I hear this question every so often, and my first response is, “Super glamorous. I am practically famous. My office smells of rich mahogany.”
That’s a total lie.
Right now my office smells like a dirty diaper because it sits just outside the baby’s room, and I desperately need to empty the diaper pail. Nobody knows my name (except the twelve of you who consistently still read here – thank you!), and if you call yoga pants, a rumpled t-shirt, unwashed hair, and blood shot eyes glamorous then you’d make at least a portion of that statement true.
My life consists of fitting it all into the cracks of my day. In his book, On Writing, Stephen King shares his writing schedule with his readers. It consists of writing three – four hours every day, allowing him to finish most manuscripts within three months.
That’s almost like my schedule, only the complete opposite. Every morning, I wake up at 5:00 (except when I don’t), and try to make my brain write pretty sentences before coffee. Sometimes I am quite successful. Other times I just scroll through Facebook for an hour, kicking myself for not sleeping longer.
I wonder if Stephen King gets lost in Facebook when he’s procrastinating?
I wonder if his office smells of dirty diaper?
With school beginning this week, I’ve found that those cracks in my day have become a bit more narrow, but at least they’re predictable. With a twenty-minute mid-morning snack break, and an hour for lunch, I’m quite certain that my productivity will skyrocket this school year.
Because we writers love penning our words with the shrill shriek of children in the background. It really helps keep the mental juices flowing in an orderly fashion. My lunch time writing usually goes something like this:
Sit down and stare at the screen.
Try to remember where I was going with that last paragraph. Know in my heart it was probably going to be brilliant, but now it’s gone forever.
Get up and investigate the crash that just came from a bedroom.
Sit down and stare the the screen.
Try to remember what I was thinking about before I got up.
Get up and dig dog food out of the baby’s mouth.
Sit down and stare at the screen.
Try to remember what this book is about.
Get up and yell at the kids to quit fighting gently remind the children to play nice.
Sit down and stare at the screen.
Open Facebook and tell myself it’s research.
When the kids finally fall asleep at night, I usually flop onto the couch longing for nothing more than to shut my brain off and watch a little mindless television. Sure, TBS – I’d love to watch Legally Blonde for the 4 millionth time.
But then I remember that pesky deadline, and all the work that needs to be done in the next twelve months, so I pull out my computer, open up the file and stare at the words, then wait for them to stop swimming around on the screen. When they don’t, I sigh and pull myself up again for a mighty search through the house for my glasses, which magically disappear any time I need them.
When I finally locate the wily spectacles (why were they on the back of the toilet again?!) I set to work. Nighttime is for editing because the brain is too fried to write stories.
Unless those stories are blog posts about what it’s like to be a writer.
If I’m lucky, I crawl back into bed around 10:30, and I pick up a book because good writers must be readers. At 10:42, I fall asleep reading, dropping the book on my face in the process.
That’s my favorite part of this writerly life.
I sleep soundly most night, except for the ones where I see characters and outlines in my head all night long, at which point I toss and turn and clench my jaw until 5:00 rolls around, and I pull myself from bed again.
Only to have forgotten every single thought I’d had through the night.
What’s it like to be a writer?
I get to wear yoga pants, drink endless cups of coffee, and stay home with my kids. Glamorous?
Nah.
But pretty dang cool, nonetheless.
My novel releases this spring, and I can’t wait to share it with you! In the meantime, I’m busy putting together a couple of ebooks to share with my email subscribers, and will hopefully have a little site redesign done sometime this fall. I’d love for you to sign up so I can keep you up to speed on all the exciting things coming down the pike! If you’re interested, just leave me your email address in the little box to the right and click Sign Me Up!
I’ve heard that phrase over and over since I announced that I was having not one, but two books published next year. And homeschooling on top of that. And my reply is always the same.
Me neither!
(And then I secretly wonder if I should have said Me either, because now that I’m all I’M A WRITER WITH BOOKS COMING OUT, I feel like I should edit every word that comes from my mouth. It’s a very difficult place to be, inside my head.)
But it’s the truth – I don’t know how I’m doing it all. Although I can say with certainty, I am not doing it all well most of the time. And I’m okay with that.
