chickens chickens chickens

We’re all about the chickens. They’re here. We have them. Wee chicks. It’s proving very hard to get decent photos of them, as they live in a brooder cage in the poorly lit basement and their heat lamp has a red bulb that makes for odd photography. Trust me, they are so much cuter than is in evidence here.

chicks1

We got four, one for each member of the family, and we each named our own chicken. So, please welcome:

Tiger, Kiddo’s Golden-Laced Wyandotte
Brown, Ladybug’s Black Sexlink
Duckie, Billy’s light Sussex
Cricket, my Barred Plymouth Rock

<em>Ladybug and Brown</em>

Ladybug and Brown

<em>Tiger, the Golden-Laced Wyandotte</em>

Tiger, the Golden-Laced Wyandotte

<em>Kiddo with Tiger</em>

Kiddo with Tiger

<em>Cricket</em>

Cricket

<em>Duckie (short for Rubber Duckie)</em>

Duckie (short for Rubber Duckie)

Posted in chickens

Writer, with Kids: Jane Smiley

Smiley

Jane Smiley, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel, Private Life, Horse Heaven, Moo, 10 Days in the Hills, A Thousand Acres, The Man Who Invented the Computer, Good Faith, and others

Age of kids: 33, 29, 19

What was your writing schedule (ideal and actual) like before kids, and how did it change when your children were born? How did it shift as they grew older?

I’ve always written every day, for a few hours a day–maybe 1 1/2 to 3. This fits in pretty well with the kids, because you aren’t busy all day. It didn’t change when my first one was born–I hired a babysitter who came two hours per day (in those days and in Iowa, she charged $10.00 a week). Usually I wrote, but sometimes, because my daughter wasn’t a good sleeper, I took a nap! But I figured that was okay, too. Often the babysitter was just there for my daughter’s afternoon nap, but at least I knew that I had two hours, and to get on with it. I think it was good to have this sort of structure, because I could always count on the two hours, and I didn’t have to worry about it. I would be upstairs in my room writing, and the babysitter and my daughter would be downstairs. I could hear them playing or whatever, but I didn’t have to pay attention. The really good thing about it was that I knew I had to get to work. No procrastinating, since I was paying for the time. This got me into better habits. For the children who were born subsequently, I used about the same system, though for #2, I took her to a babysitter a few doors down the street, and for #3, the babysitter came in. When they were around three, I put them in daycare for a few hours a day (by the time my first daughter was three, I was also teaching). I should stress that I was living, first in Iowa City and then in Ames, Iowa. Ames was a uniquely great place to write and have kids, because Iowa State had a great child development program, and the daycare in town was very up to date and wonderful. I used to think that the kids had a much better time in daycare than they would have had at home–terrific teachers, lots of activities to try and to do. Also, Ames was compact and daily life was easy to manage–the grocery store was across the street from the daycare, and about three blocks from my house. It took me five minutes to get to work. These sorts of geographic conveniences were very important to me (and Ames has an excellent school system).

How do you remain present for your family even when you’re sunk deeply into a current project?

I think it’s really important to define your work time and keep it separate. You go into your workspace and close the door, and think about your work, then you finish for the day and walk away from it. I usually contemplated it when I was, say, chopping vegetables or cleaning the catbox, but I was fairly practiced at paying attention to whatever I was doing when I was doing it, and forgetting about other stuff. But I also think it’s really important to do other stuff, not to sit in your workspace brooding. The brain needs change and rest, especially physical activity. If I’m stuck somewhere in a book, the best thing is to go do something physical (in my case, ride a horse). The break refreshes my brain, and ideas come. You have to forget and stop concentrating to invent. Thus, being a parent offers lots of times to just let your work problems go, and then have an idea come to you–while you’re nursing, for example, or walking down the street to the store or something. I did not find kids a distraction from work, but a relief from it, and VICE VERSA. Contemplating my project was also enjoyable when family life got to seem chaotic.

