes of a brainwave, I’ve written that much, but could I keep it up for an entire month? And I know me: if I say I’m going to do something, I will pretty much kill myself to get it done.

NaNoWriMo must have been created for the writers with too much time on their hands, and they just needed a project like this to challenge them and add some spice to their lives. Writing a 50,000-word novel in a month should be a cinch for them, right? Except that I don’t believe these mythical writers actually exist. For argument’s sake, however, wouldn’t it be easier for this kind of writer than it is for me – a busy, semi-working mom of two – to write a novel in the space of a month?

In fact, I believe that simply having the skills and the time are not enough to get the job done here. I scoffed when I heard people talk about NaNoWriMo last year. I thought they were crazy, and I never saw myself participating in anything like this. It just spelled failure, something that I didn’t want to sign up for. Of course, I was the tired mom of an infant and a preschooler, and my creative side was just plain drained. I did muster my energy for some editing, but that’s much more a perfecting process with a little creativity on the side.

And that was the problem: I did not have the enthusiasm or the motivation to do it. I was not inspired.

Above everything else I did in the first 14 days of the month that allowed me to reach my goal early – even above carrying my laptop with me everywhere and typing every spare second – inspiration is what has carried me through, what has made it possible for me to write ridiculous amounts every day. And the inspiration didn’t hit me until October.

I’ve read interviews of famous authors, in which they talk about what kind of music (if any) helps them write. I’ve read them try to explain where they get the impetus to write, which is nearly impossible to explain.  I’ve read acknowledgements in novels that thank a particular rock band or attribute the desire to write to a favorite author. And it’s a combination of these and other artistic expressions that I believe form my own creative sustenance, as well as theirs.

One night years ago, Thomas and I left the theatre after a movie, and a new scene for my novel du jour popped into my head. Vivid enough that I can still remember it today, I could not wait to get home and get it on paper. At that moment, jotting down the teenaged boy climbing a tree outside his friend’s window and throwing rocks until she appeared was my top priority. And you know what movie it was that inspired this? X-Men. Yes, X-Men. Were my characters mutants? No, although there were sci-fi elements to my story because that’s just how I roll.

All that to say that the things that inspire me, as well as other writers, don’t have to have anything to do with the plot or the characters. They don’t have to make sense to anyone else, after all. There are songs that have done this for me, too, songs that I’ve listened to again and again because they evoked a particular scene every time I heard them. When I was a kid, I had a couple books filled with famous angel art that I flipped through when I needed an idea.

These other artists’ modes of expression become my mantra when I need them. It drives my husband crazy because that often means seeing the same movie or hearing the same song again and again, but it’s the method to my writing madness.

So in October I decided to go out on a limb and watch a movie that I had little hope for. It was based on a book I’d read and loved – the kind that kept me up until one or two in the morning a couple nights in a row. Not only was I pleasantly surprised with the movie version, but it reawakened that spark within me. Part of it, I think, was nostalgia, considering I’d enjoyed the book so much. But another part of it was a yearning from my creative side, which hadn’t been very active in a while. The problem I faced was that while I wanted to write, I wanted to write something new. I did nothing about it, though, just a whole lot of wanting.

And then two days before NaNo, I got a tiny glimpse into a new character that made me think I could actually do this thing. It snowballed from there. I’m glad I didn’t have to wait longer than two days because the scenes building in my head all but overflowed onto the page on November first. I wrote over 4700 words, and although I didn’t keep up that kind of pace, I stayed inspired. I kept watching the movie that gave me that initial excitement about writing again, and my new story kept playing itself out in my head.

One of the first bits of advice I received about conquering the 50,000-word requirement was to write a thorough chapter-by-chapter outline. I suppose this helps people add flesh to the skeletons of their stories, but to me, instead of being natural, it’s more of a Frankenstein’s monster kind of thing. In my experience, detailed outlines are the best way to kill creativity. They’re also very presumptuous. Authors who are scared or new to the craft use them because they want to control their novels. And believe me, I am a control freak. Having a guide is important. I write notes about what I would like to have in my story and where it’s important to introduce new characters and plot twists. But formal outlines that bind the story and leave it no room to grow are the best way to kill your creativity.

