Helping Mothers Write Their Books
Whether you are a mom who is single, married, working, or a stay-at-home parent, mothering isn’t easy. It’s been well documented the primary parent takes on more housework and emotional labor than the non-primary parent. While there are amazing secondary parents out there, dads, second moms, grandparents, and more, the majority of child-rearing falls on the shoulders of moms.
*For the sake of simplicity, I’m using the term “mom” to describe the primary caretaker of children, but this can also include men, guardians, or anyone else who undertakes the majority of the parental responsibility.
Moms who want to write often struggle with finding the time to do so. Between carpooling, after-school activities, doctor appointments, shoe shopping, meal making, errand runs, and more, little time is left for other endeavors. A mother’s workday begins at the crack of dawn and ends at bedtime. Even when the lunches are packed and the kids are in school, there are always constant interruptions related to child-rearing.
So, when there is a moment of time, which might be during school or in the early hours of the morning, how do moms find the time to write?
Creating Non-Negotiable Writing Time Slots
The first thing I often suggest is to establish a non-negotiable writing time. This can include a 1-hour period every day, or it can look different depending on the mom’s needs. For some moms, especially those with babies who aren’t on a predictable schedule, this writing time might not be daily but instead takes place on Saturday and Sunday mornings.
Whatever works for your schedule, the goal is to establish a writing routine. Moms will often say, “I can’t get anything done in an hour, or if I wait until the weekend, I lose touch with the characters in my story.” These are valid concerns. However, we have to work with what we have, and unfortunately, as mothers, we don’t have a lot of time. Those small segments of time do add up, and eventually, the writer can produce a book. Stephen King once said, “If you can only write 350 words a day, at the end of the year, you have a book.” No need to break out your calculator, that’s 127,750 words.
Writers who are new moms or moms who are new writers, might be intimidated by these seemingly small blocks of time. They might believe that a measly hour a day, or waiting to write over the weekend, will never allow them to reach their goals. Not true. The trick is to draw a line in the sand that says, “Do Not Cross.” This is your time, and you must defend it.
This comes with challenges. For one, women aren’t used to taking up a lot of space, and we’re used to sacrificing ourselves for the benefit of others, especially our children. It becomes further complicated when a spouse makes more money and your writing feels less important because it currently isn’t producing income - or enough income. If you’re a single working mom, the idea of finding a spare moment feels daunting.
I’m here to tell you it’s okay to defend this time to write. In fact, this time is not only beneficial to you as a writer but it also benefits you in your personal life. Taking time to do something you love has a positive domino effect on everything else in your life.
There’s No Way I Can Spare a Moment
Some moms might be thinking, there’s no way, I simply can’t carve out a dedicated time to write, and even if I could find the time, I’m too distracted to get anything done. From one mom to another, this too is valid. You won’t have the cabin in the woods for your fingers to linger on the keyboard as you stare out the window imagining each scene of your story. That won’t happen. However, what you can do is take the small time slots you do have and keep pushing forward. That’s doable.
Every moment counts, and so does every idea or thought related to your story. If you have an iPhone, you can use your notes app to write ideas that pop up throughout the day. When you do get a chance to sit down and write, you’ll be surprised by how many ideas you accumulated in those spare moments, and how much they contribute to building your story.
Every writer, mom or otherwise, struggles with the idea of wanting more time. It will probably never be the amount of time you would like, but once you accept this, the challenge of time won’t feel so insurmountable.
It can feel selfish at first to want to attempt writing. A writer is an artist, and we all know how the world feels about artists. Unless you are making money, art is considered a hobby – writing included. It’s up to you to place value on your writing and defend your pursuit.
It’s Easier Said than Done
Another comment I often hear from moms is, “It’s easier said than done.” Yes, I agree. This is true of anything. Think of dieting in a similar manner. Every salad you eat and every cookie you forgo benefits your health. You won’t notice the changes in your body right away, but if you keep at it, you will. Is dieting easy? Nope, and neither is writing. This is life. There will be constant distractions, roadblocks, and thousands of reasons not to pursue writing - the trick is to write anyway.
The Golden Question
I once had a therapist ask me, “If you were at the end of your life, how would you feel about choices x, y, and z?” I think about this question a lot because it’s a great one to ask. Why? Because it gives us distance and perspective when we look at our choices in this manner. So, I ask you, “If you were at the end of your life, how would you feel about your choice to write? How would you feel if you gave up on that dream?”
The Fear of Success
We all fear failure. No one likes to lose. Some of us just happen to be better accepting this than others. While failure is a common fear, the fear of succeeding can also be prohibitive. You might be thinking, “Who the heck is afraid of being successful?” The answer is a lot of people.
The fear of success is often hidden in our subconscious rather than at the forefront of our minds. The fear of success for mothers might include the fear of having less time with their kids, making more money than their spouse, or enjoying their writing career so much that they spend less time parenting.