How has parenthood changed the work itself, if at all?

When my kids were young, I used writing to think about family life. I didn’t write very often about my kids, but I did write about the idea of motherhood and how families work (esp. The Age of Grief, but also “Long Distance,” “The Life of the Body,” Ordinary Love and Goodwill. We learn about family life in a lot of different ways–by growing up in families, and hearing our relatives talk about our families, etc., but also by having families. When I was studying literature in high school and college, all of the writers we read were either men or women who didn’t seem to have had children (George Eliot, Jane Austen, the Brontes, Willa Cather, Edith Wharton ), so when I started writing, I thought mothers’ voices were missing in literature. I know now that there were a few around–Shirley Jackson, Enid Bagnold, Rebecca West, Jean Kerr, George Sand, Harriet Beecher Stowe–but they weren’t presented to us in school as important.

What is the most challenging aspect of being a working artist and a parent?

This changes. At first, it is finding the time and the energy to do both, especially if a baby is not a good sleeper (two of mine were, one wasn’t). The question of daycare persists. I was lucky to live in Ames, but I know that the question of nanny vs. daycare is a constant one in most places, and whatever you choose, you are likely to have doubts. I always thought that full-time motherhood was a problem for me, because it engaged about 85% of my brain, so I didn’t have much time to think of other things, but I felt restless. When the kids were at the daycare, I felt comfortable–I knew they were well cared for and having a good time. When I was a child, I had been much less supervised than they were. I thought they were safer than my friends and I had been, so that was something of a reassurance. And they did turn out to be more adept at interpersonal relationships than I was, something I always attributed to their day care experiences.

After they are in school and on their own, then their care isn’t as much of a dilemma as certain other things–do I write about them? They are fascinating, so this is tempting. Do I write about their father? What may I reveal and what may I not reveal? How much of my inner life am I prepared to put on the page? My own kids have been pretty leery of reading my work, and I don’t mind this. They can get around to it after I pass on. Some authors, male and female (say, John Cheever, John Updike, and Ayelet Waldman) have taken their home lives as their subject matter more often than I have. My interests have been more outward than inward. I don’t know if that’s a choice or a habit. There are two sides to the dilemma–should you share their lives and activities? and what will they feel when they read about your life, activities, and thoughts? So far, I have no idea which of my books my children have read, or what they think about them. That’s probably the best way for me. I do remember watching a movie called Quiz Show, about a 1950s quiz show scandal. The protagonist’s father was a famous man of letters. A room in his house is filled with pictures of his greatness–awards, famous people, testimonials, etc. I remember being really offended by this, and thinking that who you are in the house is their parent. They can find out about the other stuff on their own, not from you.

Do you have any advice to other writers with kids or who plan to have them?

Ideally, you would live in a place that is kid friendly, you would establish your writing habits and your career early so that the children didn’t distract you, but also so that the fact that you are a writer is just a part of who you are as far as they are concerned. Ideally, you would also have a mate who is willing and able to share childcare responsibilities, and finds it fun to take the kids somewhere when you are hard at work, or who can cooperate if you have to do some research somewhere (when my kids were 2 and 6, I went to Greenland for three and a half weeks). Ideally, your mate is enthusiastic about your working life and everything that comes with it. Ideally, you would be able to write if there was noise or the phone rang. You could deal with distraction and not be thrown by it. You would not need absolute silence (I’ve met some writers who do–very difficult). When I think of women writers with kids, I have to mention Anthony Trollope’s mother, Frances, who wrote dozens of books while rearing four sons, and was, maybe “the most provocative writer of the early Victorian period.” She was very adventurous, supported her family, and nursed her husband in his last illness while writing. I think her main virtue is that she just kept at it.

Tagged with , ,
Posted in parenting, Writer with kids, writing

The long slow slog toward sun

March in Portland. My love for the rain is all run out, and the rain keeps coming.