This time, I’ve let myself get quite carried away on wave after wave of inspiration. Completely open to whatever may happen next, I write scenes as they come to me. Sure, there are many places where the narrative jumps around with absolutely no transition, but at this point, I’m not worried about making it pretty so much as just making it.

The wonderful thing about allowing myself this kind of freedom with my writing is that it’s taken me unexpected places. Last Sunday night, a new scene barged in on me when I thought I was going to have a nice, relaxing 2000-word kind of night. This scene included new characters I’d never met and a circumstance that I certainly didn’t expect. It turned into a 9300-word writing fever – all in one sitting. I finally forced myself to go to bed. And I was amazed that it wasn’t nearly as late as I feared it would be. In the midst of that kind of outpouring, it doesn’t take as long to be productive as when you’re stuck trying to breathe life into a pre-determined plot point.

I’ve heard from other NaNo-ers that week two is when you need pep talks because there’s apparently a slump. There actually was one night this past week when I didn’t even type 1500 words. I am slowing down a little and having to fill in those transitional scenes that have put so many of my stories into comas. Still, I managed to pass the 50,000-word threshold at the end of the dreaded second week. I have the feeling this novel will be well over 100,000 words (at least before I take out the ax, that is), and now is not the time to sit back and think, Well, I reached the official goal, so now I can relax. I will finish my book. I will write through the dead spots. I will keep enjoying my inspirational cues, however they happen, until I get the job done.

I think I’ve said enough about process for now. It’s time to take a ride with my story.

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Let’s Just Call Them “Crappy” First Drafts

"Writing", 22 November 2008

Writing (Photo credit: ed_needs_a_bicycle)

When I read Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life earlier this year, I found a plethora of writing truths in that amazing book. Not the least of which is how she describes stories’ first drafts. Now, I want this to be a family friendly blog, so I am just going to paraphrase and call them “crappy” first drafts. But I think you get the idea. And Lamott is absolutely right.

I don’t want to let the wind out of your sails, particularly if you’re enjoying NaNoWriMo like I am right now, but what we’re writing – what we always write the first time around – is full of all kinds of garbage that should be burned on the cutting room floor. And good riddance. But that doesn’t mean this material doesn’t have its place.

I have said before that I am terrible about starting a new story but then losing my enthusiasm and fizzling out. I have many half-written novels that may never see the light of day. NaNoWriMo presents quite a different challenge, one that has forced me to be productive in a way I never thought possible.

When I started last Friday, I had about a page of notes jotted down and several fully-formed scenes already bouncing around my head. Although one piece of NaNo advice that I read was to write a chapter-by-chapter outline of the whole book, I am not a big fan of giving myself such restrictions. Instead, what I did that first day was to write at least a portion of each of the scenes that were so vivid in my mind. Each received a brief, descriptive subtitle, which I’ll delete when I fill in all the scenes in between, and as I wrote, the shape of the story began to develop. Anything I was afraid I would forget I jotted in my notes.

Then, after the first three days or so, during which I typed like mad and had to force myself to go to bed every night, I hit my first challenge: writing those in between scenes. These connect the major events of my story and include many details that are important for me, the author, but probably aren’t fun for people to read. These expositional outpourings are a big part of what make first drafts so awful.

I can’t tell you how many times my characters turn and look at each other, shrug, smile, and have awkward little pauses – made even more awkward by the fact that I wrote them to begin with. But as one friend pointed out to me, the important part about NaNoWriMo is writing. It’s getting the words on the page. Editing has its place, but that’s when the whole story is out.

