Peas and Carrots
Like you, I’m a parent.
Like you, I help my family survive (on a good day, thrive).
Like you, I’ve been writing a novel.*
* Feel free to substitute “Writing a novel” with “composing a symphony,” “painting a mural,” “building the world’s largest model of an underwater city,” what-have-you.
There are days when I proclaim this to friends—I’M WRITING A NOVEL!—and feel empowered. But, mostly, I remember my revision-in-progress while changing pull-ups or vacuuming quinoa and feel, well, oxymoronic.
Turns out writing while parenting isn’t easy.
Hell, turns out parenting by itself isn’t easy.
(Yeah, yeah, cue the laugh track and I-told-you-so’s from generations of parents before me.)
These passions—writing and parenting—aren’t always complements. Most of the time they go together less like peas and carrots, and more like milk and kimchi.
To date, I have only one kid. But she is a FORCE.
In the three years I’ve been her mother, she’s taught me more than I ever anticipated, including that a toddler’s will is not at all in proportion to her size.
“What did you expect?” family and friends shrug. “She is your kid.”
(For the record, my once-noteworthy stubbornness is MUSH compared to that of my little boss.)
Look, my daughter is amazing. I’m in love with her cheek, her intensity, her curls. I’ve never created anything better and never will.
But raising her can be exhausting. Physically, mentally, emotionally.
I can envision the mom version of myself I want to be—wise and strong; totally composed yet still fun to be around!—but often that woman is running the marathon way up ahead of me.
Meanwhile, I limp along the road on a wonky ankle, wondering when I can take a nap.
Of course, in the before-times, when my uterus was a blank canvas, I didn’t know parenting would be as hard as it is. (Just wait for my post about the hell that is potty training.)
Nor did I realize writing while parenting would be a class of challenge reserved for the masochistic.
If I had… Well, let’s be honest, I probably would have made the same choices.
Still, the point—and the reason I started this blog—is that since becoming a mother, I have struggled to secure the necessary time and headspace to produce the work that matters to me.
It’s maddening, this feeling of sprinting toward mirages. At the same time, my cup runneth over, and my well is full. I have more to express now than ever before. More joy, more discomfort, more striving, more love.
And the love is big. So big and all-consuming that it’s next to impossible to compartmentalize. A love that’s with us constantly, overriding everything else. A total eclipse of the space and time we need to write.
So, what do we do when our toddler won’t nap and our writing time vanishes? And when our kid begs us to play the “Fake Mother Witch” from Tangled (yet again), how do we look into their pleading face and say, “Sorry, sweetie, I need to write”?
There’s no easy answer. The truth is, we writer-parents must learn to be resourceful, hunting for scraps of writing time like the undervalued poet hunts for scraps of writing paper.
And, even if we do manage to find an hour of uninterrupted time and to clear out some conscious headspace, there’s always the subconscious to contend with, which is perennially preoccupied with our children’s well being.
(It’s difficult to focus on metaphor and theme when your kid is napping with a hundred-degree fever.)
But, lest you hear despair in my words, I’m convinced that this abiding love we have for our children can be the source of never-before-seen creative abilities. It can help us access our superpowers as writers and creators and, in doing so, give us a deeper sense of meaning that will help us be the best versions of ourselves to our children.
The key question, of course, is how to make it work.
How do we harness the power of this profound love and become the writer-parents we want to be?
That question, dear reader, is the seed that sparked this blog and site.
I started The Write Parent to acknowledge, explore, and celebrate the dilemma that is writing while parenting. To discuss the struggles and joys creative parents face, build a community of hopeful, like-minded writers who are parents, and glean from that community myriad ideas and solutions for how to find productivity and satisfaction as a writer-parent.
Our work as writers is for the most part solitary, but we’re all scratching away at our pages alongside one another. Similarly, it’s easy to forget that other parents experience the same frustrations and fears, the same hope and longing, that we do.
We’re in this together, folks—raising children and writing stories that hopefully will make a positive contribution to the world.
Let’s support each other on our journeys. Let’s love, let’s parent, let’s write.
Sláinte,
Erin
What are some of the joys and struggles you experience as a writer-parent? Leave your comment below.
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