I have a lot going on as the new year begins. I recently agreed to sign on as assistant editor of a brand-new horror magazine. I’ll be blogging at least twice a week for a startup regional parenting site… and perhaps contributing articles to its companion print magazine. I have existing clients with ongoing work. I have a personal blog that I try to write for at least once a week.
All this would probably be manageable if I didn’t also have a fledgling fiction career. At any given moment, I cannot figure out whether to work on my next novel, any one of half a dozen short stories (one of which is shaping up to be a long ‘un, maybe even a novella).
And then there are the boys.
I complained to my husband that I haven’t done any real writing since the baby started to walk. And now I have all this stuff going on. How to manage it all?
I’m open to suggestion. In the past, I’ve done freelance work by day and fiction by night, but that was when I had regular childcare and no baby. (Even at that, I could see childcare a.k.a. Grandma overwhelmed by both boys at once!) I’m thinking a different, more structured schedule is in order.
Hamlet has preschool three mornings a week. This should be my alone time with Puck, but without both boys competing for attention… it’s so tempting to work at least part of the time, perhaps a blog entry. Late afternoons, when the kids are bored and tired and need downtime, may work: I could pop in a video. But what of the never-easy-to-predict high-maintenance days, when both boys demand almost constant interaction? That I’ll just have to play by ear, like always.
And where does that leave fiction? Well, there’s the tricky part. Ideally I would devote 30 minutes per day to fiction, plus several hours on Saturday morning. This is easy when I’m in a groove, in the middle of a scene or story where I know what’s going to happen next. It’s not so easy, though, when I’m stalled–with more questions and doubts than ideas, and too many distractions to focus in such a short span of time. Not to mention competing freelance work.
So that one, again, I’ll have to play by ear. Most of all, I hope for balance. I’m never happy when I’m doing too much of either writing or mothering, but my sons are extroverts – they need interaction, and the “companionable silences” I treasure, working on something while they play nearby, may not be enough for them.
So, my challenge for the week: a schedule of some kind. Maybe even a week-to-week one. As for work, I need to complete one article edit and page proofs for the new magazine going out, and I need to catch up with some projects I’m managing for a client. Over the longer term (this month), I have another article edit and two articles to write. I’ll be busy… will I manage? Stay tuned!
Studio Mothers: Life & Art 