My house is messy, and my kids haven’t eaten what you might call nutritionally well rounded meals every day. Some of that is just summertime. I can’t be expected to keep up with all of their dietary needs three meals a day, every day when they’re home all the time with zero semblance of routine.
I just can’t.
And my house isn’t clean. It’s not a disaster. A little here and there every day means that the house is functional…but it wouldn’t pass Mary Poppins’ white glove test, either.
I can’t seem to find time to blog these days, and I really do miss it. But life, you know? It’s busy and full, and seriously my brain is in constant motion as I think about all the things I need to do to launch two books in the next twelve months.
I’m finishing writing one, while anticipating the edits for another. I’m formulating marketing plans, contest ideas, making connections and partnerships, preparing for a minor site redesign, and even tossing around writing a couple of ebooks to give away for free.
Because, you know – there’s too much down time in my days.
When I have a minute to sit still, I go through homeschool curriculum, and I’m familiarizing myself with the books and their formats. I have our first two weeks of lesson plans almost all filled out, and I’m wrapping my mind around how each day will operate when we officially start.
And in between all of that, I’m trying not to miss my kids. These days are just so hectic. Even if I wasn’t doing all of these other things on the side, though, not missing my kid’s summer days is a tough order. Because honestly, they don’t really want to sit around and hang out with me.
They want to be with friends and play games. They’re going to camp, and they’re swimming, and I’m happy they’re having so much fun. I don’t feel like I’m missing it. I’m sort of watching it from the periphery, and that’s okay.
So I have a survival plan in place, and somehow it’s all working. There are, however, a couple of pieces missing in my ultimate plan of survival. And these missing pieces are causing some problems.
Sleep and exercise. I’m tired, and sluggish. Both things need to improve, or I really won’t survive these next twelve months, no matter how airtight my plan may be. So I’m working on that.
This is all the challenge of motherhood and working. I’m not complaining – not by a long shot. My days are sweet and full, and for the most part I am enjoying them, even if I’m slightly overwhelmed. And truth be told, I know this won’t last long. These hectic days will be gone in an instant, and maybe I’ll miss them.
Or maybe I won’t.
I don’t really know, nor do I much care because today I have enough to think about. So I’m not going to worry if I’m doing too much or too little. I’m just going to keep putting one foot in front of the other, and crossing things off my never ending to-do list.
[Tweet “Because motherhood is a glory crash of the crazy and the mundane all rolled up like a snowball.”]
I’m just here for the ride.
Tell me, moms. How are you all doing with the crazy hectic fatigue of it all? How do you work sleeping, eating well, and exercise into your crazy packed days? I’m open to suggestions for how to make this all work.
I’m knee deep – nay, NECK DEEP – in all of the writing these days. Every spare moment is divvied up into sizable, manageable chunks, and there is little wiggle room for anything else.
Related: My house is a disaster, and the laundry threatens to eat me in my sleep.
Wendy and I are down to two months before we have to turn in our manuscript to the publisher, which seems like a long time, but feels so terribly short given all that still needs to be done. Every once in awhile, though, I’m able to sit back and assess where we are, and it’s good. First drafts of every chapter are written. Now we polish and refine and rewrite.
We will survive.
My novel is in the publisher’s hands, we’re finalizing the title (I can’t WAIT to share it with you), and I should be receiving sample covers soon. This is crazy exciting stuff!
But this also means that the need to begin a big marketing push is looming, and I’m overwhelmed. With all of it.
And then there’s the blogging. I miss blogging. I miss telling stories. Like how my children are slowly and systematically destroying the house this summer, one curtain rod, broken window screen, and shattered dish (or salt shaker) at a time. If it wasn’t so frustrating, I’d be impressed with their clumsiness.
But alas, there is little time to blog. I wake early and work. I get the baby down for a nap and work. Afternoons are for being with my kids, making sure they know I still love them (JUST STOP BREAKING MY STUFF). Then I put them to bed and I work.
I have managed to still carve out a bit of time to read, though. I’m a fiction girl, so diving into story is a necessity for my survival. I sneak reading in at night before I fall asleep. It soothes me, and it releases all the tension in my brain from a long day of walking the line between motherhood and writing.
