Editor’s note: This interview is generously cross-posted from Alison Wells’s Head Above Water.

Laura Wilkinson grew up in a Welsh market town and as a child was a voracious reader. She has a BA in literature and worked as a freelance journalist, editor and copywriter. Her first novel, BloodMining, the story of a young woman’s quest to uncover the truth about her origins to save her son’s life, will be published in autumn 2011 by Bridge House. She currently lives and works in Brighton, England.

Tell us about your children, Laura.

I’ve two boys: Morgan, twelve, and Cameron, seven. They’re glorious redheads; I call them Ginger1 and Ginger2, and people comment on their extraordinary hair colour all the time, especially as both their parents are brunettes. You can imagine the comments!

When did your writing begin?

As a journalist, copywriter and editor for many years before the children came along, and then alongside them. Fiction came later, around five and a half years ago, once I was out of the totally sleepless nights period with my youngest. Both my boys were horrendous sleepers! My routine has always been fixed around the major needs of the kids and, so far, it seems to work for all of us.

What impact has having children had on your writing career?

Having the boys focused me. I’d harboured a desire to write fiction for years, but work and other stuff (like going out, partying, and other hedonistic activities) got in the way. As well as fear. After the children came along I became more aware, more centered, and the brevity and preciousness of life hit me, hard. I knew that if I didn’t at least try to write I’d have let myself down, and the boys somehow. Now I use the little free time I have doing something that stretches me, challenges me, surprises me, and I find that really, really exciting.

How do you organise your writing time and space?

I work four days a week, so on these days I tend to write in the evening, once the boys are in bed. 9pm to 11ish, sometimes later, depending on how it’s going. I have been known to rise early, 5am, and write for a couple of hours before the rest of the house wakes up, though this is hard during the winter months. I don’t manage this every day, but I aim for three or four evenings/mornings a week.

On my ‘free’ day I write as much as I am able. On good days, I can write for two or three hours, take a short break, and then carry on for another two. Then it’s time to get the kids from school. Other times I find it much harder to get going, and then I might go for a walk, or pop out to see a friend, and then come back to the work. I cherish this day and I guard it ferociously. No visitors, no housework, no shopping. Writing.

I’m workman-like in my approach. I aim for 1,000 words each sitting. Of course, I don’t always manage this. Some days I might churn out a mere 400, but on others I might reach 3,000. It’s a productive week if I manage 5,000 words. My pattern is that I start slow (and yes, it can be extremely painful) and pick up momentum as I go on.

For first drafts I write on a laptop in bed, often in pyjamas, or slouchy clothes. A bed is a place for dreaming and passion. Perfect for first drafts. When I’m editing I’m at a desk on the landing, or at the dining table, in a straight backed chair, fully dressed, blusher and mascara on. Editing is business-like and often cruel. As you will have gathered I don’t have a room of my own; I would love a writing shed, or office. Twitter is my favourite new online habit and I have tweeted about this, demonstrating severe shed envy. I live in hope.

Is it possible to maintain a balance on a daily basis or do you find yourself readjusting focus from work to family over a longer time-span depending on your projects?

The nature of children and family life requires a degree of flexibility, so, yes, I do readjust my focus periodically. The ease with which I achieve this depends on the stage I’m at with any given piece of work. Long haul projects like novels require momentum, especially when creating a first draft, and breaking the rhythm makes picking it up again difficult. I speak from experience here. Usually, editing comes with deadlines. Writing is a craft, and requires regular practice, so while we all have to adjust to life stuff that comes our way, my motto is to write as often as possible. That said, when the boys are sick, or need extra emotional input, it’s difficult to write and I’m not going to beat myself up if I don’t during times like this.

How do the children react to your writing or the time you spend on it?

My eldest is proud, I think. He will ask about the story I’m writing, often presenting some penetrating and challenging questions, and he’s pretty excited about my first novel coming out. My youngest hasn’t shown too much interest. He knows Mummy reads and writes ‘all the time’ (I bloody wish), and often picks up whatever I’m currently reading and flicks through the pages and asks if my books are as long. When I reply that they are, he sighs, shrugs and wanders off. I suspect he thinks I’m fibbing. Perhaps once my debut is out, he’ll believe me!

