Mother/worker/creator

[pegkerr]

Liz and Josh called us up on the spur of the moment and invited us over for dinner. Well, actually, their daughter Cayla initiated the invitation. They have two daughters, like us (a little younger than ours) and we were in the same Early Childhood Family Education for about four years. We've socialized with them quite a bit--we're all part of a potluck group that meets regularly--well, semi-regularly, since we've all gotten so busy.

It was pleasant evening. The kids played together well, and the four adults enjoyed adult conversation over pasta. I've always felt a strong affinity for Liz because there are a number of similarities about our lives: we're both mothers of two daughters, and like me, she's interested in issues of creativity. She used to do her own art, but now she runs an arts organization called Articulture, which holds classes, events and workshops. (She's going to graduate school, too; this is a truly busy woman).

We talked a little about the fact that I'm blocked at writing fiction and she isn't producing any art personally. Like Karen (minnehaha), Liz pointed out that I am writing--it's just that I'm writing non-fiction (these LiveJournal entries; essays). She doesn't seem as tense and unhappy about not producing work as I am. Perhaps she's simply more realistic about what she has the energy to do.

I don't know too many women like me who are 1) raising kids AND 2) working full time outside the home AND 3) trying to work at their creative outlet. Most of the writers I know locally don't have kids. (Lyda Morehouse's partner is expecting; it will be interesting to see how that works out for Lyda). Naomi Kritzer has a daughter, but she stays home with her. Lois McMaster Bujold had two kids; she's thought a great deal about parenthood--examined it in her fiction, too (see, e.g., Barrayar and Diplomatic Immunity--but she never tried to juggle writing with a full-time job.

I need to re-read Tillie Olson. It's been years since I read "As I Stand Here Ironing," but I think her fiction dealt a lot about the tension between mothering and self actualization, whether as a writer or otherwise (like I said, it's been years since I've read her; am hazy on the details).

Damn. Another reason to be sorry I'm not at Wiscon this weekend. (Feminist Science Fiction/Fantasy convention held in Madison, Wisconsin on Memorial Day Weekend). I'm sure there'd be any number of women there who'd be delighted to talk about balancing creativity with motherhood.

Sleepy. Had two glasses of wine with dinner; that's usually enough to shut me down for the night.

We're going to paint the girls' bedroom tomorrow (or at least, we SAY we're going to. We'll see).

Comments

[sahiya.livejournal.com]

Oooh, I've read "I Stand Here Ironing" -- last year in my AP English class, I think. Very good short story, if I remember correctly, but also very sad. If I'm remembering the right short story.

Writing takes so much energy -- and so do kids and a full time job. I don't know what your situation was while you were writing The Wild Swans, but from the amount of effort that you said you put into it, my guess is that you had more time than you do now. And you'll probably have more time as your kids get older -- it might take awhile, but I know that my sister and I are home a *lot* less now than we used to be. It might just be that this is just not the best time in your life to produce a novel, and that's fine. It certainly doesn't mean that you never will again.

Stacy

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I pushed through many years of full time worker, full time student, and single mom of two, so I qualify to understand your pain and stressed tiredness, if not exactly the frustration at not being able to write the fiction you want to write. What I learned from those years: That I would have to do a mediocre job of or ignore entirely a lot of things I thought were important and worth doing. That I would remember with greatest fondness the simplest events and quietest moments. That when my kids needed me, they could not wait. That what is important to me changed with the years. If I had known then anything like, I'd have spent less time in summer school classes and more time at the beach with my kids.

It might be that everything else is makes such a large claim on your attention that writing just doesn't get that hot little creative spark it needs. If that's so, worrying won't change anything. But I don't know what compromises and trade-offs will.

K. [knows there's not a lot of exact parallels between your life and mine]

eek, my name's in your journal

[(Anonymous)]

Ironically, I was ON a panel at Wiscon called "Writing With Kids in the House." The moderator was Amy Thomson, who sends her child to day care AND, I think, does not actually have to have a day job (she's independently wealthy, not a bestselling writer, at least not yet). The other two people on the panel were Catherine Shaffer and ML Konett. Catherine is also a SAHM. ML works part-time in the evenings. There were NO full-time WOHMs on the panel, possibly because it was scheduled for 2:30 p.m. on Friday, in the very first program block.

There were a couple of interesting ideas that got tossed around. ML has an arrangement with her husband and actually takes a laptop and goes to a coffeehouse two nights a week to write for several hours. That struck me as a good idea, actually. I can write during Molly's naps, but if she's awake and I'm around, she wants my attention, even if Ed is home and happy to play with her. Catherine has a strict rule that she does NOT do housework during naps.

Someone also said that when Marion Zimmer Bradley was a young mother and a new writer, every time she sold a story, she would take her kids out to a toy store and use some of the money she got to buy them a present. And she would impress upon them that they got this toy because mommy had some extra money because she sold a story! This struck me as a good way to get an older child to encourage you to sit down and write. (Molly is not yet old enough to care; she likes new things to play with, but the box my new office chair came in is the best new toy she's had in months, and given the option of Mom's Attention Now and some sort of delayed gratification, well, she's actually pretty good at delaying gratification given that she's 20 months old, but that's setting the bar pretty low.)

I don't know how I'd deal with it if I were working outside the home AND a mother. Back before I had Molly, I could write in the evenings; my routine when I was writing the first draft of my first novel was that I wrote every night without fail for at least ten minutes. If after ten minutes I was hating it, I could go do something else. Now, well...I'm glad I have her naptimes. I think the ideal for a working-mom writer would be a job where she could steal time to write, but that's not an option for everyone.

All writers, I think, go through periods of not writing much, for whatever reason. During my semester in Nepal, I wrote one story (a really bad one); most of my writing energy went in to long, detailed letters home. While in college generally, I wrote very little fiction. I felt like I had no time to write; this was BS, of course, it was just that socializing was more immediately compelling. During the early part of my pregnancy, I completely quit writing because of morning sickness. After dinner I wanted to go lie down; I didn't want to sit in front of a computer. (Hilary Moon Murphy -- there's a local working mom/writer for you, Peg -- went to Clarion while five months pregnant and suffering from morning sickness so bad she ended up in the Ann Arbor ER. She was keeping down nothing but lemon drops and flat gingerale. Clearly, this is someone with a lot more discipline than me when it comes to working while sick -- egads.) One way or another, though, sometimes life does get in the way. Sometimes "I have no time to write" is just an excuse (I have a very old friend back in my hometown who was a stay-at-home mom most of the time with a daughter in late high school, who STILL insisted she had no time to write -- she had plenty of time, but no discipline!) but sometimes it doesn't matter how disciplined and organized you are, there are things that keep you from writing. They pass, eventually. Most of them, anyway.

--Naomi