Guest post by Eros-Alegra Clarke, a fiction writer who went to New Zealand for the surfing, and never left. Alegra won the Grand Prize, 76th Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition, with her short story, Salamander Prayer. Lately she’s been toiling in the muddy fields of the novel, while simultaneously mothering three small children. Read more on her blog, Eros-Alegra Clarke, a Golden Retriever with Butterfly Wings.
WHEN IT COMES TO MANAGING MY LIFE, I spend a lot of time dreaming about sprouting a second set of arms. Actually, those are my conservative dreams – in my wild, unrestrained dreaming, I add a third set of arms and grow a new head. But barring a lucky encounter with a radioactive asteroid, I don’t think there is much hope of me becoming anything other than your average, frantic, two-armed, one-brained female.
With a three month old baby and two other children aged 5 and 3, I don’t have time to put into place the organizational systems that in my pre-motherhood days served me well. And, ironically, it seems like with each child I have had, the more external, non-motherhood related opportunities have presented themselves to compete for my time.
Between dishes, laundry, small-scale catastrophes, and the need for sleep, I am daily learning to focus on habits of efficiency and adaptability. I don’t have a lot of control over my environment, my daily schedule, energy levels or sanity on any given day, so I need methods of working that are flexible. People often ask me how I manage to write a novel with everything else going on around me. So far these 4 strategies are what seem to be working:
1. Quantity over quality. I look at a daily writing habit as being no different than exercise for the body. Consistency goes a long way. Squeezing in just 20 minutes a day of writing time is far better than waiting for inspiration to strike and hoping that when it does, I will have the time and endurance to sit down for hours and write. Even when it feels like my writing is nothing but uninspired sludge, I have noticed that over the long haul, the daily effort means improvement. If I’m not in training, I’m falling out of shape. At the least, my writing isn’t improving.
2. Words out equal words in. It can be tempting to look at reading as a luxury or something only to be done when there is spare time, but I have come to the conclusion that if I don’t have the time to read, I don’t have the time to write. When I am putting out more words and not replacing them by reading, my writing starts to suffer. Reading actually saves me time. I am absorbing invaluable lessons in how to write a good novel.
3. Multi-tasking. While I don’t deny that I need periods of uninterrupted quiet, I don’t often get to dictate when those times will be. I try not to look at chores as time apart from my creativity – if I am hanging laundry, mopping floors, putting away dishes, I am also mulling over scenes and plot issues. I compose blogs while weeding or taking a shower. I cuddle with my kids while they watch a movie and I read. It is what I like to call an ‘attitude of availability.’ Even if I am taking a break to watch a favorite show on television, my mind is open to relating whatever is going on around me to informing the project I am working on. I often find when I am stuck on a plot issue if I take a break but remain available the answer comes to me in an unexpected way.
4. Support systems. I have great people surrounding me. I make no claims to be a stoic single mother raising her novel without help. I require a support system. I am aware that some writers are several draft wonders. They work in a solitary environment, locking themselves in rooms and emerging after two drafts with a brilliant child in their hands. That is not me. I wish it was. I am a messy writer. It takes me multiple drafts to get things right. Left on my own, I would keep editing and revising until my poor novel figured out a way to climb out the window and run away from home. Because of this, I have several friends whose editorial eye I trust. When I reach a level of feeling like it is ‘almost’ there, I run my writing by these friends. It saves me a great deal of time and agony to get a fresh, outside perspective on the writing.
Beyond my writing circle, I have a supportive family believing in me far more than I believe in myself most days. My husband gives me the space and time I need to get my writing done. Of course, I think this might partly be because he is a smart man. He wants me to write because he wants to survive me. As the saying goes: If the wife isn’t happy, nobody is.
This might be the greatest reason any writer is able to write in a life that is full of distractions and demands. The other option is misery. I have come to believe that anyone can write. A writer is someone who has to write. We find time each day to prepare food and eat. A writer finds time to write. It is a necessary requirement for us to thrive.
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