What do you find most challenging in juggling your role as a mother, your writing and your work?

Practically, it’s time. There’s never enough of it. I wish my sleeping habits were like those of Margaret Thatcher. During her premiership she claimed to sleep for only three hours a night. Unfortunately, I need seven or eight to function. And there’s the need to make money. A private income would remove the need for paid work, and then I could spend everyday writing. Bliss.

Emotionally, I suffer Guilt, with a capital ‘g’. For not playing with the boys more, for daydreaming when we’re together, for not baking beautiful cakes, and so on. But most mothers I know, writers or not, feel guilty. On the plus side, my boys are very good at entertaining themselves. Having a dreamy, distracted mother has made them resourceful and independent.

You’ve had success with having BloodMining accepted for publication. Why do you think your breakthrough happened when it did?

The first short story I wrote won a (minor) competition and was published. My youngest was three. This gave me a misguided opinion of how hard it was going to be. Years later I realized just how lucky I’d been. I began my first novel when my youngest was four and my eldest nine. It took two years and several drafts to complete. Proper authors — people who had masters’ degrees in creative writing and even had books of their own published — were encouraging, and so I entered some debut novel competitions. While I was waiting for the results, a period of around eight months from entry to final announcement, I wrote a second novel.

To my surprise I was shortlisted in two novel competitions, one of which I went on to win. Back in November, when I received the call from Debz Hobbs-Wyatt at Bridge House I was at work, in the staff-room, I had to sit down. For days I wandered round in a state of shock. I told few people; I didn’t believe it was real; I expected the ‘Gosh, I’m so, so sorry — we misread the winner’s name, it was Laura Williams that won, not you,’ call. It never came and, slowly, I’ve come round to the idea that it’s going to happen.

The children were settled at school and content during this period. In September last year they both changed schools and it’s not been an easy time, emotionally, especially for my eldest who started senior school. During this period I completed another two drafts of my second novel, though I’ve not been as productive as I’d have liked. Things have settled down now so I’ve started a third novel, as well as getting a submission package together for novel #2 and working with my editor on BloodMining.

In all honesty, I have no idea why it happened when it did, and I guess you could say that it happened because I was persistent. A writer needs to be tenacious.

Do you think women face particular challenges in career/family life balance?

I’d love to able to say that the pressure facing both sexes is equal but I can’t. It’s a fact that women still do more than their fair share of childcare and housekeeping. But we can’t blame it all on the fellas. We take on too much. And whether we’re conscious of it or not, many of us (I include myself here) are reluctant to let go of these responsibilities, to trust that men can do them as well as we can. It’s a rare relationship where the split is even. Perhaps gay women manage it. I’ll ask a friend about this.

Something has to give when wearing many hats, what is it for you?

Housework. I was never much cop at the domestic: cleaning, home decoration/making beautiful, cooking. But no one died of a grubby house or the odd take-out, did they?

What suggestions do you have for mothers or indeed parents who want to write or further a writing career?

Write. Forget ironing. Don’t give up the day job (at least until you’ve the three book deal with the six figure sum) , your kids won’t thank you if there’s no food on the table.

Thanks so much to Laura for telling us about her experience of being a writer mother. We wish her tremendous success with her new novel BloodMining and look forward to it coming out in the Autumn. For more news on her novel and other projects visit Laura at her blog Sting in the Tale or follow Laura on Twitter.

Yesterday I received my two free author copies of The Petigru Review. It felt good to hold a big chunk of a book in my hands, flip to the table on contents, and see my name listed three times. The $15 I made in “royalties” felt good, too. It brought the total profits from my writing to date up to $115. What a lucrative career choice I’ve made for myself…

Obviously I’m not in it for the money. It’s more the satisfaction of knowing someone else read my writing and thought other people would like it, too. That feels good. And it also feels good to be published in a literary journal named for James L. Petigru, SC stateman, who famously said “South Carolina is too small to be a republic, and too large to be an insane asylum.” I love my adopted state, but as a born and bred Tarheel, I do snicker (quietly) to myself whenever I hear that quote.