I’ve had this song stuck in my head for days. It’s no coincidence that The Thermals are a Portland band.

The Thermals, “Back to Gray”

ETA: HA! I wrote this last night, then woke up to snow and a two-hour delayed opening for Portland schools on my workday. That’s what I get for complaining about rain in Oregon.

Posted in Uncategorized

Writer, with Kids: Mike Cooper

mike cooper smaller

Mike Cooper, author of: Clawback
Age of kids: 8, 12

What was your writing schedule (ideal and actual) like before kids, and how has that changed?

I didn’t start writing until our daughter was born, and we decided I’d be the stay-at-home parent. Back then it was easy. Two naps a day – during the morning nap I’d sleep an hour too, and then I had time to write during the second, not to mention after she went into the crib at night. When it got challenging was after the second child’s arrival. Man, those first six months with a toddler and a baby were hard. I need my sleep. I started dozing off all over the place, like on the floor of the preschool or slumped in a kitchen chair.

I lost a year or two of writing in there.

Now they’re older, though, and I have a few hours to work every day while they’re at school. The usual rule, so familiar to parents, does apply – sloth expands to fill the time available. The real problem is not the daily hours but the constant siren song of procrastination. I really wish I were more driven, or compulsive, or goal-oriented. I try to make up for it by asking for lots of deadlines, but that only works to a point.

How do you remain present for your family even when you’re sunk deeply into a current project?

I hope my editor isn’t reading this, because my basic rule is “family comes first.” After all, the children still depend on me for food, homework assistance, chauffeuring, first aid and everything else. Maybe I’ve just been lucky that a real conflict hasn’t occurred yet.

As for being deep into a project, well, one thing parenting teaches is how to keep more than one ball in the air! And the kids can be surprisingly understanding – so long as their meals arrive as expected.

How has parenthood changed the work itself, if at all?

One result of becoming a parent, probably common to all, was that I totally lost interest in reading about violence against children. In fact, noir generally became less appealing to me, as both reader and writer. My first short stories were all fedoras and rain and semi-automatics. Nowadays, although there’s plenty of over-the-top action in my writing, it tends to be cartoonish, even silly.

I’d like to think that parenting experience has made me more sympathetic to the world’s wide range of personalities, emotions and inter-personal difficulties. (My children suggest that it’s merely made me even more rigid and set in my opinions, but what do they know?) If some of that broadened perspective informs the writing, I’m happy.

What is the most challenging aspect of being a working artist and a parent?

Sleep. It’s always about sleep.

Do you have any advice to other writers with kids or who plan to have them?

Before our first child was born, we had to line up a pediatrician, and the doctor’s office we use was good enough to let us interview several. One of our standard questions was, “What’s your basic philosophy of child-rearing?” The physician we decided to go with – who has worked out great, he’s been wonderful – had an answer something like: “You know, whatever you do, they turn out fine.”

And pretty much the same is true for your vocation – writing or art or anything else. Go ahead and have the kids, they’ll be a joy (much of the time) and don’t worry about the rest. Whatever you do, it will work out fine.

Tagged with , , ,
Posted in parenting, Writer with kids, writing

CHICKENS!!!

I’ve wanted chickens since before we moved to Portland (in September 2007), but it never seemed like a real possibility. Our house sits on a smallish lot and about two-thirds of the backyard is given over to vegetables. The only place we could put a chicken coop in the backyard would be right next to the only place to sit and eat outside, something we do a lot of in the summer. Even a well-tended coop carries a smell I’d rather not eat next to on a hot summer day. And then there’s the whole keeping-the-chickens-out-of-the-vegetables thing.

Our first couple of years in Portland, Kiddo and I would visit the Urban Farm Store and look at the chicks, and make daily visits to the neighbors’ chickens across the street. Then time moved on and I let the chicken dream go. I don’t think I brought Ladybug to visit the chicks at the farm store more than once since she was born, and we almost never visit the neighbors’ coop.