The whole purpose of NaNoWriMo is to write through the times when we would usually give up; get the entire first draft out, as crappy as it may be. Going back and looking over it may be painful, but it’s good to remember that

you don’t care about those first three pages; those you will throw out, those you needed to write to get to that fourth page, to get to that one long paragraph that was what you had in mind when you started, only you didn’t know that, couldn’t know that, until you got to it. And the story begins to materialize, and another thing is happening, which is that you are learning what you aren’t writing, and this is helping you to find out what you are writing. (Lamott, 9)

So far, at the beginning of day eight, I have written about 22,600 words. I remember when I blogged last week, I had little hope of even getting this far just because such concentrated writing was a new and intimidating experience for me. But knowing that I have only one month to complete my task has lit a fire under me that – even as a very self-motivated person – I’ve never been able to get myself to do. And it doesn’t hurt that self-publisher Create Space is offering two free, printed copies of novels for all NaNoWriMo winners. I have the feeling my novel is going to well exceed the 50,000-word requirement to finish, so my goal is to actually make it through my whole book, no matter how many more words it takes. Then, I’ll take a deep breath and read it. I’m sure I will cringe a lot and pull out my ax. Because even if every first draft is a crappy one, I would like to at least have something a little more respectable in print, even if I decide to hide it in a drawer forever.

So if you’re writing and feeling discouraged, if you know that the scene that gets you from point A to point B is really rough and will need fine-tuning in the future, write it anyway. And if you still feel doubtful, I’ll leave you with more wise words from Anne Lamott: “The first draft is the child’s draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later” (22).

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It’s November. . . Do You Know Where Your Story Is?

The setup for NaNoWriMo at home, if I need to ...

NaNoWriMo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve lived through a little bit of a fiction drought lately. For months, the only new thing I’ve written is a bit of flash fiction for a writing contest. I queried agents until I was sick of it and did a lot of editing. Plus, I’ve been busy running the freelance circuit. So when I saw that it was time for another blog, and it was also November first, it seemed like the perfect time to write a list of excuses for why I can’t participate in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and solicit tips from anyone daring enough to try.

It made me feel like a coward, the idea of acknowledging that I was going to sit around while other people worked really hard to do the seemingly impossible. But November is a busy month. My elder son’s birthday is during the first week, and since my younger son has his birthday in December, I’ll throw a party for both of them halfway between. Plus, there’s Thanksgiving, Christmas shopping, and life in general. When both of the kids are in school in a couple years– that’s when I’ll finally be able to do it. Except that there’s no guarantee that things will be any less busy then.

Aside from my schedule, there’s also the problem of starting and finishing a novel in one month. Well, I mean, the idea can come before November first, but no writing. The problem for me is that when an idea strikes, I have to get it down pronto, or it’s gone. So if I had the best opening scene ever, but it came to me in August, would I be able to memorize it and wait until November to actually produce it? Or would I go ahead and write and hope that another story idea might strike closer to the starting date?

As it happens, sometimes inspiration does strike right when I need it. Remember the flash fiction I mentioned at the beginning? Well, I saw a contest for flash fiction a few weeks ago, and although it seemed impossible for me to write an entire story in 750 words or less, I decided it was worth a try. Aside from the challenge of cramming my usually novel-length stories into such a small space, where would the story come from? And just like that, a story popped into my head. I wrote it, edited it a few times, and submitted it the next day.

So as all these doubts about NaNoWriMo flitted through my head – as I remembered how fun it is to sink my teeth into a new story – as I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and considered rubbing coconut oil on my vitiligo-afflicted arms – I remembered something. I remembered seeing a teenager whose vitiligo was much worse than mine, and I wondered how my self-confidence would have suffered if my arms had been covered with white splotches when I was a teen. Hmm. Well, it happens that I love writing young adult fiction, and with NaNoWriMo only a few days away, I had the perfect opportunity to explore a character with just such a problem.

Can books be born from a single character? Absolutely, they can. The first novel that I ever finished started just that way, although it took me eight months to write the first draft, not one.

Oh well. I decided to take the plunge, anyway. My husband thinks I’m nuts. He probably assumes I will suffer from severe lack of sleep and shortness of temper this month, but I’m sticking to my work-at-home covenant. I doubt I’ll reach the 50,000-word mark by the thirtieth, but I’ll never know unless I try, right? I’m just excited to have a new story to write, and it’s something I plan to continue enjoying through the next year.