I had hoped that I could brag that it was now available on amazon.com, but it isn’t yet. It is, however, available at a local bookstore, Fiction Addiction.

I’m only doing my due dilligence by pointing out that it would fill a stocking nicely and would most certainly impress all your book-loving friends with its sophisticated, artsy, literary-journalness. Plus, I have it on good authority that you might even persuade one of the contibutors to autograph your copy.

Brava, Brittany! We’re so proud!

Read the full piece here. Then, get back to work!

I’m not one of those writers who thinks everything I write is genius. I don’t shun editing, or even re-writing, when it’s warranted. I like to hear criticisms of my writing (though obviously accolades are more welcome) because I do see writing as a process, and something you are always learning and growing from. So when I submitted my manuscript to this publishing company, I didn’t expect them to trip over themselves in their zeal to offer me a contract. I’m a realist.

But at the same time, I didn’t expect to be rejected so summarily, or so soon. The email I received said that while the “best editor” at the house loved my concept, she just couldn’t deal with the long laundry list of rooms in the house and their flaws and that I should re-work my book with an eye toward keeping my readers’ interest. Ouch. It’s obvious to me that the editor stopped reading at somewhere in chapter 1, at which point she suggested to the publisher, who then suggested to me, that after I reworked my book, I should re-submit it to them.

I got online and whined about my bad luck on Facebook. My friends were split into two camps. There were the ones who said, “Excellent! They’re still interested in your work! Re-write it and re-submit it to them!” And there were the ones who said, “Send it to someone else. If this publisher can’t be bothered to actually read the entire manuscript, they’re big fat, giant poopie heads and don’t deserve to publish your book anyway.”

I can appreciate their reactions, and I agree with them both. But at the same time, I feel very sad. I feel sad for me, the writer, whose three-year work-in-progress isn’t getting published. I feel sad for readers, whose literary choices are controlled by publishers who expect every story to play like an episode of 24. I feel sad for publishers, who are so time and cash-strapped, they don’t have the time to read a novel and examine it through a wider lens. It seems like more and more, novels are going the way of news, where everything must be reduced to a sound bite. What happened to the novels of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, where a reader could get lost in the lengthy descriptions of another world? What happened to our collective attention spans that we can no longer absorb large amounts of information without singing, dancing, and catchy slogans? I remember from my experiences as a teacher that there was an enormous push to make learning fun and entertaining. That’s all fine and good when it’s appropriate, but sometimes, you have to know the basics before you can make the learning fun. People seem to forget that.

I devoted six double-spaced pages of my novel to a description of Alex and Will’s tri-level. It is the central conflict of the book, the “home” in Home Improvement, the place where the vast majority of the action in the book happens, the physical manifestation of all that is going wrong between my main characters. My reader has to see it, has to be overwhelmed with the “laundry list of problems,” has to experience the house the way Alex experiences it. They have to understand why buying this house seemed like a good idea at the time. They have to understand that this is the moment of no return.

Evelyn pulled into the driveway of a large brick tri-level with gray siding and cheerful yellow shutters. It sat on an oversized corner lot where several mature oaks and maples dotted the yard. We got out of the car and wandered up the daisy-lined sidewalk to the front door. Evelyn unlocked it and we stepped inside.

From the outside, I expected warm country décor, much like what we’d seen in other houses. But the entryway walls were chalk white, and instead of bandanna-clad cows, the only decoration was a large square of geometric-patterned carpet and a light fixture made of neon squiggles.

“The owners go for those modern touches,” Evelyn observed.

If a twenty-year-old light fixture was her idea of a modern touch, I couldn’t wait to see what else she considered current décor.