So without further ado, I give you What I’m Reading
Photo courtesy of Tammy Labuda Photography
The following are books I’m either reading right now, or I’ve recently finished. I tend to have three or four books going at a time. It’s a sickness.
Big Little Lies: I am really enjoying this book. It’s breezy, and doesn’t require too much effort to read. The story is clever, the plot engaging, and it’s just quirky and humorous enough to keep me grinning. This is one I’ll get through quickly.
A Long Walk to Water: This was a quick read. I read it because Sloan needed to read it for school, so I thought I’d go through it first. It’s a great story, albeit a sad one. It’s been fun to watch him get into the book. In general, reading isn’t his favorite, but he’s enjoyed this book.
Schindler’s List: I bought a copy of this book when I went to Dachau. It’s actually quite good, but it’s heavy, and so I’m making my way through it slowly. Today, with the rain pouring outside, the sky all weepy and grey, is the perfect day for curling up with this excellently written book.
A Mountain of Crumbs: Elena Gorokhova might be my new favorite author. I finished her book, Russian Tattoo, in no time and I loved every bit of it. The book was engaging, funny, poignant, smart, and fascinating. A Mountain of Crumbs is actually a precursor to Russian Tattoo. I read them out of order. It doesn’t matter, though. That’s how good a writer Gorokhova is.
Russka: When I signed on with Kregel publications for my novel, the publisher recommended I pick up this book. He thought it would be something I enjoyed, and he was right. This book is a fascinating merging of history and fiction, spanning 1,800 years of Russian history and culture. This is one I really want to dive into when time frees up.
Books that are sitting on my shelf, waiting patiently to be read:
The Grace Effect: I really can’t wait to read this story of love and redemption from historian and Christian apologist Larry Taunton. He shares the lessons he learned through the adoption of his Ukrainian daughter, Sasha, when she was ten, and the false promises of an atheistic society.
Wild in the Hollow: Don’t you just love that title? That alone is the reason I bought this book. Reason number two lies in the fact that I’ve always loved Amber Haines writing. I’m looking forward to this book.
Making it Home: Emily Wierenga is a poet, her writing all clear and smooth like water trickling off the top of a mountain. I can’t wait for the release of her new memoir. In fact, I’m so excited about it that I’ll be hosting Emily here in the near future to share personally with all of you!
So those are a few of my current reads. Tell me some of yours!
I work in a profession that requires thick skin. I put my heart out there, tapping each beat to the rhythm of my keyboard, and I hand it to a friend, an editor, the world via a blog post, and then I wait for the feedback.
I learned to accept criticism in college. My senior year, the class Writing for the Popular Market would be the training ground for giving and accepting constructive criticism.
That was also the year that I began to associate editing with coffee.But that’s a different topic for a different day.
Once a week, my classmates and I, along with our professor, sat in a circle in the local coffee shop, or on the couches in the room above The Sub, and we’d dutifully hand the ten pages we’d written in our novels that week to the person sitting just to the right.
Then we’d sit back, sip our coffee, and read one another’s words.
There were only six of us in the class, and by the end of the year, we each had a completed manuscript. This would be the first draft of my novel. It was the beginning of learning to communicate through story.
I’m grateful for the lessons learned in that small class. I’m glad I learned to hear someone criticize what I wrote, and not take it personally. It’s a necessary skill, and it’s one that’s served me well over the last fifteen years since I graduated.
When I shared the news that my novel would be published last week, I received so many wonderful, encouraging messages and comments from all of you. And I cried a lot as I read through them, because fifteen years of waiting and dreaming of seeing this book published suddenly took a realistic turn.
I received a lot of rejection letters for the various drafts of my novel. For a long time, I kept every rejection letter I received. After reading Stephen King’s book, On Writing, the notion of a stack of rejection slips seemed almost romantic.
[Tweet “There is a refining power in rejection. It either makes you, or it breaks you. “]
See, when I started the process of trying to get my book published (an earlier version of it that is nothing like the one coming out next spring), I did it the old school way. I mailed letters – actual letters written on paper.
