Balance

wordmonkey said:

It's tempting to say that if I ditch the family now for a while, it will be worth it in the long run - but will it? What if I make it, but lose them? That's not a good trade for me.

Thoughts?

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First, IMNSHO, it will NOT be worth it. Forget the "kids want quality time" lie--kids want TIME, lots of it, as much as the traffic will bear. The spouse can get to feeling neglected in a very short time as well.

That being said, here are a few solutions I've come up with (I work FT, so does the DH):

I searched for "found time"--the 15-minute, half-hour, etc. chunks that I used to fritter away. I have a big white binder that I tote everywhere, with current printouts of my WIPs. I bring that to soccer games, swim meets, band concerts, dentist appts--you name it. Then I disciplined myself to get into character (theater term) ASAP after the kids headed to the sidelines or backstage. When they're not performing/on the pitch/in the pool, I'm writing or editing. I usually can't write long scenes in this time, but I can can do short scenes, sketch outlines, flesh out characters, etc. I do CD reviews too, and I've brought the CD player to meets, listened to the CD and written a 300-word review in an hour.

About evenings with the spouse:When we're actually home and not at a meet/game/concert, we're often vegging in front of the tube. (The kids and DH watch lots of televised soccer.) I have an old laptop with no Net card that I drag onto the couch and write on. I'm with the DH/kids, often commenting on what's happening, and they understand that if mom doesn't answer them right away, she's probably killing off a bad guy.

This took nearly a year to achieve. It helps that I don't need absolute quiet to write. I can pretty much tune out everything but nuclear war or the sound of an injured offspring.

Hope these help!

Time

Do families with two people who work outside the home ditch their kids or each other? Kids require time, but they do not require nearly as much as some parents believe. In fact, to kids, nothing is worse than parents who always have to be there. Even young kids appreciate time alone, or time with someone other than mom and dad.

Parents who spend every evening taking their kids to all sorts of events, and who stay there with the kids every time, are not doing their kids any favors.

Nor do parents lose their own right to free time because they have children.

The lifestyle we lead is always a choice, and the free time we give ourselves does not harm our spouse or our children, as long as it isn't taken to extremes.

It does get easier when all the kids are in school, but even very young children should be able to spend some time alone, doing things that interest them, and there's nothing wrong with hiring a babysitter, even if you're at home.

Nor is there anything wrong with using a couple of hours in the evening after your wife gets home. Would you begrudge her a couple of hours each evening if your situations were reversed?

Jamesaritchie said:

Parents who spend every evening taking their kids to all sorts of events, and who stay there with the kids every time, are not doing their kids any favors.

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In our situation, it's usually a 20-minute to half-hour drive to the field/meet. Waste of gas and time to drive back home--we'd have to turn right around and go pick them up! Thus, I sit in the bleachers, scribbling away.

I don't have a day job and neither does Hubby. Both kids are in daycare, usually from 9am until 5pm. Hubby goes off to work, when he has to (we manage rental property), but he writes, too. NO writing is done betwee 5pm and 8pm. That time is for the kids. Now, there are occasions, at least twice a week, that we get the kids early and go to the beach or whatever. Weekends are all about kids, but we both usually find time to write for a few hours each day. When one of the kids stays home, because they are sick or something, and Hubby is gone to work, I can still write. I can't have as much alone time as I'd prefer, but there are nap times and movie times. There is also story time. My current WIP is MG, so, I read it out loud to the kids. If a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old can follow, great. If not, it really helps me edit. 5-year-old understands some of my characters and is starting to offer ideas of her own. The 3-year-old gets bored quick, so there's always Dora and Diego to occupy her mind while I'm working.

Life is always about balance. You shouldn't completely forego your family, but neither should you forfeit your own dreams and goals. As JAR indicated, how would you handle this if you had a part-time job outside the home or were working from home for someone else who had demands on your time?

Hire a sitter for a few hours or network with other parents to swap child-care duties once or twice a week. A goodly portion of our lives is spent juggling something or other in an attempt to achieve balance.

Congrats on making some headway in a tricky business.

Lock the children in the cupboard under the stairs. That's what it's there for.

I write when my son is sleeping. My husband can deal with it- half the time he falls asleep on the couch around my son's bedtime anyway. Nap time ended a year ago, much to my dismay.
Unfortunately, I've spent the last few weeks sanding and painting the inside of my house, and that has cut into my writing time.

scarletpeaches said:

Lock the children in the cupboard under the stairs. That's what it's there for.

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Then write a book about it, throw in a wizard boarding school and make a billion. Oh... wait.

That'll be shining bright.

What are you trying to do, give me a breakdown?

It's okay to enjoy your work. Life is better if you do. Many people who work in more traditional fields enjoy theirs. If you want to earn income from your writing, you must treat it as seriously as if you were working for someone else.

It's about mindset. As long as you treat writing as a hobby or something that you are just doing for fun or yourself, then everyone else will, too. And, if that is all it is to you, then that is fine. Nothing wrong with it. But if you want something else, something more, then you have to treat it as if it were something more.

wordmonkey said:

And the oldest one will sort out your life. He's very practical. We went car shopping at the weekend and he wasn't concerned about getting a sporty number that went fast and looked like the Batmobile. No, he wanted to make sure there was enough room in the trunk for the stoller, plenty of cup -holders, and that the gas-mileage was up to snuff.

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Oh, you have GOT to put that one in a book. He's hilarious.

I can never figure out the balance thing. No matter what I do, something gets neglected. I can organize things wonderfully on paper, but DOING it...

Anyway, the "solution" I have come to is to rotate what's getting neglected. The house will get neglected for a while, then I clean it up and neglect the writing. Then I neglect the writing and dedicate myself to family. Then I let them do their thing and write. And so on.

