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....

Menacing Middles

My romance novel has been running on neutral lately. Whenever I start writing, doubts creep up if I’m headed in the right direction. It’s the dreaded middle which is stopping me, and I’ve decided I need an outline to show me the way.

Yesterday, coincidentally, two of my friends brought up the subject of middles. One friend told me, after I confessed being stuck, that she sees the subject of middles as an on-going issue in my life. She argued that I easily start new projects or say I’m done, but middles challenge me. Another sign of flakiness, right?

A little while later my other friend called. She is pursuing a new project and confessed she worries about her follow through. She had tried many careers, and what if she loses interest in this new one too? I realized that instead of praising herself for searching for her next goal, my friend believes that her shifting focus is wrong. Switching jobs perhaps means no commitment to the middle of any one job.

But what is a middle and who decides how long it will be?

With books it is easy to recognize beginning, middle and end. My daughter likes to tell this story: “Once upon a time, the middle, the end.” For an opera singer, the beginning, middle and end of an opera are often clear: there’s a first and a last performance and however many in between.

But sometimes in life it’s not so easy to determine what the middle is or how long it should be. I was married for eight years when I decided to end the marriage. Had I admitted failure when I ended it so soon? Or perhaps my failure was not recognizing earlier that the marriage was bad? Perhaps I would have done better to end it sooner?

I know people who have worked in the same place their whole life, and I know others who move routinely from place to place. I don’t think either is right or wrong. As always, it is the circumstances that mean the most, and I wouldn’t want to judge anyone before walking a mile in their shoes.

My life has been, so far, a continual search. A search for love and happiness. A search for self actualization, self faith and belief. Many endings led me to new beginnings, and there were always middles following, some good and some bad, some satisfactory and some that I tried to escape. I don’t have everything (or really anything) figured out. But I do see my life as a journey to explore all I can, with no road map or outline that I can consult. I make it up as I go and hope that at least some of it will turn out to be fun.

Perhaps this is why I love to write. There’s order in a novel. Only one way to follow. It’s easy, simple and clear. And an outline exists, a beacon of light to lead the way to the landing strip of the end.