“Let’s start on the first level,” Evelyn said, and led us from the entryway, down a short flight of stairs to the family room.

The first level was mostly below ground, except for two small windows that were level with the Indian Hawthorne growing in front of the house. A cookie-scented candle sat burning on the family room fireplace mantle and filled the room with the irresistible scent of baking cookies. The-butter-and-vanilla-scented room was enormous, and looked extra inviting with its large brick fireplace on the far wall. Those were the room’s good points. Unfortunately, the room was crowded with mismatched furniture, and the wood-paneled walls were covered all over in little strokes of aqua and pink paint. After a few seconds, my vision began to blur.

I wandered through a doorway to my left and into the den. A homemade desk took up most of the room and black splotches circled the ceiling. “Is that mold up there?” I asked.

Evelyn squinted at the walls while Will examined the nearest patch. “It’s just paint,” he said after poking it.

Who in their right mind thought faux-mold was a good idea?

I asked the same question when we opened the door to the laundry room. Every surface was covered in pink sponge marks, including the pipes. As I stared at the paint job, Evelyn came up behind me and said, “This sponge-painting is all the rage right now. We just did it in our dining room. It turned out really nice.”

I had my doubts.

I won’t be re-submitting my work to this particular house. And I won’t be re-working anything with so little critique to go on. Again, I’m not averse to re-working my novel, but I have to feel like the changes I make are purposeful. I had purposeful reasons for writing the scene as I did, and I need to find an editor who, at the very least, understands my intent and can support my vision. That’s all I’m really asking for. I think that’s all any novelist can ask for.

The whole publishing experience feels a lot like that poem The Blind Men and the Elephant. Everyone “sees” something differently, and everyone is wrong. I know I still have a lot to learn. The first order of business is hiring a professional editor… someone who is looking at my book for its strengths, rather than its weaknesses. Then we’ll see where I go from there.

The frustrating thing is that I don’t feel like my publishing company and editors have been giving the book enough time and attention.  The editors keep saying they’re going to be sending along comments soon, but nothing ever comes.  I am trying to be patient, as my rough draft deadline isn’t until July 09.  They may not have budgeted time this soon to spend on my project.  But the other concern I have is that this company doesn’t do the promoting that some of the big companies do.  When I told my representative at a big company I do a lot of business with that I am writing this book, she just about killed me for not asking her company to publish it.  I think it would sell MUCH more with that firm, but I’ve already signed a contract.  Does anyone have any idea how to navigate these waters?  Can one get out of a contract?

Also, I’m still running like crazy, last weekend I ran a 5K on Sat and a 1/2 marathon on Sunday.  I don’t usually do 5K’s, because my rule is to never run a race it takes longer to get to than it does to run.  But this one was sponsored by the University where I’m employed, and it was very close to my house.  I ran it too fast, which made the run the next day quite painful.  But it is the 1/2 marathon I wanted to write about here. It was the Maine Coast 1/2 Marathon, and only women are allowed to enter.  There’s a “significant other 5K” and one man, chosen from a lottery, got to run with us.

It was a spectacular race, highlighted by the fact that Kathrine Switzer was the emcee.  She has the distinction of being the first woman registered for the Boston Marathon, and many people recall the photos of Jock Semple (race director) attempting to physically yank her off the course once he found out a “girl” was running his race.  She’s since ran several marathons, and now organized races and does a lot of event speaking.  She’s written three books, and was signing and selling books at this race.  I purchased “Marathon Woman,”  which was a great book for the first two thirds.  By the end, it started to read like the acknowledgements section… too many names, dates, places, and races that stopped being as riveting as the first half of the book.

But Kathrine Switzer is a great example of a sort-of mom (a stepson entered her life fairly late in his teenage years) who is able to balance work, writing, running, and family magnificently.  She’s 62 years old and looks about 45.  She’s slim, solid, and exudes happiness and grace.  She also wrote “Running and Walking for Women Over 40,” which is a great starting book for those wanting to get into the sport.  I find that my best ideas are hatched while running, and my best actual writing is done immediately after running… all that oxygen in the brain.  If I’m ever stuck on something, even a quick 2-miler is guaranteed to free up any writer’s block.