So will you take the plunge with me? Yeah, the water’s freezing, but I’ve heard it’s not so bad once you’ve swum around for a while.

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Are You Happy with Your Child’s Education?

education

education (Photo credit: Sean MacEntee)

The three R’s: reading, writing, and arithmetic. Well, okay, only one of them starts with an “R,” but you get it. These are the basic skills that every child should carry away after twelve-plus years in school, right? But I’m not so sure that they’re touted or taught as much as they should be anymore. Okay, you know what? I know they’re not.

I have a friend who is a retired English teacher, and her grandson needed a little help on his essay for his college application. I don’t know what prompted him to ask her for help. After all, he’d already had a conference with his English teacher about his essay, and she signed off on it. Thank goodness something told him it wasn’t quite right. My friend was shocked when she read it. “Now, it’s not an AP English class,” she said, as if that should excuse it.

I don’t care what kind of English class it is: if you’re preparing high school seniors for entrance into college, they should at least be able to write a solid essay. His was full of platitudes and clichés. After the opening sentence, there was nothing original in it, certainly nothing that would make him stand out as exceptional. He’s a bright kid, full of excitement and energy, which he should have been able to impart – and which his teacher should have encouraged. Yet it was his grandmother’s guidance that finally helped him write a great essay.

So I’ve been mulling over that, wondering where the problem lies. I remember my first college writing course, where everyone was a freshman, and at seventeen, I was the youngest by at least a year. A week or so in, my teacher grew so frustrated with how ignorant most of the class was that she gave us a quiz on basic things that every American high school graduate should know, and not just limited to writing. Questions from the names of certain presidents to the years of the Civil War to what the color white symbolizes in our culture and on and on – and the majority of students failed. I looked around, wondering what in the world was wrong with my classmates. What made me different?

I majored in English, and many people assumed that that meant I was going to teach English. That never made sense to me; if I wanted to teach, I would have gotten a degree in education because there’s a lot more to running a classroom than knowing how to punctuate properly. In any case, I had many fellow English major classmates who planned to do just that. One girl, who was very sweet and wrote compelling stories, could not spell or punctuate her way out of a paper bag. And she told me proudly in her last semester that she had already been hired as an English teacher for the next year in a local high school. I cringed and told myself that I would never send whatever future children I had to that school.

Now, if you are a teacher, before you get your panties in a wad, I do understand that there are a great many of you who are excellent at what you do. Your vocation truly is a calling, and many children are blessed to have you in their lives. Some of you are in my family, and I know you have great gifts. You can’t help it that some of your peers have no business working alongside you.

Nor do I think this problem is only in public schools in troubled neighborhoods. There are plenty of charter or private schools or public schools with very active PTAs who turn kids out into a world for which they are grossly under-prepared. My son attends an excellent independent school, where he gets lots of individual attention, but some of the other parents assume that if they’re paying so much for their children’s educations, they don’t need to do anything at home.

It’s complacency that we’re fighting here, folks. Although the schools that hire the unqualified teachers and the schools that gave them their sub-par education to begin with share a lot of the blame, education has to start at home. Think about the days before school was compulsory. Read some of the writings of people in our nation’s infancy. These were people who had to help their parents run a farm or a general store, but those same parents knew that, if nothing else, their children had to be able to read, write, and know at least the basics of math to get by in the world. Think about Abraham Lincoln, who had little opportunity for a formal education. Yet every child in the US now has access to full-time education, and more of them than ever are leaving the system ill-prepared for the most basic tasks.

As a writer, it is painful for me to see how poorly other people write. Shouldn’t this be one of the first things we learn? Why are we bothering with all these ridiculous standardized tests, when the focus should be elsewhere? I take on a number of paid projects (which I appreciate, don’t get me wrong) that anyone with a high school diploma should be able to accomplish. And as a bookkeeper, the math end of it bothers me, too. When I go to the store and owe $19.26, then pay $20.26 so I can get a one-dollar bill back, you would be surprised at how many cashiers scratch their heads. Really? This is about as easy as it gets. What would they do if their cash registers broke?

