Challenges! And writing.

Whoee! This week has been a challenge, one that for the most part, I have not risen to.

I'm having a hard time balancing being a full time mom, a part-time college teacher, and a part-time writer. Two of my three kids are still at home, so I really am a full time mom. It's not like there are eight or even four hours a day when I have free time. They're here needing to be fed and cleaned up after and played with and nursed and cleaned up after and changed and then fed again. There are naptimes (sometimes), but that half-hour doesn't feel like much time when I've got two or seven hours of extra work I need to squeeze in each day. The seven sounds like hyperbole, but it's not. Twice a week I leave for work at 5:30 pm and get home at 10:30 pm. Add an hour of grading and an hour of writing, both of which are conservative estimates, and I've literally got an extra seven hour work day on top of the 7 am to 5:30 pm Mom shift I just pulled. On the other days, it takes about 2 to 3 hours to get grading and writing done, and those 2 to 3 hours usually don't even start until 9 pm when the baby goes down. In short, time's a legitimate challenge. Not an excuse, but a challenge.

Time is one thing I'm struggling with. The other is energy. I know, I know. Everyone's sick of hearing stay at home moms whine about how tired they are, and I'm not whining--I'm just saying it: I'm exhausted by the end of the day. And teaching makes it worse. Nothing saps my creative energy like teaching and grading writing. I don't know why that is, and I think it's horribly unfair, but there it is.

So that's the problem. The challenge: what to do about it? I have several ideas:

1. More moderate writing (and possibly grading) goals on the days I have to teach. I love the idea of consistently pushing myself to reach higher and higher benchmarks, but I've seen this week that when my benchmarks are too high, I give up. Better to make Monday and Thursday (the days I teach for five hours at night) thousand word days and actually write than make them 2500 word days and quit in discouragement.
2. I need an outline. Writing is not particularly difficult. It's knowing what comes next that I struggle with. If I have it on paper in front of me, I might find composing the words easier.
   
3. Accountability. I've conscripted my bff (who is patient and wise) into being my de facto word count cheerleader. I message her word count milestones on Facebook. For the most part she ignores me, which is fine with me (her life is even busier and more exhausting than mine is), but sometimes she says, "Go you!" or "Nice work." And that means so much to me. It really keeps me going.
   
4. Lego Man starts preschool this week. I'm clinging to this desperate hope that with him gone and the house quiet, BabyGirl will sleep for an hour or maybe even two, allowing me to get some serious grading and/or writing done.
   
5. Finally, choosing it. The awareness of choice empowers and energizes me. I am choosing all these challenges. No one is making me work. No one is making me write. No one made me have kids. Every time I feel tired, every time I want to complain, every time I want to quit, I tell myself that I am choosing my actions and, by extension, my experiences. That helps too.
   

2466 Words and Voluntary Delusion

So the last few days have been so crazy that I didn't take time to blog. There were a few days on which I only did 1200 or so words, but with the exception of last night (I was absolutely beat and I knew I needed to get up early for the first day of school this morning), I always wrote. Tonight I was resolved to get back to building up my stamina. I did a little bit of writing this morning while BabyGirlDoll slept and then a little more tonight after I graded my daily quota of student papers.

I so hope this all works out and isn't just a waste of time, ya know? I've never wanted anything this rawly, this unabashedly, this hopefully before. I've never worked this hard and consistently for anything that wasn't reasonably guaranteed. No, wait. That's not true. I took years of voice lesson and worked my guts out in order to make the elite choir when I was in high school. Never did make it.

Well, rot. There's a thought I wish I hadn't had.

Nope. I can't give in to that train of thought. Embrace the fantasy. Choose the delusion. Make yourself believe.

Because that's what it is, really. I suspect most people who are competent writers to begin with are smart enough to realize that they've got a snowball's chance in hell of getting published and an even smaller chance of becoming popular. I know this. I've known this for years. I've told myself and my mother and my grandma and my aunt and my in-laws and my husband and my friends and my students, all of whom have asked me where my novel is, this very thing for years and years and years. I really, really, really wanted to not want to write, and I hoped that by mocking and ignoring and again mocking my desire to write a novel, it would eventually go away.

It didn't.

Finally one day I heard that quote that's always attributed to Einstein, that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results, and I realized that I'd been trying the same thing over and over for years. Suppress the desire to write and when it becomes unbearable do something small and non-committal. Hit a rough patch. Use this to remind yourself that writing is for dreamers and wannabees, and quit again.

