Of all the questions I have been asked since Finding Ruby was published, this one is by far
the most common. Mostly by busy working mums (not dads funnily enough – maybe that’s a post for another day). The truth is, there’s no secret. It’s just about juggling.
A valuable skill I learned from teaching, is that you have to compartmentalise. You have to apportion a certain amount of time to a particular thing and just do it in that time. You won’t finish it. It won’t be perfect. But stop and move on. Get the next thing done (or partially done). Writers think they have to write all day otherwise there’s no point starting. Not true. 30 minutes a day is an achievable goal and you’d be surprised what you can achieve in that time. Sometimes, I just edit what I wrote on the previous day. Sometimes, I write on beyond 30 minutes because I am really in the flow and there’s no stopping now. But sometimes, I really do need to move on. I have two young sons and so life does not go by my pace or my needs at all!
It's easier to say this in lockdown as I’ve been afforded extra time and energy to do this. When I go back to school in September, I accept that it will be harder to do this as a daily occurrence. Teaching is a gruelling, all-consuming, exhausting (and rewarding) job and the last thing I will probably feel like fitting in at the end of the day will be 30 minutes of writing. Especially when I am trying to fit some exercise too, or working on my other blogs or helping my sons with homework. I know it will be different. But I will still dedicate some time on my day off and on the weekends to just working on my novel.
Secondly, you have to let go of completing things. In teaching, I have a rolling to-do list that never ends. This would have made me so stressed before I was a teacher. My husband will plough through his work to-do list tirelessly until it’s done. He has to have that sense of being finished. But in teaching you never reach that point. You have to let it go and think, right I’ve achieved 20% of that, I will do some more tomorrow.
Trying to write a novel while being a working mum is a bit like this. Get a bit done. Now go and put some fishfingers on. Now do a bit of marking. Now go for a run and, while running, think about the next stage of your story. Now read a bedtime story. Now plan a lesson or two.
Repeat.
So in answer to how do you do it? You just do it. Sometimes it’s not as good as you like. But it’s better to do than not to do! And one day you will reach the end of your novel. And then you will start all over again! 😊
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