So this has turned into a rant. Sorry about that, but I am passionate about raising a nation of competent people. You may be wondering if I’m going to go on all day or if I might actually have some practical solutions. Well, I do. If you care as much as I do, read on.

• Read to your kids. This isn’t hard. Even for busy, working parents, picking a short book to read before bed every night is an easy habit to get into and one that brings the whole family together, even if only for five minutes.

• Read road signs. Even if your child just knows the basics of the alphabet, it will be a fun game to find every letter A or B or Q on the way to and from wherever it is you have to go.

• Write with your children. It is never too early to teach grammar, punctuation, and syntax. My kindergartener can write simple sentences. He has a few sight words that he already knows. For instance, he can write “I see a” and then sound out the rest. Last night he wrote, “I see a truck,” and we sounded out “truck” together. Once little things like these click, you will be surprised how quickly they pick up the rest. And when they succeed at something, they enjoy doing it.

• Teach your kids how to count money. I do this with my son when he has his own money and wants to buy something. It’s also a great lesson for when your kids have a little spending money and need to learn limits. Show them how to read price tags and figure out what they can afford.

• Volunteer in a local school. This is a great one because anyone can do it. You may not have kids, or your kids may be grown and out of the house. Wherever you live, I am sure there is a local school full of kids who are hungry for that one-on-one attention. Just giving emotional support can help boost their performance in class, and then you can move on to the academics.

•Check out Starfall.com. I absolutely love this site, and your kids will think they’re just playing computer games. It has everything: colors, numbers, letters, vowels, spelling games, and all sorts of activities that teachers use in the classroom. And unlike a lot of pre-school sites, you don’t have to pay to use it. If you buy a year-long subscription, you will have access to more, but there’s plenty to do there for free.

• For older kids, encourage them to start a writer’s group. And this isn’t just for future writers. I grew up with a kid who thought it was fun to research and write about different countries. That was his thing. He was interested in different cultures, so although he wasn’t writing for the sake of writing, he wrote because it was about something that interested him. They could focus on reptiles or earth science or even sports. Then have a parent or older friend read over the reports or stories to give constructive criticism. And guess what? There are excellent publications written for and by kids out there. They can submit their writings or art Highlights (any age) or CRICKET Magazine (age 14 and up). Think of the boost it would give your child to see his or her hard work printed in an actual magazine.

See? It’s not all negative after all. But if we don’t take these small steps to encourage our kids, we’re letting them down, and they’ll miss so much. Don’t sit back and wait for school to do its magic – the magic begins with a little push from you.

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The Work-at-Home Covenant

Working mom

Working mom (Photo credit: rankun76)

I’ve been working on an article about the balance between being home with kids and trying to work at the same time. I think this is something that needs to be addressed for frustrated moms out there (like yours truly) who sometimes feel helplessly at sea. But it seems like the articles already out there fall into one of two categories: advice from people who clearly don’t have kids (or are empty nesters and have forgotten) or are written by frustrated moms who just need a friendly reader to commiserate.

Yet there are successful work-at-home moms who make it look so easy. I’m sure it’s not rainbows and unicorns for them all the time, but they’ve turned their time at home and considerable talents into profitable careers. J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone while she was out of work and a single mom. Madeleine L’Engle stayed at home and wrote, even during a decade-long drought, in which she worried she would never be published again.

So while I’ve wrestled with my own situation (which is more often work-on-the-go than from home), I’ve tried to piece together what I do that works and what doesn’t, aspiring to be as successful as one of these greats. And it was actually my son who made me realize what the most important aspect is. It was a truth that’s glared at me for months, but sometimes it takes the brutal, innocent honesty of a child to bring it home.

Granted, it was a rough week for us. My husband was gone for five days, something that only happens a couple times a year, if that. I really admire single moms, military wives, and other women whose spouses travel frequently. We made it, but it wasn’t pretty. I cook most of our meals from scratch, and Thomas often takes the boys outside to play while I cook. Or he helps me in the kitchen. On my own, my kids ate a lot of chicken nuggets, I’m afraid, and I rarely got to eat before they were done. Chores went unfinished, and my temper got shorter and shorter: there just wasn’t time for me to do what I needed and sleep and play with my kids. And we’re talking bare minimum here. Forget reading a book or doing anything fun for me.

