My latest resolution is to write five pages a day of my new novel. Five pages. That’s, like, nothing. It doesn’t even have to be good. It just has to be down on paper. I can worry about the good later.
Because I use most of the time the kids are at school or their dad's (two nights a week) to work on contract editing and writing projects, there isn't a lot of extra time to write my own stuff.
Here's the problem: I do not want to be one of those mothers who writes at five in the morning before her kids wake up. If I had to choose between sleeping in and the new novel, sleep would put up a damn good fight. What I want is to be able to write at night after they go to bed.
But it might be time to face the facts.
My kids are terrible at going to bed. I'm sure it's my fault. As you will see, I still haven’t figured out how to be consistently, effectively strict. Instead, I am just intermittently bitchy, depending on how much patience I have at any given time.
Around eight o’clock at night I naively start thinking “Okay, the kids will be asleep in half an hour. I might even write ten pages tonight!”
But here’s how it usually goes down:
8:15
I tell them it’s time for bed
They tell me they’re hungry
I feed them toast while lecturing them about how they should have told me earlier.
8:30
I tell them to brush their teeth
My daughter (let's call her T) remembers that she didn’t do her math homework
Another lecture followed by half-hearted help from me, who is now back down to five pages.
9:15
They actually go to bed but fight for ten minutes over which story I should read.
9:30
I tuck them in, kiss them goodnight and you would THINK that would be the end of it...
9:35
I sit down at the computer and haven't even opened the file when T yells that she has dropped her blanket from the top of her loft bed. I get it for her and tell her, admittedly with some irritation, that this is the last time I will be going in their room (hah!), which prompts her to say tearfully, "It's the only time I asked you to come in. God, Mom!" She's almost eleven. It's a preteen thing.
9:45
I sit down and am about to read over the last thing I wrote when the other child (let's call him J) yells that he' s scared. There is weary (on my part) discussion about which light should be left on, the hallway or the bathroom. The kids, of course, disagree. When I side with J it sparks outrage from my daughter, who clearly believes that her brother has been sent here to destroy her.
10:00
T is asleep, but J keeps calling me back despite threats that I will shut the bedroom door if he doesn't stop. I don't follow through on the threat because his yelling would wake up T.
10:30
J finally falls asleep.
By now I am too tired and frustrated. Five pages are impossible. Disciplined Me tries to make a deal with Tired Me. Three pages? Two? A paragraph?
The answer, Tired Me says sternly, is no.
So should I give up on the night writing? Should I at least try getting up early? Wait! Don't answer that.
Maybe I'll give it one more shot.
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Hey Rebecca- Great idea writing a blog. Another way to procrastinate actually writing your novel! Haha. Sorry, no offence meant! I wish you luck in getting your next novel written and look forward to it's eventual publish. I am consantly wondering how I could maximize and increase my own productivity. And I don't even have kids to deal with. It's just hard to get around to things, even when they are things I love to do. Or maybe my procrastination skills I so cleverly honed in my teens and twenties are just difficult to overcome...
ReplyDeleteI clearly have no suggestions or advice, but I enjoy your ramblings and humorous take on life's little obstacles, so I'll be reading :)
Amy Shaw.
Totally true on the procrastinating, Amy! But this kind of writing is actually a mental break. I can do it while kids are shrieking around in the background.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking about you, actually, and wondering if you have a blog for your fitness adventures. I loved reading about them on FB!