Last week, I got through some dialogue. Dialogue is easier for me to imagine than to actually write. I hear it well in my head, but how do the characters sound on the page? All like me or the narrator? I hope not. So, it’s slow going, besides all the interruptions. But the good news for this week is, knock on wood, neither of the boys are sick — each stayed home from school a day last week, two different ones, of course. I have no appointments for any of us. The cat and dog have both been deflea-ed, finally, at the vet. Bad news is I planned a picnic at my house on Saturday for my Asperger’s group that I don’t foresee doing much prep for as it is a potluck, but I do need to move a dirt pile, reorganize the desk again, hopefully get through some of my albatross box of papers to be filed, and flea bomb the backyard. That’s right, nature girl is going to intentionally poison the planet. Good news is I am going to write THE SCENE this week. If I’m lucky, THE OTHER SCENE, too. These two scenes are at the heart of the book, upon what everything after depends. They should also advance me to the halfway point. Woo-hoo!

I just finished re-reading an old favorite book that didn’t help my frame of mind for writing a youth novel, but I enjoyed it anyway — Alice Walker’s In the Temple of My Familiar. My next step to move my writing along in the vein of a youth novel is to re-read some Jerry Spinelli, Sharon Creech, and other authors for the age group, whose work I love and whose style is very conversational and very much from the point of view of an eleven- or twelve-year-old. I think that will help my dialogue problem a lot. I should grab some Carl Hiaasen and Gary Paulson, too. A dog figures prominently in the story, and Paulson writes Dog really well. I mention these authors because I believe a lot of the best writing out there now by contemporaries is for the youth market. Go check out the Newbery Medal winners. They are a great lot.

Enjoy! I didn’t know what I was missing until a few years ago, so I really do recommend a trip to your local library youth room. The reads are so quick, too! If you want a really good cry, you must check out Sharon Creech’s The Wanderer or Love That Dog. I’m no crier and I absolutely blubbered my way through those, out loud, in front of a class of fifth graders. If you like disturbing (Lisa D and Christa), check out Spinelli’s The Wringer. I read that four years ago and it still haunts me.

Happy writing, painting, puzzling, knitting, etc this week!

Taking its name and inspiration from Henry David Thoreau’s essay “Wild Apples,” this twice-yearly arts and literary publication combines poetry and prose with the work of visual artists and photographers. Wild Apples brings together the work of artists and writers who are connected by the common threads of care for the environment, engagement in social concerns, and commitment to the arts and the ways they shape our world.

If you’re a writer, poet, artist, or photographer, check out the submission guidelines. Collaborative work is encouraged. More information is available at the Wild Apples website.

It might sound like dwelling on the negative if I say I received 122 short story rejections before my first acceptance. But, for writers just starting out, it’s important to hear. If you know I was rejected more than a thousand times while placing 50 stories, it might be hard for you to justify giving up after five printed slips….Just about every one of my rejected stories has gone on to be published. Without further revision. Some were rejected a handful of times. Others garnered over 50 rejections before finding a home.

Hyde offers several reassuring reasons for why submissions may be rejected. Her full article (it’s short) is online at Glimmer Train.

What’s your own personal quota on submitting before you “shelve” a piece? Five, ten, twenty–no limit? Personally, if a short story I wrote isn’t accepted or doesn’t place in a contest, I look at it again, revise, and send it on out. I like the feeling of having stories in the queue somewhere–sure, the chances of publication or winning are usually small, but it’s a numbers game. You certainly can’t sell or win if you’re not submitting. If you believe in what you wrote, keep it out there.

Another project which I worked on simultaneously – an anthology entitled Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child with Special Needs – will be officially published next month. And coming up, in November, Topka Press will publish my first children’s picture book, Playing for Papa.