<em>Three-year-old Kiddo gazing longingly at a tub of chicks in the Chicken Dreaming Years</em>

Three-year-old Kiddo gazing longingly at a tub of chicks in the Chicken Dreaming Years

<em>Kiddo visiting the neighbors' coop. (He was so LITTLE! Ladybug wears those pants now.)</em>

Kiddo visiting the neighbors' coop. (He was so LITTLE!)

Yesterday we went to the Urban Farm Store because it’s plantin’ time and I needed to stock up on the components of the organic fertilizer mix* I use. It was a dryish sunny day, so we all walked over there together, and Billy entertained the kids over by the chicks while I measured out the lime and kelp meal. Apparently all that was missing to make the chicken dream a reality was getting Billy in front of some fluffy little chicks. Now he wants chickens. You know… “for the kids.”

It still won’t work in the backyard, but with Billy on board we now have another option. Chickens in the front yard. Because this is Portland, after all.

CHICKENS!!!! AHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!! WE’RE GETTING CHICKENS!!!!!!!

    *Steve Solomon’s complete organic fertilizer, from Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades:

  • 4 parts seed meal
  • 1/2 part lime
  • 1/2 part phosphate rock or bone meal
  • 1/2 part kelp meal

Posted in Uncategorized

Writer, with Kids: Sara Shepard

sara41

Sara Shepard, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Pretty Little Liars series, The Lying Game series, The Visibles, and Everything We Ever Wanted

Age of kid: Kristian, 7 months

What was your writing schedule (ideal and actual) like before kids, and how has that changed?

Before kids, my writing schedule was all the time, or very little, or whenever I felt like. I would write at 2 in the morning. I would write at 6 in the morning. I would spend a lot of time thinking about writing and traveling for writing and dreaming up (and executing) more writing projects. Then, after Kristian was born, I took three months off, but it honestly wasn’t enough. Don’t get me wrong, I was happy to go back to work– I missed writing–but I also didn’t feel ready. I still wanted to be with him. I hadn’t figured him out yet. I was still So. Very. Tired. I finally started to come out of the fog at more like 5-6 months, maybe when he formed more of a schedule.

And my schedule has changed greatly. I am lucky enough to have a nanny, and she starts at 9 and works until 4 on the weekdays. I trust her implicitly, which means I can go upstairs and work, but as we writers know, it’s hard to work in a given guideline of time if you just aren’t feeling inspired. I do what I need to do–write chapters, make edits–and then try to squash my inspiration/ free thinking/ mental editing into that nanny time as well. Because the other 17 hours of the day? They’re mostly consumed with baby thoughts, things I need for baby, ways to entertain baby and make baby happy, about 45 minutes of exercise/ eating, a few minutes to shower, and as much sleep as I can get.

Okay, so maybe that’s overexaggerated, but it really feels that way sometimes. The crazy thing? I don’t mind it. Not at all.

How do you remain present for your family even when you’re sunk deeply into a current project—say in the sticky middle of a novel’s first draft?

The two YA series I work on are very carefully outlined, so even when I hit a roadblock, I’m not totally in the clouds on the off hours. It’s writing an adult novel I’m worried about. I’m on hiatus from that at the moment, but when I dive back into it, it’ll be more interesting. Luckily my son is young enough where I’m not sure he really notices when I get all introspective and contemplative on him–he’s just happy to be in the Jumperoo or hitting his head on the floor. When he’s older, though, and I’m trying to figure out character motivation when he’s naming every dinosaur that ever walked the earth? I’ll probably catch hell for it.

How has parenthood changed the work itself, if at all?

I think it’s changed it a lot and hasn’t changed it much at all. I’m happy to say I can still focus–I was really worried about that when I was pregnant, as though certain hormone fluctuations would make the writing abilities magically disappear. (I worry about stupid things, sometimes.) But someone told me this when I was pregnant: I just won’t be so interested in writing as many books in a year. The year I was pregnant, I think I wrote four books (three of which were when I was pregnant). Even though I’m still very driven, I think it’s made me slow down–in a good way. I can’t work on weekends anymore–and that’s probably a good thing. So now I see family. I go on random outings just so the kid can get out in the world. I’m not so stuck in my head. It was probably what I needed.

