Happy Family Day! What to do with the beloveds, though, when writing...

The day my sons had dueling lemonade stands, with a neighbour as bouncer. Later in the day, one decided to up his game by offering skateboard lessons as well…

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Today is BC Family Day, a new paid day for people in this province, with the idea that you are going to spend the time with family.

I’ve raised three sons, and those younger years were busy. Understatement.

Here in the Unschool, I know there are writers who might not have children, or young children, but are occupied with caring for family members, or who work full-time.

When you are in the midst of raising family (isn’t “raising” an odd word?), possibly working at some paid employment, pulling together a semblance of “home,” it can seem impossible. At times it is.

Perhaps the toughest and most necessary piece is to be honest with yourself about what you can do: if you set goals that are too much, you’ll accomplish nothing. There can be points at which your goals can’t be too small—anything will do.

What

I’ve posted before about whether to set a word count or a TIME limit on your work. But in the case of “too busy,” I suggest you work with a time limit, even if it’s only twenty minutes per day. Twenty minutes comes in at over two hours each week, and that might look like 5-7 pages on a longer work, or one or two poems or songs, maybe a first draft of a short story or picturebook. These are not small accomplishments. Ten minutes will be over an hour. Ten minutes is just fine sometimes!

When

While you may go through times when your life is so chaotic that you really do have to grab at any random moment (and I know that can be true), the more you can plan, the better.

As Flaubert said, (and I used to mumble this to myself frequently):

Be settled in your life and as ordinary as the bourgeois, in order to be fierce and original in your works.

Gustave Flaubert, To Gertrude Tennant (December 25, 1876)

*note the day he was writing on - carving out time on a holiday!

This quote has a number of iterations, it seems. One will work for you, though. While Flaubert never had children, he took care of his mother and niece for years. Once he inherited his father’s estate, he was able to focus on writing. It’s entirely possible he had more time than you or I! But, point taken: find a daily time to write, if at all possible.

Children tend to like schedule and routine—so work with this. My first novel was written during my first son’s early naptime. But once I had more than one child, for some years, I would get up early and get my daily word count done before they even woke up.

Where can you fit in the time? If working, with your children in daycare, what about your noon time? A 20 minute period at the end of the day before you leave? Can you write on transit instead of driving?

Or it may be that your only time is a couple of hours one weekend day, with someone else caregiving. I find it tough to focus on writing just once a week. It becomes much less productive than a short time each day. Yet many writers do exactly this, and need the longer time to immerse in their work. Or take a handful of days and go to a hotel and immerse every few months. (I used to occasionally borrow a friend’s cabin.)

Find your time, declare it is yours, and honour yourself in this.

Those kids — the list of priorities

kids/spouse and extended family

paid employment

community

hobbies/interests

home—keeping and care of

writing…

Is this what your list looks like? What do you prioritize?

What do you have to do? What do you want to do? What really needs to be struck off the list, even temporarily?

I loathe housework, and have to say it was pretty minimal around my home when my boys were small—just barely enough to pass a health inspection. I did often say that I was working on building their immune systems… But I was both writing and teaching, too. I used to say that when I see a gravestone extolling someone’s housework abilities, I might pause and re-think, but in the meantime, no… housework was VERY low on my list. Hobbies and interests went, too, alas. My writing was more important to me.

Note “social media” is nowhere on this list. I am the last generation for social media not to be a Thing. If I was raising young children now, and trying to fit in writing, I suspect I’d have to opt out. Yet as a writer—artist/public person (as much as we have to be)—it is a challenge. Still… I do know writers who are choosing to opt out. You can “put a timer on it.” Five minutes on facebook/whatever can be enough for the ugly task of promo and connecting. At the very least, become aware of how much or little time you spend with it, and then decide what you want to do with that time.

To those of us who are not paid by the hour, Time is very precious. You know this.

Time is precious to our children, too, who are young for a brief time, even though when we are in the midst of that time it feels as if it will go on forever: waking up several times a night; tantrums; questions; all the navigating of “new”—it’s exhausting.

Other Times

But there are the other times. For me, the hours of reading aloud are the best in my memories. *Disclaimer: That was a lot of research time. The boys realized—quickly—that I would spend long minutes studying the front matter of every book we read. “Mom, get on with the story,” they’d say. Once, walking around the bird sanctuary (safely away from street traffic, I thought, though with those ugly dark-water ponds) I was muttering story-thoughts and character-words under my breath, and my oldest son shouted at me to “Stop thinking!” He was so on to me!

But the joy of reading together was rich. Reading aloud sharpens your sense of sound, your sense of how a sentence should work. Why a paragraph is a paragraph. And what should happen at the close of a chapter and the beginning of the next. Those shared times worked for both them and for me. There is no better read aloud than Treasure Island! Charlotte’s Web still stands, and so many more. Read poetry. Read classics and read new.

When I’ve written about keeping a personal journal, I have had in mind just those years. As significant as those 20 minutes of writing time are, so is scratching out notes about those years. The most mundane pieces will escape you later—yet those are the times, the details, that will bring “real life” to your story-telling. Your kid tells a joke? Write it down. No, you won’t remember it. The recipe you discover experimenting with him? Write it down—write about how it came to be, and the conversation.

Write the language of these years.

Times spent for others

One day a week now I spend with my mother who is 86. Since losing my dad a few years ago, I’m even more aware of how special is this time. She is relatively healthy. We can cook together, and go for walks. Her mind is clear, and she shares stories of her childhood and young adulthood, which I takes notes of and write out in my journal. She reminds me of times in my own life that, in the daily grind, I’ve forgotten. We laugh about things that only we can laugh about. I find I am slowed by these days, in the best way, especially at this time in my life when I am borderline “too busy.” These days with my ageing Momma are respite.

When you’re a writer, writing is your lens. It sits—always—between you and the world. It’s not easy for family and friends to understand this if they are not writers.

There’s a type of necessary selfishness to how we live, and we wrestle to balance—to hold on and to set aside when we need and as we need to. (And wisdom to know the difference… )

Comments? Thoughts? Please post and share —