One night, after getting the little guy down, I sat at the table with my laptop, writing an article. And my elder son came to me and asked for something. I am ashamed to say I don’t remember what it was – I was barely paying attention then, immersed as I was in my work. What did catch my attention, though, was what he said next: “Mom, sometimes you’re not very fun. You don’t spend enough time with us.” I stand condemned.

No matter how many hours my husband works, he gives our kids one-on-one (or one-on-two) time when we’re together. The boys eat it up. They crave time with their daddy and miss him when he’s gone. The way things have been going, I wonder if the boys feel the same way about me. Something has to change. I don’t want to look back over my mothering years and realize I missed a number of small, meaningful moments while I wrote another article.

Last week was an exception, but it’s no excuse. I’ve had too many days recently in which I allowed myself to become a passenger in my own life – a passenger who barely even looked out at the scenery. And it’s my life. If I am imprisoned by my choice of lifestyle, I can only blame myself because I am the warden and hold the keys.

Because freelancing is so open – so “free” – it’s easy to get swept away in the current of work and never stop. And since there are no paid vacation days, no sick leave, and I don’t make a salary while I apply for jobs that may or may not come to fruition, I sometimes feel an almost self-denying need to write while everyone else takes time off. The idea that I could squeeze in full workdays every weekend was seductive. With no need to rush out the door for school and with most of my other chores finished during the week, I could just sit around and write all day – and let Thomas deal with the kids. First of all, that’s not fair to him, and it makes me unavailable to all three of them. Second, I ended every weekend looking back on everything I didn’t get done and feeling like I’d let everyone down. I’ve heard freelancers say to set a schedule, and the longer I’ve been at it, the more I agree. It doesn’t have to be nine to five (and in my case, it’s not going to be), but I do need some parameters. At some point, I need to say, This is my family’s time; writing can come later.

I have preached about this before – to others as well as myself. But for me, walking the talk is more than just saying, “I need to.” My almost immediate mental turn-around – the decision to not let my writing interfere with my family – was akin to other life choices I’ve made. These are things I’ve decided to do, no matter the cost, like nursing my babies for at least twelve months, getting up early to exercise on weekdays, and cutting wheat out of my diet. This was more than a simple decision but what I think of as a covenant with myself. I write because I love it, which means it should feed me, not starve me. The only way I can keep on writing is to protect myself and my family from freelancer’s burn out.

I implemented the plan this week. I wrote during the day, cutting myself off at supper time. I still checked e-mail, and if necessary, I wrote after the kids went to bed. But one of the reasons I’ve been so irritated lately is that, along with having little family time, I’ve had absolutely no me time, no time to recuperate. So I’ve made sure to only write sparingly at night, allowing myself a little time to read for the fun of it.

When I received three assignments with a tight deadline on Thursday, I met my first challenge. I either had to write them all on Friday, or I would break my promise and work through the weekend. So I stayed up a little later, finished the assignments, and when I woke up this morning, instead of heading straight to the laptop, I went into my younger son’s room and helped him build a train track.

This little bit of structure – of making myself accountable – has helped me be more productive than ever, believe it or not, and extra conscious of my family’s needs. Work-at-home moms have to decide what’s most important and tailor their lives to their particular covenants. That doesn’t mean there won’t be rough days or emergency writing assignments, but there will be something to answer to. All the other bits of practical advice I’m saving for my article are secondary to this. If we work-at-home moms can’t define the purpose of staying home – and I certainly hope it has something to do with spending more time with our families – why did we choose to be at home to begin with?

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The Rejection that I Really Needed

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Photo credit: Wikipedia

If you decide you’re going to be a writer, rejection is something you need to get used to early on. And it’s not just the newbies who find their inboxes full of metaphorical pink slips. Madeleine L’Engle, international bestseller, went through a ten-year slump, in which she thought she might have to give up on her career, before someone finally gave A Wrinkle in Time a chance. Especially after a run of success, rejection is hard to swallow, and that’s where I found myself last week.