What is the most challenging aspect of being a working artist and a parent?

Well, where I live, I don’t feel like there are too many people doing what I do. I suppose that’s the benefit of living in New York– there are lots of other writer/ parents around with whom you can commiserate and share experiences. But most people I know go to work (or don’t go to work) and then come home and be with their kids. They can compartmentalize. Their work is steady, they don’t have crazy deadlines, they know how much they’re going to make in a year. So it’s sometimes hard to find common ground when it comes to that. Another challenge is figuring out a way to make it work. At first, I went through a lot of guilt over leaving my baby with someone else, going upstairs and going to work. When he started recognizing me, I felt horrible when his face fell when I waved and said I had to go up to my room. And I felt guilty about going running in the middle of the day, even though running is often when I do most of my best thinking about novels. I felt like the nanny we had when Kristian was really little was looking at me and thinking, “What a terrible person, exercising instead of choosing to be with her son!” It’s hard to retain your identity and passion while also pouring as much of yourself and your efforts into your child. But I wouldn’t be very useful to him if I didn’t work, both from a practical standpoint and an emotional one, too. I need to do this for a lot of different reasons. It makes me a better person, and it will make him a better person, too. (It also helps that he’s just downstairs, in case I miss him too much.)

Any advice for other writers with kids or who plan to have them?

Set realistic goals about what you want to accomplish before and after baby. (As I said, I wrote four novels the year I was pregnant. Not for everyone. This year, I’ll be lucky to write one. Well, two, I guess. My books come out twice a year. I don’t want to get my publisher too angry at me.) Realize that those dreams of writing with the baby snoozing in the room/ sitting on your lap probably won’t come true (my mom was like, “You’ll get lots of work done! Babies sleep a lot when they’re born!” Uh, not so much. Or when he slept, I wanted to sleep, too). Realize that your schedule will be the baby’s schedule for a long, long time, and if you don’t accommodate and adjust to that, you’re going to have some serious problems.

But most of all, enjoy it. Sounds cheesy, but seriously, it’s a wonderful thing, an experience I’d never trade. And as a bonus? I’m sure it will make my writing richer in ways I’d never imagined.

Tagged with , ,
Posted in parenting, Writer with kids

[random]

1. It was a weirdly disjointed weekend. I finished These Dreams of You on Saturday during the girlchild’s nap and then spent the rest of the day in a sort of Erickson-induced haze brought on by watching everything fall apart and then come back together again in a way that should have felt predictable but instead felt true. I can’t think of a single thing to say about this book that isn’t a spoiler, other than Read It.

2. Kiddo’s kind of milking the injury thing a bit, as is his due. He’s asking me to do all sorts of things for him “because I have a broken arm.” Like I could have forgotten the broken arm. But still, I do a little more for him than I normally would without letting him totally regress into a pampered pet. It feels good to be able to do these small things for him. Eases the guilt of having failed to stop the runaway skateboard from twenty feet away.

3. Eight more days until the cooling-off period ends and I allow myself to pick up the first draft of the new novel (which needs a new working title) and see what the hell I’ve done and then figure out how the hell to make it work. I’ve passed through the antsy stage and straight on to twitchy. May these eight days pass quickly, and may I not be too horrified when I look under the hood.

4. In the meantime I’ve been working on a new story. I don’t write short fiction often, but every once in a great while I find one tugging at me. This one grows from the same seed as the new novel (though in a very different direction), and as I near the end of its first draft I’m realizing that it actually wants and deserves to be called “Cold Black Stars” much more than the novel does. That title suited the novel when it lived only in my brain, but once it started to take shape it was no “Cold Black Stars.” Not at all. So I don’t have to find a title for the story, which is awesome because I suck at titles. But I now do have to find a title for the novel, which is rather more important and which is unfortunate because I suck at titles. I have a few bouncing around in my head but they must not be very good because I don’t want to tell you what they are.

