Throwing my hat into the ring

 

Today is November 1, and that means it's once again time for National Novel Writing Month. I'd been debating since September about whether I would participate this year, and I finally decided to give it a go. I'm hoping to regain the writing momentum I lost several months ago. Fingers crossed!

As far as my project goes, I've decided on a chick lit idea that's been rolling around in my brain for a few weeks. Time may be an issue—isn't it for everyone?—but I'm excited to get a good start on this novel.

Are you taking part in NaNoWriMo this year? What type of book are you working on, and what are your tips for living life around NaNo? If you're not participating, what are your plans for this month?

"Had we but world enough, and time..."*

I was thinking this morning about how hard it is to do all the things I need to do each day. My to-do list is often left unfinished, as everyday chores, like cooking and laundry and cleaning and running after children, take up most of my time, leaving little for the other things that really need to be done around here, like organizing and weeding out clothes that no longer fit and attempting to unpack more of the boxes I put in the basement when I moved here years ago. Fitting in writing time is sometimes an even bigger challenge, but it's an important one--and also the topic of today's 100 words:

As a writer and a mom, one of the things I struggle most with is finding the time to write. I stay at home with my two very young kids, something I wouldn't trade for anything. I do some writing early in the morning before they get up and some late at night after they're in their beds; however, in both cases, I'm pretty tired and often unfocused. But to paraphrase Tim Gunn on Project Runway, I make it work. I have to. If I have to sacrifice something--sleep--to follow my dream, that's what I'll do.

*Opening lines of "To His Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvell

Pressure

"But you will come to a place where the only thing you feel are loaded guns in your face, and you'll have to deal with pressure." ~"Pressure" by Billy Joel

Pressure. I've been feeling it a lot lately: a tug-of-war between following my dream and caring for my family. I've wanted to be a published writer since I was very young. In some ways I've succeeded--I was a journalist and have a portfolio of published articles--but my ultimate dream has always been to publish a book--to be able to walk into a bookstore and find my humble words on the shelf beside those of so many others. I've been working toward this goal for years, writing and rewriting the rough drafts of various books and working on other pieces as well, all with my eyes toward achieving my goal.

For the past several weeks, however, I've felt as if my dream is just that--a dream. I don't know if I'll ever achieve it. I've written before about the pressure I feel to be a good mother and the pressure I feel to work toward my writing dreams: those two things compete, leaving me feeling guilty about the amount of time I spend with my children versus the amount of time I spend writing. Pressure and guilt. Some days I feel like I'm missing my children's childhoods as I sit and type at the computer. Other days I feel like my writing dreams are slipping away while I take my kids to storytime or bring them to playdates featuring perpetual games of Candy Land. I can't seem to find a balance. And the pressure to do so--to somehow come to grips with the guilt--has gotten to be too much.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do. Maybe I need to take a break from my larger projects--but only my larger ones. I could never stop writing completely; I would never want to. I need to write. I know that. Maybe I should just focus on my short stories, on my 100-word pieces, and on this blog. Right now, I don't know if I can keep working on my books, following that dream. I know there will come a point when my children won't need me so much--a point that I dread because it already makes me feel so sad. But maybe then it will be time to follow my dream. Or maybe that time is now, and if I don't do it right this second, I never will. I really don't know. I wish I did.

Pressure.

My ongoing battle with time

One of the things I'm still struggling with as a writer is finding the time to work on my bigger projects. As a mom, I realize that the moments I can carve out among cooking and cleaning and playing with the kids are precious, yet at the same time, I have difficulty utilizing those ten- or twenty-minute writing sessions effectively. Although they're perfect for writing things like blog posts and drabbles and my 100-word exercises, when I attempt work on anything larger, like my novel, I find that I can't concentrate, and before I'm even able to begin, the moment is gone and something else calls me away from the computer.

Getting up a couple of hours before the kids do used to ensure productive writing time, but I'm finding now that I'm often too exhausted to write, as I generally get only four or five hours of sleep a night. Going to bed earlier might solve that problem--and that's something I'm working on--but I have trouble unwinding after a long day with the kids and find that one of the only things that relaxes me is reading. Unfortunately, I just don't know when to quit, and I often stay up until one or two in the morning, going to sleep only when I can't keep my eyes open one second longer. These marathon reading sessions are creating a new problem: I often oversleep, something I wrote about in my 100-words entry this morning:

I overslept this morning, which has been happening more and more frequently lately. I had one of those heart-stopping moments where something woke me up (thankfully), and I sat up quickly, pulse racing as I realized that the clock said 7 a.m. and not the 6 a.m. it needed to say. My daughter's two-year checkup was scheduled for 9:30, which made my getting up late all the more difficult to deal with. Before I had kids, I never imagined how hard it would be to leave the house on time.

Now I know.

Anyway, regarding my larger writing projects, I'm at a loss. I don't believe it's an issue of finding time as much as it's an issue of learning to use the time I have more effectively. I'd be interested in hearing how you utilize the small bits of time you carve out during the day. How do you make the best use of those precious few moments?