Trouble is, that never got me any peace. It never got me to the point where I felt content. I realized it wasn't going to, so I thought I'd try actually pursuing the "dream" (can you tell that I feel a little sarcastic about dreams?) of writing a novel. I have no idea if this will eventually lead to some kind of contentment either, but at least it's something new. But in order to spend an hour or two a day writing instead of sleeping or reading or sleeping or spending time with kids or cooking or sleeping, I have to delude myself that I'm going to get published. If I don't make myself believe that for at least as long as I'm in front of the keyboard, I'll give up.

Today I wrote 2466 words.

Perfectionism

I have this compulsion to make things perfect. Here's an example: the other day, I bought a box of Legos for CrazyKid (4) at a yard sale. In the box were a few random cards from a game apparently called Gulp. Because BookBoy (6) is obsessed with a) anything that has words on it and b) anything that involves fish, he immediately snatched up the cards and began playing a weeks-long elaborate game with the cards and his cooking books. (He is also obsessed with cooking books and word and number games.)

He's happy. He loves the cards. He's learning. That should be good enough.

But nooooo . . . . every time I see him carrying around that quarter-stack of raggedy cards, I have this overwhelming compulsion to scour Ebay, Amazon, Craigslist, anywhere to find him the actual game, complete with 52 crisp, shiny new Gulp cards. I haven't been able to find them anywhere. That's probably good for me.

The perfectionism is good when it makes me obsess over making my classes, projects, lectures, or decorating better, but it's bad when it paralyzes me or makes me fixate on something to the point that I waste hours on something that doesn't really matter. It's what stopped me from trying to write for years.

Tonight I wrote a little more than a thousand words. They were far from perfect. Even the word count was far from perfect. (My goal was 2400 words.) But it's late, and the baby has been waking us up a lot, and I'm so tired, so tonight I'm going to set my perfectionism aside and say that even though the writing wasn't perfect, at least it was.

Last night there was much family drama and a very harrowing situation, so I copped out and only wrote 1200 words. (I have to say, though, that I love the fact that I now define only writing 1200 words as a copout.)

Tonight I forced myself to get back on track and wrote 2330 words.

I need to come up with more things to blog about.

I am Bullheaded

Today was the first day of the gauntlet. I refer to my small petty challenges as gauntlets because it makes me feel cool. The gauntlet was to finish three hours of teaching English, make the forty minute commute home, and then, staring at 10:45, do my writing. If I can do that all semester, I may not have to abandon my noveling in order to do the whole mothering by day, teaching by night thing.

Done, done, and done.

I can't believe that all these years I thought consistent writing was about inspiration or genius. Turns out, it's mostly about being bullheaded. Ha ha ha ha ha. Bullheaded I can so do.

Tonight I wrote 2,202 words.

Watching the Hugos and 2100 Words

OMG. I watched the Hugos streaming live until 11:30. Why? Because I am a moron. I was really, really, really tempted to just go to bed after that, but I couldn't very well watch this totally inspiring writing awards ceremony and then wuss out on doing my own writing, could I?

I am cogitating positively. Cogitating positively. Cogitating . . . snore.

I wrote 2100 words today. So tired. Must sleep.

Pinterest and 2,025 Words

Again exhausted. Again powered through. One more night, and I'll have finished week two of consistent, increasing amounts of writing.

Wrote 2,025 words tonight. I'm hoping this draft feels more cohesive than the last one did. It certainly has more direction.

Hey, here's a cool thing that I do, and I'd love it if other writers did the same thing, because I think it's fun.

I don't know if you've heard of Pinterest, which is basically an online bulletein board for images. I've got about 20 boards, but one I use is the "Creative Inspiration," board. (I would call it my "Novel Writing," board, but then my friends and family would know that I'm actively writing a novel, and I'm not sure I'm ready to come out yet.) Whenever I have an object or character or setting that I need to get a better visual grasp on, I do a Google image search, and when I find the right image, I pin it to that board. Sometimes when I'm writing I have my Word doc open on one half of the screen and the board open on the other half. It helps put me in the mood I'm trying to evoke and the pictures serve as visual reminders of where I'm going.

What about you? Do you have a Pinterest board? Do you use it for novel-writing stuff?