If you walk out through my kitchen door and keep walking, down to the end of the semi-enclosed barbeque area, you will find a shed. Full of odds and ends – old shelves, Christmas decorations, kittens – it is the perfect size for an office, and I spend long minutes dreaming of the day when it’s cleaned out, revamped and mine (MINE!) to write in. There’s a small window, looking towards the poppy fields.
I want to write. I wake up and I juggle fiction around breakfasts and school lunches, showers and dishes.
Shush children, Mummy is writing.
I wonder if I’m doing them a disservice by keeping this small part of me intact, unsullied by motherhood. But I think I’d be doing myself a disservice if I give everything I am to my children.
I have projects on the go everywhere, and nothing is getting my full attention.
Before Evelyn, I used to write best of an afternoon. Now we start our days at 5am and by 8pm I am dead on my feet.
But isn’t this the refrain of tired parents everywhere?
Children are demanding, housework is insidious, creativity drips from the end of our washing up gloves until we’re dried out and used up, unable to do much more than read a bedtime story and fall into bed ourselves.
Yesterday I sent all three of my children outside to frolic in the mid-afternoon sun while I locked myself in my bedroom and wrote the things I needed to get out of my head. Writing is like that. I can’t ignore it, even as I procrastinate around it.
NaNoWriMo is looming on my horizon and I’m torn between wanting desperately to participate and knowing how good it is for me, to dreading feeling the pressure. But then pressure is good. I work best under pressure, right?
Right.
Basically, to summerise: My life is hard, fiction is hard, children are hard; I wouldn’t change a single moment.
I love this Veronica, most especially the line
“creativity drips from the end of our washing up gloves until we’re dried out and used up,” because that is exactly how I feel most of the time.
I’ve actually just written a post on similar themes (which is scheduled for tomorrow.)
I’ve never attempted NaNo, but am sorely tempted this year.
Here’s to the juggling! (And future offices – the shed office sounds brilliant.)
You would definitely be doing yourself a disservice by giving everything that you are to your children. You need to keep you for you.
Write when and where you can, but don’t stress if you can’t manage it every day. That will happen soon enough when the kids get older and don’t need you every minute.
I totally agree with River. Do bits and pieces when you can.
It’s like why I knit,it keeps me sane
Hugs
I hear you, sister!
Don’t let that part of you die, you need it for your sanity.
As they get older, it won’t get any easier, I have to tell you, but you DO need that part of you, something that is exclusively you.
Oh, this. Exactly, word for word, this.
At one point, when attempting to blog every day (I don’t dare even dream of beginning the fiction that floats in my head), I realised it was making me resentful of the kids. Stop fucking needing me! I’m busy writing a post about your neediness!
Oh, I thought.
So yes, I don’t give over my whole self to motherhood but I realised I needed to tip the balance a bit more in its favour. Just for now. They won’t be this little forever.
xx
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