I sent query after query in the mail, along with book proposals and sample chapters. And I included in each stamped envelope, a Self Addressed Stamped Envelope (SASE) for the publishers to send me his response…which was usually a big, fat no.
Every once in awhile, though, there would be a glimmer of hope. A note, scratched at the bottom of a form letter from the editor encouraging me to keep writing.
Those rejection slips went to the top of the pile.
I tossed the folder of rejection slips when we moved, because I was over the romanticism of it all by then. And the world had moved on to email, so now I had the privilege of receiving electronic form letters, and that felt a little less nostalgic. I wish now, though, that I had that stack of “No’s”
Because I’d love to see it dwarfed next to the contract that says “Yes.”
I haven’t really minded all the rejection, if I’m honest. I’ve been impatient at times, of course. And there were days when I’d feel terribly discouraged over it all. But in all the years of waiting and hoping, it never occurred to me that I should give up on the book.
There are some stories that just get under your skin, and this story that I’ve written is one of them. The characters crawled into my very being, and I knew that someday I’d see them really come to life in print.
So I waited, and I pushed, and I simply refused to take no for an answer.
[Tweet “Rejection doesn’t mean the end of a dream. Rejection says you’re on the right track.”]
If you’re in a place where “No” is the only word you’re hearing, can I just urge you not to give up? Sometimes you have to wade through a whole lot of “No” to get to “Yes.”
And when that happens, you’ll find that the “Yes” is so much sweeter after the waiting.
His voice reached through the phone pressed to my ear and I took a breath to give the expected response, then stopped. Tears pricked the corners of my eyes, and I felt the wind sort of escape in a small sigh.
“I don’t know,” I said, voice trembling slightly.
A month ago, I signed my first contract with a literary agent. For over a decade, I have been trying, without success, to secure a literary agent. It is a very big step toward my dream of publication – this is what I’ve been waiting for, what I’ve wanted to do since I was a teenager.
I should be excited.
I am excited.
But I’ve lost momentum.
When I began blogging seven years ago, I had no idea where that journey would take me. Very early on I came across one of the Compassion Blogging trips, and as I read through those posts I felt a deep longing for my words to matter. As much as I loved chronicling the humorous moments of mom-life, I knew I wanted my site to become more.
I would walk through a year of grieving and heartache, and I couldn’t find my footing in the blogosphere anymore. I had accomplished my goal, and while writing has always been an outlet, at that point in time I found more solace in working on my novel, because blogging began to feel too painful. I was so very raw in those days, and I felt exposed online.
It’s been such a journey these last two and a half years. And now here I am, on the cusp of seeing another dream realized, and I find myself wildly overwhelmed.
If it weren’t for my husband, I think I would have given up a long time ago, because this process of doing what I love hasn’t been easy. Success, however you may measure it, hasn’t fallen in my lap. I’ve worked for it – I’ve worked really hard, and I have a stack of rejection letters to prove that what I do isn’t for the faint of heart.
Maybe I shouldn’t have kept the rejection letters. Maybe the folder full of “No” is a little bit of a downer, but it does make the “Yes” a little sweeter. And inside that folder full of “No” are little glimmers of hope. Editors who took the time to write me a personal note on their typical form letter response.
“Love the concept, and the writing is beautiful, but it’s not a good fit for us.”
“Keep working on this. You have the beginnings of something really special, but it’s not there yet.”
When I got those notes, I placed them on top of the stack of rejections to remind myself that I really can do this writing thing. Because the truth is, when you fight for something for so long, and you are constantly pushed backward, you start to question whether or not you’re cut out for this gig.
But now, there is someone else out there who believes in me. An agent who believes me capable of telling the stories I long to tell. I have a writing partner who, like my husband, has always been my cheerleader, and she’s right beside me in this new journey. She’s helping shape a message that the Lord placed on both of our hearts so many years ago.
I’m overwhelmed by it all. This is where the real work starts, and there’s a small part of me that is just scared. I’m afraid to get too excited. I’m intimidated by the need to gain blogging momentum again – to rebuild a platform in an already saturated market.