My problem is that I am a planner to a fault. And I had a goal for how much money I wanted to earn last week, which was dependent on the number of articles that were accepted. I got past the halfway point with acceptance after acceptance, and I felt pretty good. I mean, I was writing about obscure things like foot valves – I didn’t have a clue what a foot valve was before I wrote that article – and getting paid for them. I began to have that indestructible, I’m-never-going-to-get-rejected-again feeling. And then you can guess what happened.

And it wasn’t something weird like the foot valve that did it. It was an article on treadmills. I used to run on a treadmill every day. I’m familiar with the super-fancy models they have in gyms, as well as the simpler models for home use. My instructions were specific about keyword phrases and how often to use them, and there was a website for reference. I followed all the instructions to a T, submitted the article. . . then waited. I waited longer than usual, then finally received an e-mail that it needed revisions. This worried me somewhat, but I figured I’d fix whatever I needed to fix, then have done with it. Except my instructions were that it was exactly not the kind of article the requester wanted. Well, I followed all of the instructions, so how else was I supposed to write it? Not only that, but she didn’t want me to edit the article. She wanted me to start from scratch. At that point, I’d already invested a couple hours of my time without being paid, and it wasn’t worth starting over – especially when the requester refused to send me specifics about what parts of the article didn’t work for her.

At that point, I was behind on my weekly goal, and unless I planned to stay up a couple hours later than usual to make up for it, I wasn’t going to be able to catch up. Now, my goal was ambitious, anyway, but that’s how I am. Instead of having a meltdown, however, which is what I tend to do when I can’t force things to go by the plan, I accepted it.

Looking back, I realize now that the pace I was keeping was liable to blow up in my face eventually, and the rejection actually saved me from what could have been much worse. I could have stuck to my goal, added to my sleep deficit, and lost my temper numerous times as I tried to cram thirty hours worth of work into a twenty-four hour day. Instead, I took some much-needed rest, read the novel I’ve been neglecting, and picked up a new project with a much friendlier deadline.

Rejections can be disappointing, yes, but they can also be freeing. Mine gave me perspective on the balance (or lack thereof) between my writing and personal life. That doesn’t mean I’m looking forward to the next one, but when it inevitably comes, it’ll probably be time for another wake up call, anyway.

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The Sock Graveyard

An argyle sock, knit using intarsia

Argyle Sock (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I know your secret. Oh, yes, I do. You don’t tell other people because they’ll think you’re crazy. I know you’ve been doing your laundry as usual, folding the clean clothes, but that one stubborn sock is missing its twin. Where is the stupid thing? Why, it’s one of a myriad of socks in the great sock mountain, probably underground, with a little hairless sock goblin perched on top. He’s got bulbous eyes, a wide mouth, and he’s currently rubbing his hands together in glee, croaking, “Mwuhahahaha.”

If you live in a house like mine, where there is a place for everything, even if everything isn’t always in that place, you’ll understand that odd socks just don’t belong. The sock drawers in our house have the socks neatly organized in pairs, or in my kids’ rooms, I just roll pairs together because I know that, otherwise, they’ll become hopelessly separated.

These odd socks, the ones that don’t belong, live in a sock graveyard. And where is the sock graveyard? Well, in my house, it’s in the laundry room. That’s right, those socks don’t ever have a chance of getting onto a foot, not while I’m on the case. I currently have four, one that belongs to my husband and three to my elder son. Now, I have a pretty good idea where those three little socks are, but that one poor, black dress sock? It’s been hanging out for months, wishing I would put it out of its misery already. Perhaps waiting for me to turn my back, and the little sock goblin will take it away to be with its brother.

But I’m smarter than that. I know that if I throw it away, either the matching sock will suddenly decide to come back from wherever it’s been, or another of Thomas’s black dress socks will have a hole or something, and then the joke’s on me.

