Monday, October 29, 2012

One Writer's Dilemma: I fed my family cereal for dinner so I could write...


Let's face it, if you aren't a professional writer/author/getpaidtotypewords, then you struggle with the day to day tasks of working and running a household and finding time to write. And if you have kids, that just compounds the situation.

Enter me, and you, and 99.3% of those who call themselves writer's.

Some of my favorite blog posts from other writer's are the ones encouraging us to keep on writing despite all of the struggles of life. I bookmark those. I re-read those.  I think about them when I'm changing baby diapers at 3am at work. (I am a NICU Nurse during the night)

What I've discovered in life, is that you've finally excelled at a profession when you can joke about situations that would cause a normal person to blush cherry red with embarrassment. 

Examples:

I accepted myself as a Biochemist the day I got way too excited over a new mass spectrometry instrument and all the cool experiments we could do with it.



I accepted myself as a Registered Nurse when ran to my co-workers bedside to inspect a brand new ostomy post-op.



Will I put a Disney movie on, sit next to my daughter and lose myself in my work? 



Will I feed her popcorn for lunch and cereal for dinner? 


 
Yes. Yes I will. 

"How could I do such a thing?" you may ask, gasping in horror.

I've asked myself that a few times, until I realized this: the perfect manuscript is not going to fall from the sky into my lap. Neither is the perfect short story, the perfect query letter or the perfect synopsis. We write and write and write and edit and edit and edit. Life is a struggle, success is a struggle and nothing teaches our children better than them watching us live through that struggle and succeed.

My daughter has watched me leave for the night shift at 7pm and return in the morning to bring her to school and do all the mom things that society expects from me. She has seen me struggle. And she's picked up on it, there is a lot less whining, a lot more cooperation. I don't want her growing up expecting everything to be handed to her on a silver spoon, that tends to be a problem with a lot of people today. They give up too easily. 



Don't hide in your basement at night. Don't wait until midnight when everyone is asleep. Let them see you working. Let them see you writing. It's a good thing.  

When I'm buried in the ground I may not have published a best-seller, but my daughter will always remember sitting next to me as I followed my dreams. 
It will remind her to always follow hers no matter how hard the path may be.



Happy Impending NaNoWriMo!







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