(no subject)
The kids have been out of school for two weeks in honor of spring break, during which I’ve realized that I have been on my own break for quite some time. I admit my life broke a little when my grandma died this past fall. There’s something about losing someone that makes you hold on tighter to the people who are still here.
I finished my second novel at the end of this past summer. For the past couple of years, I’ve viewed the kids’ school year as my own “writing year.” Them being in school offers me structured time each day to write. It seems most logical that each school year I should be able to write a novel and then spend the subsequent summer revising. It’s a tidy timeline that should keep me task oriented.
Except when I started my new novel in September, after the kids had gone back to school, the writing felt slow. Really slow. The story keeps expanding and contracting as I work through it because I’m not slamming my foot on the accelerator. I’m spending time in my kids’ classrooms when I could be writing. Last year I tried to keep a firm boundary on how much I was going to spend time at the school. Time spent there equals less time to write. Except my lack of being there last year has created a need for me to be there this year. And it’s been wonderful. The kids’ teachers have allowed me to teach poetry, the kids have responded and it’s really feeding the former English teacher within me. I’ve enjoyed working with these young emerging poets. What’s suffered, though, is my writing. I just haven’t spend as much time each day doing it.
Now it’s April and I only have about fifty pages of a novel. Rough draft. On top of that disappointment, last night I read author blogs and caught up on Facebook, and now realize what a failure I am at reaching out to cultivate a community for myself. I’m an author. I’m supposed to be getting myself out there, right? Connecting!
Except--I’m at this point in my mothering where I’m beginning to realize how fast time is whipping by. My children are growing up directly in front of my eyes. Yesterday I had hoped to spend some time writing while the kids played. Except my daughter wanted to snuggle. My son wanted to play doctor. I completely obliged because I know that in the coming years, they’re not going to want to do these things. I also remember my own parents not being able to do these things with me when I was a child because they had to work. I, on the other hand, have a choice. I can be there for them.
I need to write, it’s part of who I am. But I’ve pulled back in order to be more fully present as a mother and wife.
I remember reading an interview with author Anne Tyler. Someone had asked what happened after she finished a book. She had said something to the effect that she steps back in to her life, into her garden and when a new idea enters--whenever that organically occurs--that’s when she gets back to writing.
This year has felt like that for me. The whole stepping back into my life. I feel that last year was about writing a book and this year is about being a wife and mother. I risk sounding subservient here because I’m supposed to be able to do it all, right? But it seems that the scale has tipped and might stay at this slant while my kids continue to grow. I have to accept that my stories, as slow as I may be going at this pace, will eventually get written. The need to write is ever present and I pay tribute to it daily. It’s just that I’m not in the fast lane.
When my kids are older and need less of me, my writing will get more of me.