So it’s going to be a great year, and yet I still feel like I’m teetering on the edge of a career as a writer. It’s been two years since I finished writing my novel and the short story that will become a picture book. I’d expected to have another novel completed by now, especially since my children are now in elementary school. And the short story collection that was accepted for publication by a press that I admire is no longer accepted. The editor that I was working with died suddenly, and the press’s interest in my work died along with him. And what’s more, the publisher of my novel has sold his company. The new owners seem to have a different vision for the company, one that might not include me.

So this writing business, I’ve found, is a precarious one. There are infinite levels of failure. Yet I persist. I didn’t start writing for money or fame or adulation. I wrote because I love it. And I still do.

Having written five novels already, I know that I can go the distance and write another one. This month, the members of my writer’s group have committed ourselves to writing 10,000 words. As of today, I’ve completed 2,663 words on my novel-in-progress. Onward!

Since that post, I haven’t been able to write. I’ve been happy with my re-writes up to this point, but I wonder now if I’m as far ahead as I thought I was. Is my sparse writing style enough? Can I do better? The other big questions that spring to mind are when will I really be finished? And will I know I’m finished when I get there?

It’s ironic that my book is about home improvement when time and again I have likened the re-writing, re-editing, re-assessing process to the continual construction of the Winchester Mystery House. I think we can safely say that the “additions” to that house didn’t improve it in any way. I wonder about this as I tear apart my novel and try to reconstruct it into something better, something more functional. Am I simply making additions or am I actually making improvements?

I can see this going on indefinetely. The more I learn of the cut-throat behind-the-scenes business of the publishing industry, the more my fear grows that I’m never going to be finished. I was always the student who wanted to turn in my best work, but deadlines always loomed at school. Now there are no deadlines. I can tweak endlessly. And because I lack the experience to know when enough is enough, I might very well end up doing that.

So my question is to those of you who’ve declared your project finished and have gone on to see it published: How do you know when you’ve reached the finish line?

By now, I was “supposed to” have landed an agent. I really was convinced that my writing was good enough. Even though I knew it was certainly possible that it wouldn’t happen within six months, I didn’t really think it wouldn’t. I believed at least that I would get requests for fulls and that those would tide me over.

I did get those requests, but early on, and nothing since about Thanksgiving. While I’m aware there are other options in publishing (I’m looking at small presses), I’ve still found myself wondering: what’s really in store for my career? Is this really what’s meant for my life?

I hope not. Because the thought of not being a novelist really, really depresses me.

But here’s the other thing, the other part of this confession. What I was hoping for was to be a wunderkind. I’m turning 33 in a month, and I really just wanted to be “discovered” and published before I turned 40. I wanted this because no one has ever thought much of me (at least until I met my husband). I was “nothing special” for many years. Two teachers loved my writing, but my parents didn’t love it and my peers didn’t get it. I have always wanted to “prove” myself, even though none of those people will ever be satisfied.

An author gave me some advice a few years back that I’ve kept, and now that I’m in this position, her words mean a lot more to me than they did then: “There’s been a lot of discussions of youth/writing recently. But you know what? There’s absolutely no percentage to being a wunderkind because, eventually, they’re going to take the kind away and you’re going to have to be a wunder on your own. And, at the risk of sounding very, very vain, I’m fairly confident that there’s not a 30-something on the planet who can write a wiser book than I can. Better, more beautiful? Sure. But there are things we learn as life goes on that makes writing richer with each decade. So think about the life as part of the writing, and don’t beat yourself up.”

What elicited her advice? My fear, even then, that I wouldn’t get anything done because of my kids.

In many ways I’m in a better position now than I was then. I have a number of short story credits in good, reputable markets; I’m helping to edit a magazine. So I can’t say I’m still stuck in a rut, and that’s good. Meanwhile, like I wrote to Bethany, fiction is an intrinsic part of my sense of balance. For my own sake and that of my family, I need to continue to pursue it. Even if it’s only a few sentences a day. And that “wunderkind” thing? Well, maybe that’s my personal bar that needs to be lowered.