5. I have nothing more to say, but I mistrust the number four, so…

Posted in Uncategorized

In which I make a bonfire of skateboards and wrap my child in bubble wrap

You know how these things go… One minute Kiddo was happily riding his skateboard down a slightly sloped sidewalk around the corner from our house while the little girl collected twigs in her wooden cart. The next he was headed for the curb and then he was down, a sick cracking sound that I was sure was bone snapping but in retrospect was probably his skateboard hitting the curb. And then he was on the ground, screaming and crying and clutching his arm.

broken wing

He screamed and cried the whole way to the hospital, until he started to pass out. From the pain. My first-born baby. “Why didn’t you catch me?! Why didn’t you stop the skateboard?!” *Cue shotgun blast of broken glass aimed straight at Mama’s heart*

He’s fine. He broke his wrist, but it’s a minor break, as breaks go. He’s uncomfortable but he’s okay. But ugh… It takes tremendous energy to stay calm for them when you’re absolutely freaking out on the inside, doesn’t it? I’ve got a stress hangover dogging me today. Everything feels just a little too sharp, a little too loud.

I let him stay home from school today. I bought him a cookie. He’s watching (too much) TV. He’s having a great day. Me? I’m thinking of all the different ways I can destroy that skateboard.

Posted in Uncategorized

Writer, with Kids: Sophie Littlefield

sophie-ya-press smaller

Sophie Littlefield, author of: The Stella Hardesty mystery series (Saint Martin’s Minotaur), The Aftertime series (Harlequin Luna), and young adult fiction (Delacorte).

Ages of kids: 16 and 19.

What was your writing schedule (ideal and actual) like before kids, and how has that changed?

I worked full-time in technology before I had children, and I was a hobbyist, writing a few hours a week. At times I belonged to a critique group, but I finished only a few short stories a year. I read a lot, at least as much as I do now.

After my children were born I worked full-time, part-time, and eventually not at all, but I did a lot of volunteering in their schools and elsewhere. During this time I wrote magazine articles and did some freelance copyediting and earned a few thousand dollars a year at it, and began to take myself more seriously as a writer. I had childcare for several hours a week, and that certainly helped. I attempted a novel, and then another. I wrote eight novels over ten years, but never sold any of them, despite trying.

When my children were twelve and fourteen I made the decision to write full-time. I was lucky in that I had been a stay-at-home parent and our household was supported by my husband’s salary, so I did not have to get a “real” job immediately, though I knew that if I couldn’t earn money writing I would have to do so. I still had no agent or contract, but I took the job very seriously. I worked nearly every day, including weekends, and finished several manuscripts. I sent out queries nearly every day. By the end of the year I had an agent and my first book contract.

How do you remain present for your family even when you’re sunk deeply into a current project—say in the sticky middle of a novel’s first draft?

Children first – ALWAYS. Doesn’t matter what age…when my son was nursing, obviously his needs came first. But now that he’s nineteen, if he calls from college, I drop everything. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve put off my children or said no to a reasonable request because I was working. I try to be grateful every day for the flexibility this job brings. For instance, today is Saturday and I was in the chair by 6:30am. When my daughter wakes up, I’ll walk away from the desk to make her breakfast. It’s not uncommon for her to do her homework in my office at night while I’m working.

You know, I hear people saying jokingly that they’ve taught their kids to heat up microwave meals and that they use the TV as a babysitter. I’m as guilty as anyone of poor parenting decisions, and of course sometimes I have to travel and the kids have had to step up and fend for themselves, but the idea of doing this shit deliberately does not amuse me. Can a person be a good parent and hold a job? Of course. And we all work within parameters that are occasionally out of our control. But I reject the notion that you can’t balance a writing life and a family life. Writing is a wonderful job for a parent.