Now, why is the full-time writer mom pining away about a few odd socks? Well, “mom” is a part of my title, right? And my job description does include laundry. But you know I’m going to tie it back to writing, like I always (well, like I frequently) do. If nothing else, the sock goblin makes a good story, right? It takes the socks and replaces them with those totally useless wire hangers that only serve to ruin my shirts.

But there’s more to it than that. Sometimes I get an idea on the road or while wrestling my toddler or when I’m desperately trying to fall asleep, and the only thing to do to get that idea to leave me alone is to jot it down. I have an entire folder on my hard drive that is full of these unfinished (or barely started) documents. Sometimes I’ll simply write a title, knowing that it will be enough to get me started when I finally have time to write the content. Sometimes I have a bullet list of points I don’t want to forget. They’re incomplete and would make absolutely no sense to anyone else. They’re so much clutter when I have more fruitful projects on the line. Yet they still belong. Throw them out, and I may lose something important. Wait long enough, and the story or article may bloom some day when I least expect it.

Little sock/idea goblin, I’m watching. I know you’re there, and I’m holding onto what I have for dear life.

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Back to School (Not So) Blues

Stress

Stress (Photo credit: Alan Cleaver)

My son went back to school on Tuesday, and I actually allowed my worries about getting back into the school routine to taint my last few days of summer break with unease. I wasn’t walking around in a funk, but I certainly did stress some. Part of that could be remembering the meltdown I had the day before Peter went back to school last year. And then there are all the questions. Can I get everything done in the mornings? How will my younger son behave without the distraction of his elder brother? Will my house ever be clean again? When will I read and write? Instead of looking forward to autumn, which is my favorite season, I focused on the little things that get under my skin.

I guess the problem is that my summer was just too good. I really enjoyed the freedom afforded me this year. I don’t remember a time when I’ve ever been so productive, as far as writing goes. I wanted to publish my latest story on Smashwords (I have another story, “Stranded,” published there already), and I did finish editing it right on schedule. But I decided to try my hand with the children’s literary magazine market instead. This is a new venture for me – and a new way to get rejected. Still, I figured it’s worth a shot. Maybe the story will end up on Smashwords anyway, just not as soon as planned. I also wrote blog content weeks in advance, something that I’ve missed this week. Plus, I loved the slightly later bedtime for everyone in the house. I found a nice rhythm of getting laundry done, cleaning the house, and cooking the majority of our meals from scratch. With things going so smoothly, the looming prospect of shaking everything up was daunting. “Disciplined” should be my middle name because I almost always have a plan for everything and generally stick to it. My problem is that when things don’t go as planned, I’m liable to have a conniption.

What I discovered this week, however, is that it’s kind of like what they say about riding a bike. And I haven’t even fallen off yet, which is a plus. Peter and I went to visit his kindergarten classroom on Monday, and I was immediately swept up by the school bug that made me want to volunteer and substitute teach there to begin with. It’s like Disney World for elementary school (and if there’s anything I love, it’s Disney). After only two days back on the get-up-at-4:30-and-out-of-the-house-before-7:00 schedule, I wondered why I was so worried. Yes, I have less time to clean the house, less time to relax, less time to write because, during the school year, when I’m either substituting or spending my days at my parents’ business. But since I’ve been at work every day, I’ve gotten to see my parents more, and work hasn’t piled up like it did over the summer, when I only came in a few hours every week. My younger son’s nap time has adjusted about two hours earlier, so my productivity during his nap is simply at a different time and station. I carry my laptop with me everywhere, typing and researching in my spare moments. And it’s working.

I wish I could say it will always be smooth sailing, but there have already been days when I’ve gone to bed with too much left to do. If I have a new goal, it’s not to stress out too much about it. And another nice perk is that the guys (well, my husband and five-year-old – not so much the toddler) are pitching in, too. The things that I often did myself over the summer, like cleaning and cooking, are shared responsibilities now. Why in the world do I have to be supermom? I can adjust, if only I’m willing to be flexible, and if I can just let go of my usual I’ll-do-it-myself attitude and allow myself to be satisfied with things that aren’t one hundred percent my way, I’ll make it through just fine.

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