As a mom writer with young (high maintenance. So much maintenance) children, I’ve developed a finely-tuned, ninja-like ability to find space and time to squeeze in a few writing moments. I call it Drive-By Writing.
Some examples of places I’ve frantically jotted down words:
- Soccer practice
- In the closet
- In the bathroom
- In the minivan when I’m supposed to be grocery shopping
- In therapy and doctor office waiting rooms
- The park
- A McDonald’s Play Area
- A Burger King Play Area
- A Chick-Fil-A Play Area
- {Fill-in-the-blank} because I’ve probably done it
But the place I write the most is this:
That’s my laptop sitting on an economy-size box of baby wipes which is sitting on the counter in my mess of a kitchen.
Sure, there were (still are) many days I stayed up until 1 a.m. writing when the house was quiet and still. And yes, there were a few evenings or an occasional weekend afternoon I slipped away to a coffee shop to write my heart out. And with four kids and three bedrooms, there’s isn’t a designated office space for me to write in–unless you count the kitchen counter.
A couple of years ago, I discovered purely by accident that this set-up was the perfect height for me to type while standing. Because I stand a lot, especially in the kitchen. I spent my days typing a sentence, sometimes a whole paragraph, before someone yelled, “Mom! He’s hitting me!” I revised a whole page and then scrambled to clean up the glass of spilled milk (and there’s always spilled milk). I jotted down a few bullet points on an outline and hunted-and-gathered something for dinner. I shot off a handful of query letters to agents (and read more rejections than I can count) and chased down a naked child on the trampoline in the backyard.
Somehow, I managed to write an entire book this way.
Is this ideal? Probably not. But, it keeps me in the middle of my writing all day. An unexcepted benefit is that the kids see me writing and working towards my dream, and assume this was a regular part of everyone’s life. Long before I’d finished the first draft of my first novel, they were introducing me to strangers as, “Oh, yeah, that’s my mom. She’s a writer.”
Most days, it feels like I count my writing time in minutes and seconds, not hours. This Drive-By Writing isn’t for everyone, it’s messy and exhausting. Some days I waffle between forgetting my children’s name or my characters’ names. And on more than one occasion, I’ve had to clean flour off my keyboard. But, this is how I’ve learned to mom and write at the same time and (mostly) keep my sanity.