There is a well known literary author who recently said one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard. I refuse to googlesearch the exact quote, but he basically said you can’t produce enduring or transcendent work if you have distractions. He works in a quiet room with no internet. I wish this fucker would go have a couple of kids before the next time he sits down to write about a mother’s life. I’ve written with distractions from the day I peed on the stick. I remember being up against a deadline and taking my daughter to some regional band festival. The only place to sit while they rehearsed was on the floor behind the percussion section. I sat there for four hours and wrote 4,000 words through the din.

How has parenthood changed the work itself, if at all?

Absolutely – how could it not? I just did a quick mental review of all the books I’ve written, both published and unpublished. There are ten published or about to be, eight unpublished, and three proposals. Of those twenty-one, only one does not have parenting as a central theme, and it was erotica… Any time I sit down to consider a new idea, the experience of being a mother informs every character decision I make. I wrote a zombie trilogy that was really about motherhood. I am finishing a historical WWII thriller in which all the central action unfolds from a mother’s decisions. If I sold a couch on craigslist, the ad would somehow have parenting at the core…

Each day when we sit down to work, we bring what we care about. Humans want a pretty consistent set of things, which is why we find fiction relatable: our characters are going to end up searching for meaning and getting laid and making power grabs and doing penance and protecting the children and avenging wrongs because we do all those things ourselves. Can there be great fiction that has nothing to do with parenting? Sure, why not? But I don’t think there can be fiction written by a parent that doesn’t in small and large ways bring the diaper bag, even we neither intend nor want to.

I want to add that child-awareness works its way into the stories of even non-parents as they move through their lives and relationships. Some of my best writing friends are not mothers, but they are daughters and sisters and aunts and are around children and they write beautiful stories reflecting all of that.

What is the most challenging aspect of being a working artist and a parent?

For all my brave talk, I found myself completely stymied for a number of years when my kids were small. I just couldn’t get the job done. I was dealing with depression at the time, and that was certainly a factor, but there were also entire days that were consumed by girl scouts and carpooling and going to Target and lying on the floor with the baby. I don’t regret any of that. I tell young parents who wish to write that it’s okay to put your writing on the back burner as long as you’re sure your extra time is going to the kids. If you want to use your free precious hours on TV, or knitting, or the gym, that’s cool too, but just do it with awareness, because every time you do so, you are making a statement about what you value, and you value those things more than pursuing writing.

Right now there’s a truly poisonous attitude out there that we have to get a lot of content up NOW, that we need to put a little lipstick on our backlist or whatever we’ve got lying around or whatever we can cobble together over the weekend and send it out on the dance floor. What a terrible mistake. I personally don’t want anything out in the world that I’m not proud to have written, and if I can’t do a competent and thorough job of writing AND parenting, then something’s got to give.

(Actually, I guess that leads me to one of my biggest challenges…financial. How does a working artist afford kids? How can you spend the time to create something you’re proud of, and give your children the attention they deserve, when you don’t have a steady paycheck? But that’s an entirely different problem…)

Do you have any advice for other writers with kids or who plan to have them?

I really think that if you constantly revisit and evaluate your priorities, most decisions aren’t that difficult. For me, age has brought the gift of being able to tune out a lot of the “should” voices and the would-be comparers. The choices your friends, colleagues, and peers make don’t have to be your choices. Give your children what they need and deserve. Give your art the rest.

I was working in a coffee shop with another writer/mother yesterday. A steady stream of babies and young children came into the shop, and we fussed over every one. Did my work suffer for the distractions? Oh, maybe my word count was a little lower – but I’m pretty sure that having all those little human beings parading by enriched my prose in ways I’m not even conscious of. Once you’re a parent, your art changes, and for me, that’s been a good thing.

