Legitimizing Writing Time

Here I am, sitting on an airplane flying thirty thousand feet above a sea of clouds. The sun is just rising in the horizon, an orangy-yellow presence outside the oval plane window. I am flying to Los Angeles, where, for the next three days, I will attend the Society of Children Book Writers and Illustrators conference. Yesterday I was all mother. For the next three days I get to be all writer, guilt-free.

Guilt defines much of who I am. Since the children spend only half of the week with me, I want to give them my entire attention when they are around. Partly I do this to make up for not being there the other half of the week, and partly because I want to give them so much, but I don’t have enough time. My writing, therefore, takes second place (or even third and fourth) when the children are around.

A writers’ conference, however, is a different story. It sounds so..., well, so legitimate, so important. It sounds real! Engineers, teachers, people with real jobs go to conferences. And once in a while so do I. I go to the conference and feel that I’m doing something to further my career. I’m making contacts, deepening my knowledge of the business of writing and publishing. Then, after three days of taking myself seriously, I go back home to writing on a desk surrounded by pecking chickens, barking dogs, and attention-deprived children.

The quiet before the storm -- conference main room

The truth is that at home I doubt the legitimacy of my writing. I minimize my computer time when the children are around so as not to encourage them to spend time on their computers as well. Except, here’s what makes no sense about this: I am not playing on the computer or watching a teen series with too-beautiful photo-shopped young people. I am working! I am writing, and someday someone will want to read what I write. Right?

Am I working, or am I playing around? Am I indulging in a hobby which might never become a job? Certainly, I don’t treat writing as a job. I do not sit at my desk 9 to 5. And if part of the definition of a job is that it earns the worker money, then I am not exactly up to standard in that. I do what I love, and I feel privileged and grateful to be able to do that. But with an inexplicable fear of what others, my children included, will say, I don’t follow my writing ambitions, yet, with the same single-minded sense of purpose that I do other goals of my life. Motherhood, for example.

My son tells me: “Why are you on the computer all the time?” “Blogging,” he answers his own question, and a tone of hurt (or is it contempt?) sneaks into his voice. Once again I realize how important it is for me to feel the legitimacy of my writing, make room for WRITER in my definition of self. It’s ok, I think, frightening though it is for me to say, not to be 100% mother all the time. I wonder what will happen when I stop being afraid of being more than mother, and give myself permission to feel sometimes all writer inside....

Priorities Rock!

My brother-in-law once told me about a demonstration done by a time-management expert. The expert filled a large jar with rocks and asked, “Is the jar full?” “Yes,” the group replied. The expert took out a bag of gravel and poured it into the jar. “Is the jar full now?” he asked. “Maybe not,” the group thought. The expert took out a bag of sand and poured it into the jar. “What about now?” he asked. “No?” the group wondered. The expert took a jug of water and poured it into the jar. Now it was full.

The point of this demonstration is that we need to put the big rocks, our greatest priorities, in the jar first, otherwise they might not fit. But which of my to-do list items are rocks, gravel, sand or water? Chores, for example -- are chores sand or water? Hanging out with friends -- is that rock or gravel? Some of my activities are easier to identify: spending time with the kids or writing are rocks. But others are confusing. I care about my family eating healthy, homemade, organic food, but I would rate cooking lower down than reading the children a book.

Sometimes the sand and water, my chores, weigh on me so much that I cannot get the big rocks done. Scheduling doctor and dentist appointments, paying bills, and grocery shopping might be less important, but postponing them can irritate me enough that my mind, instead of concentrating on writing, will obsess on what still needs to get done.

So what are my priorities? The children, writing, exercising, hiking, my family and friends, eating healthy. But there are many activities which I would love to do and have given up on: singing, drawing, walking the dogs. Isn’t that too many rocks in one jar? This jar metaphor is stressing me out! Perhaps it is not meant to be used on a daily basis but more as a big picture kind of ideal: the jar being life and the big rocks my goals?

A coach once told me to make a plan and write down where I’d like to see myself tomorrow, next month, in a year, and in five years. Perhaps, to continue the jar and rocks metaphor, each of these time goals ought to have a jar of its own, with an appropriate size. Expecting myself to be published tomorrow is probably unreasonable, but setting small goals like writing a blog, revising my novel for an hour, reading a book, talking on the phone with the kids -- those are manageable rocks which I can fit in.

In my five-year jar so much more can fit! More books to write and to read, more hopes and dreams for the kids, places to travel to, empty canvases to fill. And even more in the jar of life, where each day is no more than a grain of sand, and the rocks are the big goals of life: self fulfillment, parenthood, love.

What do you do to find time for what’s most important to you?