Mom, Teacher, and Writer?
"If you believe you are a writer, you are a writer."
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Like a lot of writer moms, I started blogging when my children were really young. A year of graduate school had convinced me that it was time to get into the blogging game, although it was probably too late to ride the wave that helped some moms to find financial success as they shared their triumphs and struggles on the internet.
We were two years into renovations on a house that we bought as a foreclosure. Writing about everything we were doing in the house allowed me to vent my frustrations and celebrate when we finished a task. After two years of immersing myself in academic and creative writing, I also discovered that I loved having a place to publicly share my work. Because I was an exhausted mom and I was also teaching full time, I couldn’t write regularly, but I wrote when I had time and I had something to say.
A couple of years after we moved to Texas I decided that it was time to dedicate myself to my craft. I told myself I would write a blog post a week. It was an arbitrary goal that helped me produce hundreds of thousands of words, but it wasn’t always my best work. However, it helped me develop an important habit that gave me an outlet outside of my teaching job and my role as a wife and mom.
Was it easy? No. Did it bring me fame and fortune? Decidedly not. But did it help me grow as both a writer and a professional? Yes.
Even if you are able to eventually make some money from your writing, the ability to make a living by just writing is not available to most of us for a lot of different reasons. Personally, I love teaching and I’m good at it. Teaching gives me material for my writing, and years of teaching high school English and commenting on student papers have made me a better writer and editor for my adult writing peers. I would love to someday be able to supplement retirement income with my writing, but I have a long way to go before my two teenagers are completely out of the house and I can double-down on those efforts.
But that doesn’t keep me from writing regularly. That didn’t keep me from writing two books while also working and running kids to sports practices and games and choir competitions. And it doesn’t have to stop you. If you are a writer and you have a story to tell, you can still grow as a writer while managing the realities of life.
How?
Write in the spare moments
I know that most parents don’t feel as if they have any spare moments. We just finished one sports season and our daughter is wrapping up her show choir season. We only have two kids and it feels like we haven’t had much time to breathe since we returned from Christmas break. Our son just finished basketball season and we just got an email about a parent meeting for track.
The point is, I haven’t had much time for myself in the last couple of months.
I find the spare moments to write even a few sentences, or if I’m lucky, a few paragraphs. I write while I’m eating my breakfast on weekend mornings. I have given up lunch periods with colleagues to eat my lunch in my room and write or catch up on writing tasks. (One husband got blasted on social media when he complained that his wife did just that…and got a $100,000 book deal in the process.) Or I’ve snuck in a few minutes of writing while dinner cooks in the oven or on the stove. We spend a lot of stolen moments on social media. How about you spend those moments on your writing instead.
Find time to read
I get that this feels less possible than finding spare moments to write. I know people who are so dedicated to reading that they have far healthier social media and television habits than I do. But the older I get and the more I immerse myself in the writing world, the more I believe that writers must read.
How do I make this happen when it feels like I’m being pulled in multiple directions at once? I have my high school students do silent sustained reading once a week and so I get at least one hour of paperback reading a week. I have at least one audiobook on my Libby app at all times. I usually have at least one other book going at home that I read while we’re watching television at home or while I’m waiting for appointments.
The more access I give myself to words the more I want to read, and I’ve discovered that nothing beats writer’s block than a good thirty minutes of reading long-form writing.
When you have the time, dive in
Breaks from school are my writing retreats. Yes, we schedule time for family activities and vacations, but when we’re home and my teenagers are sleeping in and my husband is busy working from home, I lock myself in my office and produce as much work as possible. As a longtime blogger, I make sure I schedule out that work as far into the future as possible, which then consistently sends my work to my readers even when I don’t have time to do new writing.
We all have finite hours in the day, so if being able to write is really important to you, you have to make time to really sit down and write. It doesn’t have to be every week. It can be once or twice a month. If you need motivation, find a monthly writing group or writing contest that forces you to dedicate a certain amount of time to meet a set deadline. Communicate that need with your partner or family so that they know that this is “you” time and share your goals with them. You might be surprised by how supportive they will be of your writing dreams.
Remember that writing is a marathon, not a sprint
Saying “I want to be a writer” often feels like a presumptuous goal. When we tell non-writers that we want to write professionally or that we have a goal of writing a book, most do not understand that it is a long process full of starts and stops and hills and valleys. When we hear of overnight success stories, we become frustrated because we haven’t had the same amount of success with our own work. We compare the quality of our work to others and ask why we haven’t seen the same level of success.
Here’s the uncomfortable reality: for most of us, the dream is not going to happen overnight, but that doesn’t mean we don’t pursue it. I write because it’s my therapy. It’s how I process everything going on around me. It’s always been how I’ve best communicated my hopes, fears, frustrations, and celebrations.
If we treat our blogging and journaling as a workshop, we will eventually discover a wealth of material with which to write that memoir or novel or collection of essays. My first book was a collection of blog posts that I thematically wove together into a single book. My second book is an actual memoir, but much of the first draft of the camping memoir was taken from blog posts of family camping trips over the years.
Does life get in the way of our writing dreams? Yes, of course it does. Because life happens without our permission. Even when we are living our best life in the moment, it can be hard to find the time to do the writing that we want to do. Start by committing to small pockets of time and watch the work grow.
If you believe you are a writer, you are a writer. Just start writing things down.
Thanks Sarah!
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Faith, I’m sorry you had that experience. If you write, you should absolutely call yourself a writer. I say this as someone who doesn’t yet call herself a writer either even though I, like Sarah, write in every pocket I can find in my day being a single mom of 3 and a full time teacher as well. So this reminder is for me too!
Encouragement is so important to any creative endeavour. I’m sure your words had an impact on the new writer you were speaking to. You deserve the same. We can cheer each other on here, at least! 😊
As a full-time teacher and dad of two toddlers, this is really helpful and relatable. As you point out here, I’ve had to make a habit of writing during the small gaps that present themselves throughout the day whether that’s during my lunch break or while the kids nap on a Saturday afternoon. I imagine my schedule will continue to be full as they get older, so your post is a great, actionable reminder of what it takes to keep our writing dreams alive as parents. In a way, the business and responsibilities just makes the writing feel that much more special. Thanks David and Sarah!