And that ever present nag that tells me I might not be good enough to pull this off likes to prick at my ears in the quiet moments when I’m most vulnerable.
Dream chasing is hard. It will always involve rejection. There are so many “No’s” that make up a “Yes.” And we’re all prone to look to our left and our right, and to see the people who are doing the things we want to do and assume that the success just fell in their laps. But 9 times out of 10, that’s not the case.
They worked hard for it, too.
If you’re chasing a dream right now, and you feel overwhelmed by it all, can I urge you not to give up? Don’t look at the “No’s” as a finality, but as the stacking point for the great big “Yes” waiting in the wings.
Maybe it won’t look like you thought it would, and maybe it will be more work than you assumed, but at the end of the day your dream matters, and the tenacity with which you’re willing to run after it will be the tipping point between excellence and mediocrity.
The sky was grey the day I met him. It was 2003, and I was in Kiev, Ukraine looking on a quest to speak with the men and women who’d fought valiantly in “The Great Patriotic War.”
Leonid sat behind his desk and looked at me warily, not generally accustomed to people wanting to hear his story. His back was bent, his face bearing the lines of one who’d lived through hell on earth. Through the translator, he asked one simple question.
“Why do you want to know?”
I was a 24 year old pregnant American in Ukraine with a thirst for history. I wanted stories. I wanted to hear them and to tell them. But this man – this man had lived the stories. They weren’t romantic, and they certainly wasn’t as neat as most movies had made them seem. Leonid’s history was alive with the sounds of men dying. He could smell the gunpowder and fear, all mingled together in a story of heartache.
He was a veteran.
The men and women who lived this history are slowly fading into the past. Their stories are all we have left, and we must be willing to listen. We must gather them, and preserve the words if we cannot preserve the sights and sounds. This is why I continue to search for the right publisher for my novel.Because I believe the stories must be told.
We must continue to write books and make movies so that these veterans will understand that we want to know because we want to honor them. And for the men and women who are serving today, the ones living new stories, fighting against our own modern day terrors, we must show them that we respect their sacrifice. That their stories are worth hearing and telling and honoring, too.
“Why do you want to know?” he asked.
“Because I believe your story is worth telling,” I told him.
His eyes glistened and he leaned back in his chair, folding his hands gently in his lap. He took a moment to gain his composure before speaking.
“I was 16 when the Nazi’s invaded my country. My father went to the front immediately and died very quickly. Though I was not yet old enough to enlist, the Red Army allowed me to fight as a volunteer. When I was 17, I entered the front lines.
The men in my unit were not much older than me. They were 18-25 years old, all of us boys. We were afraid, but we had courage in our hearts.
There are a lot of stories I could tell you of those years, but I won’t tell you all of them. Most are too painful. I do remember one evening, though. It was near the end of the war, and we knew that we were winning. We were in Russia at this time, and the winter months were finally ending. It was still cold, but we could feel spring coming. We were by the fire after another long day of walking. We hadn’t seen battle that day, but we knew we could meet a fight at any time. That was part of the fatigue, knowing that we would run into the battle at any moment.
We heard a sound coming from the trees behind our camp and we all stood up. I remember my heart beating so fast I could hardly breathe. A man shouted from the darkness in a language I recognized, but didn’t understand. He was speaking English.
My friend, Pavel, spoke English and responded. He told us to put down our guns because these men were friends.
The Americans sat with us by the fire that night. They gave us cigarettes and vodka. I didn’t understand the conversation, but I remember the camaraderie we all felt. We were different, but we were also the same. We were young men who had survived. We had seen the very worst of mankind, and the very best of mankind. We were all scared, and we were brave.
We were soldiers.
They left the next morning, and not many months later we got news that Hitler was dead. This is the story I want you to know. I want you to know that those years were dark and painful, but there were good things that happened, too. I will always remember that night when I sat with friends from another land.
These are the stories you should tell. Thank you for listening to me.”
To all the veterans who have served in the fight against oppression, I thank you. And to the men and women serving now, I am so very grateful. Your story matters today, and it will matter fifty years from now. Thank you for your sacrifice.