My fear of success involves the loss of anonymity. I don’t even like it when people sing “Happy Birthday” to me in a restaurant, as it draws the attention of a crowd. Therefore, I can’t imagine what it would feel like to be famous – yuk, yikes, and a big no thank you.
How Do You Move Past the Fear?
The best way to move beyond fear is to examine it, express it, and carry on with your goals. The bad news is, the fear probably won’t go away. The good news is, you will learn to live with this fear and manage it. Your fears will evolve and change with time and different levels of success. The writer who struck gold on their first novel is going to fear whether or not they can maintain their success with subsequent books.
My Time is Blocked Off, Now What?
So, you’ve managed to set aside a writing routine but don’t know where to go from there. Take a look at the following steps for further guidance.
1. Set a goal: This might include writing a set amount of words per day or week. Whatever your goals are, and however many goals you have, write them down. Now, establish a realistic timeline to meet these goals. Put this timeline and goal list where you can look at them regularly.
“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
2. Break down your goals into steps: If your goal is to write a novel, sketch out how many words you want to achieve daily or weekly. Set a timeframe for when you want to complete your first draft. Set a timeline for revision. Set a timeline for beta readers, querying, and more… It’s not enough to set a goal for writing your book. You must identify the steps involved in meeting these goals.
3. Ask for help and support: This one is always the hardest for mom clients. The American culture places a high premium on strength and autonomy, and therefore, when it comes to asking for help or support, women tend to be pre-programmed to want to do as much as they can on their own.
Take up space, ladies. Ask for the help and support you deserve. Lord knows your partner has no problem asking you to go to the grocery store or cook a meal, so you can do the same. There’s no job more important than raising kind, healthy, and caring children – give yourself credit for this. Take pride in being a parent and ask for what you need. You can be a good mom and a good writer.
4. Say No: Yes, as women, we can do it all, but do we really want to do it all? I don’t. When I first became a parent, I said yes to everything. Volunteering in the classroom, sure. Hosting playdates, I can do that. The husband’s work party, no problem. Then, I learned to say no. Learn to say no, learn to be okay with it, and understand that your goals are sacred and need protection – saying no is part of that protection.
If you struggle with this, and many of us do, keep in mind that our children are always watching. How they see you prioritize your dreams and how you ask for support will inevitably influence their self-care choices. If you want your kids to prioritize their goals, ask for help, and develop work-life balance, you can model this through your actions.
5. Write: This might be the most challenging part of the entire system, the actual ritual of writing. There will be days when you stare at a blank screen, and that precious hour you so carefully protected feels wasted. Don’t fear, it wasn’t a waste of time. It's good for you to sit in front of the computer whether or not your time was successful. It’s the commitment to the writing routine itself that matters most.
While in graduate school for clinical psychology, my professor once said, “There are two tricks to not getting divorced. The first is that the two partners don’t want to get divorced at the same time (it’s inevitable both will want to leave the marriage at some point). The second trick is to remain committed to the commitment of marriage itself, not your partner alone.”
As a 22-year-old student, I had no idea what this really meant. Twenty years of marriage and partnership later, I finally got it. Though there are times when being with your partner is trying, if you maintain your allegiance to the marriage itself, you can survive just about anything.
Just as in marriage, the commitment to writing itself is imperative. Whether that writing is going well or not isn’t as important as staying true to the commitment of the writing routine. And, just as in marriage, there will be peaks and valleys in your writing, but you will overcome these with time, practice, and patience.
6. Hire a writing coach: Aside from shameless self-promotion, I do believe in the power of coaching. Writing is a very lonely and isolating endeavor. It’s also emotionally and intellectually exhausting. Add motherhood and all of life’s other commitments, and you can easily feel overwhelmed by taking on a writing project.
Hiring a coach may not eliminate the mental fatigue that can happen after writing, but what coaching can do is keep you on track, offer objective feedback, and, most importantly, support you in producing quality work. There will be days when you love what you wrote and days when you don’t. The benefit of having a coach is that they offer the objectivity and distance needed to assess what is working and what requires more attention.
*Writing and/or book coaches offer endless benefits. For more information, check out my FAQ page here.
Conclusion
Moms are superheroes. They do so much, and yet most of their work is unacknowledged and thankless. Moms deserve the opportunity to pursue their dreams of writing. Moms have a lot of wisdom, humor, and empathy to share with the world. Collectively, we benefit from reading their stories and sharing those experiences.
If you’re a mom and have always wanted to write but are unsure about the process and would like support, reach out to me for a free 30-minute consultation here. If you don’t feel like we would be a good fit, I am happy to recommend another writing/book coach, as I belong to an extensive network of talented coaches who want to help you reach your goals.