And remember, being available in another room is a good thing. Granted, a three-year-old requires a lot of direct supervision, but co-opt the siblings whenever practical. At that age, I'd let them go to the playground with an older sibling (it was nearby on a quiet street and they knew the "stay on the side of the road" rule). Even when you are not interacting directly with them, the fact that you are in the house and available when needed contributes a lot to a child's sense of security, IMHO.

Other than that, you're going to have to get used to writing in small chunks. Just find those little chunks wherever you can. And if you are actually getting some financial reward for your writing, you aren't copping out as a parent if you hire a babysitter occasionally.

wordmonkey said:

They aren't that bad...

Well...

The middle one is. He's evil incarnate. It's a constant struggle to work on him to use his powers only for good.

The youngest is a baby, so he's OK. Just screams a lot, does green poop, then screams some more.

And the oldest one will sort out your life. He's very practical. We went car shopping at the weekend and he wasn't concerned about getting a sporty number that went fast and looked like the Batmobile. No, he wanted to make sure there was enough room in the trunk for the stoller, plenty of cup -holders, and that the gas-mileage was up to snuff.

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LOL, my son went straight for the shiny convertable. He wants one in red.

Now that mine can function on their own, usually, they love to head upstairs, IM their friends and watch (gag) SpongeBob. Or Naruto. (Too screamy-mimi for my ears.) Great writing time. I'm theere when they want to tell me what happened to a character, but they have their space. When they were younger, it was harder--I usually napped when they did, I was so tired.

It helps that they think it's cool I'm a writer and can brag to their friends that I won a contest or interviewed a rock band. Minor street cred--as much as you can gain from a parent who is by definition un-cool.

Don't ask me how dusty my house is. The kids are suppised to clean it, but there's only so much time I allot to nagging.

WordMonkey, I don't know if it helps, but I know exactly what you mean. About writing something that may or may not pay off someday, about trying to squeeze in time with your spouse (and yay for you on that one), about taking care of the kids...All of that.

Don't look at me for the answer! I don't know it either. (Well, except Eraser's idea of getting someone to watch the kids. I think that is a GREAT idea!)

ltd.

I partially solved this problem when my kids were young by doing exchanges on a regular basis with other parents in the same situation. There were 4 of us and we rotated taking all 4 kids, for about 5 hours a day when they were preschoolers. It gave each parent about 15 hours free a week and it didn't cost anything except 5 hours of your time. The trick is to find a committed group of parents who understand this is a regular responsibility and won't cancel on you.

As the at-home parent with a spouse who earns the bread, I've wrestled with this one for almost fourteen years. Over that time, I've let a few time sponges go. I used to follow pro basketball; no more. (No great loss, there.) No more TV, either, and we recently pulled the plug on our cable subscription to balance the cost of a high-speed Internet connection.

Organization helps. I try to lump chores and errands into discrete blocks of time so that there are fewer interruptions, and sometimes I get pretty intense if I'm trying to squeeze a million things into twenty minutes before I bring the younger boy to school. There's added tension in that my wife is always volunteering me for projects I want nothing to do with, and though she loves books and enjoys the fact that I'm a writer, she thinks of my job as having elastic free time, whereas hers doesn't. But that's partly about the competition for a scarce resource, time to oneself, and not about disrespect for my career.

But organization and discipline can only do so much. Sooner or later, there's a choice, as you've been saying.

We have only two children, not three, so it's easier for us than you, WordMonkey. The younger one, age seven, doesn't have to be watched so vigilantly as your three-year-old, but he sometimes has to be separated from his thirteen-year-old brother. That can be a strain, because just when you want them to be apart, they insist on staying together.

Anyway, as others have, I urge you to claim what's yours, and try to recognize that the guilt, though conscientious, is misplaced. Take a little time for your work in the evenings, get babysitters, try to have your kids understand what it means that Dad writes. They know you're there for them, even if they don't say so, even if they complain of an instance when you have to miss a soccer game.

My seven-year-old, who can be a major pest, wrote me a letter when I began submitting a thriller a while ago. He said he hoped it would be published, and that the agents would like it. When the rejections started coming in, he wondered why, because the book must be good.

Get up early and stay up late. It is hard, I do know, but priorities take commitment. I know you know all this and I am giving myself advice here as much as anyone else.

My motto: I can do ANYthing but I cannot do EVERYthing.

Therefore, I am not the Brownie troop mother. I am not PTA prez. I am giving over some responsibilities to my professional organization. My house is messy.

Oh well. As long as everyone has clean underwear and their homework is turned in and no one get food poisoning then I am happy.

I tried to jump start freelancing back in January. I sent out queries, got nibbles, and I actually have an article coming out in June. But I realized that my novel writing time was being usurped by my research/query/check for replies over and over time.

So right now I am throwing myself back into novel writing time.

I would suggest first quantifying your goals. What is most important about your writing? Making money now? Finish and polish and get a novel published? Both?

How much work do you want to get done and how long will it take each day? There IS time, we just have to make it. Not find it. Seize it! An hour here and there and here again is three hours. Stay up an hour later, get up an hour earlier. Some people need structure---to write from 9 am to 4 pm with a break for lunch. Others can work in snatches. Decide what your goals are and then you can determine your needs.

And never underestimate the importance of you being a stay at home parent. That is a JOB. Do you make money that way? No, but it is soooo very very valuable. I hear there are some people who work 70 or 80 hours a week. Away from their kids....People do what they gotta do but what a fantastic opportunity you have to be with your little ones.

Good luck finding your balance. All you do has value.