Tagged with , , ,
Posted in parenting, Writer with kids, writing

Writer, with Kids

Of the fifteen of us who began the MFA fiction program at Brooklyn College in 2003, only Karla was already a parent. I don’t think any of us fully understood what it meant for her to have chosen to be there and what it took for her to do it. Her older son was two when she started the program. By spring semester of our first year, she was pregnant with her second. It took her four years (maybe more. My recall isn’t what it could be) to complete the two-year program. At the time I said to Billy that I wondered why she was doing it at all, that she was missing out on the intensity of the MFA experience. I didn’t get it. She had plenty of intensity already. Whatever writing time she managed to steal came at a price and carried with it tremendous pressure to produce.

If her classmates didn’t understand what she was going through, the professors who had children didn’t offer much more. During a Q&A following a reading by one of our professors, a well-established author and mother of a then-teenage daughter, Karla asked if the professor had any advice for a mother who wanted to write. The professor’s response? “It’s absolutely possible to be a mother and a writer, but you can only have one child.” Karla, her second child in her lap, said, “Oh.” And the advice offered in conference by Karla’s thesis adviser, herself a mother of three kids—one grown and two teenagers at the time—was that “You can’t expect to write when the children are very young. It just isn’t possible. Put it away for now.”

This is what I carried with me when I went to a month-long residency at Ragdale in the fall after graduating from the MFA program. I was barely pregnant with Kiddo—four weeks along—and convinced that I was now locked in a terrible race against that growing fetus. I had to get as much work done as I could while he was still on the inside, because once he was born my writing life was well and truly fucked.

Except that didn’t turn out to be true. Not for me, anyway. It’s hard to get the work done once you have kids. It’s damn hard. But it’s not impossible. I struggle with it, though. I find my writing time when the kids are at school or asleep, so for me it too often comes down to choosing the work over getting enough sleep. (I also nearly always choose writing over housework, but I’m comfortable with that. Until someone sticks to the kitchen floor, that is.) I worry that I’m not making enough time for the work. And then I’m deep into a novel and I worry that I’m living too much in my head, and I have to fight to keep myself present when I’m with the family, to stuff the novel down and quiet it until I’m alone with it again. I no longer have the luxury of getting kind of nuts when I’m sunk deep into a project. No matter what my characters get up to on the page, when I surface I have to pull myself back to a stable, reliable center. Or as stable as I get, anyway. That’s been the hardest part for me, surprisingly…shifting between those two realities.

My second, and last, child is about to turn two. I’ve found a rhythm now, between the work and the family. When she was eighteen months old the little one started daycare two days a week, and Kiddo is in kindergarten. If I don’t have a freelance editorial job on my desk, that time is for writing. The same goes for nighttime, after Billy and the kids go to sleep. (How to balance writing the novels with editing other people’s books for money? That’s a different story.) Once in a while I’ll sneak away for four or five hours on a Sunday and write in a café while Billy hangs out with the kids. God, those writing Sundays are fantastic. I come back to them a little manic sometimes, though. That shift from writer to mother is hardest on the café writing days, because I push myself to not waste any of that time so by the end I’m sunk way in.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it is to be a parent and a working writer. Wondering how other parents manage it, how they make time for the work while still being present for their kids. I’ve invited some of the writers I know to come here and talk about their experiences as writers with kids. We’ll hear from several New York Times bestselling authors as well as writers like me who are still working to get that first published book out into the world. We’ll hear from parents of newborns and parents of teenagers and grown children. Mothers and fathers.

I’m so excited to post this series. I’m hoping you’ll share your experiences as parents, whether you consider yourself a working artist or not. How do we hold on to ourselves, our sense of who we are and the things that are important to us, as we move into these roles of mother and father? I think it’s going to be a great conversation. And if you aren’t a parent, I’m hoping you’ll enjoy these glimpses into the lives of some amazing writers.

Tagged with , ,
Posted in parenting, Writer with kids

Archives

Writer, With Kids