How Becoming a Mom Changed My Writing Life
When my husband and I decided to expand our family and have a child, we knew a lot of things would change in our life. We prepared for the sleepless nights, the changes to our weekend schedules, and the hit to our disposable income. And while I had some vague idea that my writing life would change as well, I had a pretty good routine down prior to becoming a mom and wasn’t too worried that I wouldn’t be able to adapt.
But, as any mama knows, adding a child into the mix changes things so drastically and no matter how prepared I thought I was, it took some trial and error to find a writing routine that worked given my new circumstances. And for a little while, I worried I wouldn’t be able to find a rhythm that worked for me with a young one around. I worried that becoming a mother meant my writing self would be put on hold for a while. But while my writing days look much different than they did pre-motherhood, I’m still making progress on my writing while being a mother to my son and setting the example for him that being a mother doesn’t mean a woman has to give up everything else that makes her who she is. So, today, I want to share the ways my writing life has changed since becoming a mom and how I find the time to write as a mom.
1. There’s No Such Thing as One Sacred Writing Routine
Before I had my son, my writing routine was pretty set in stone. Mondays through Fridays, I hauled my laptop to my office job with me and on my one-hour lunch break, I wrote. I did my best to keep that time free from any other commitments, and when I had time and/or motivation on the weekends, I snuck in some writing time as well. This was my routine and it worked really well for me. I was able to set weekly goals and (usually) meet them, and I’d more often than not head into the weekend feeling accomplished.
But in 2020, my world was flipped upside down. I found out I was pregnant with my son just a couple of weeks before everything shut down for COVID and I was forced to work from home, a situation I thought would give me ample time to work on my writing, but instead left me feeling anxious and without a routine. And as if I didn’t have enough happening in my life that year, when I was six months pregnant, I decided to start my editing and book coaching business. Whatever time or energy I might have had for writing was taken up by courses and business planning. By the time my son finally arrived in November, I had no semblance of a writing routine left.
I remember when my son was about one month old showing up to a Zoom writing date hosted by the Women’s Fiction Writers Association to get some writing done. When I shared my little one with the group, so many of the other women were amazed I was there at all. I’d been feeling awful that I’d gotten no writing done since he was born, but looking back now I realize it really was incredible that I was even thinking about finding time to write in that moment. Adjusting to life with a newborn is intense, and now when I look back, I’m amazed with myself for even having the ability to think about my writing with everything else going on in my life at that time. Eventually, I found a good rhythm that worked, getting some writing done when he took naps in between everything else I had to get done. It wasn’t the dedicated hour I had pre-baby, but it was something and I made it work for me the best I could.
But the thing about kids is, almost as soon as you find something that works, they grow and the old routine doesn’t work anymore. Now you need to find something else. At first, this frustrated me. I finally found something that works, and now you’re telling me it’s not going to work anymore? But after a couple bouts of this, I learned to embrace the challenge and attempt my best to go with the flow.
This meant shifting my mindset. Instead of having a set-in-stone routine I could rely on, I realized I needed to sit down each week and think through what I had going on and find time I could write. It meant being open to writing at times and in places I didn’t normally write. It meant penciling in writing time only to have to scribble it out because I had a sick kiddo or a client deadline that had to take priority. It meant being okay with having to rearrange and cut myself some slack while also holding myself accountable and being aware enough to know when I was making excuses. It meant being okay with writing in smaller fragments of time or not being able to fully finish a scene before having to close the laptop. Which bring me to my next point…
2. Writing Tends to Happen in Small Sprints
Whereas I relished my hour-long writing times pre-baby, I rarely get the chance to write for an entire uninterrupted hour anymore. Between being a mom and a business owner, there’s a lot going on and it’s hard to find a full hour most days. This was frustrating at first until I realized I needed to switch my mindset from “needing” that full hour to working with what I’ve got.
While an entire hour might be out of reach most days, 20 minutes is usually easy enough to come by. And some days, I’m lucky to find two or three 20-minute snippets I can piece together. I’ve found I can be just as productive, if not more, utilizing these small sprints of time as I was when I had one-hour stretches simply because knowing that I only have a small time forces me to focus on my writing completely without room for distractions. When I had an entire hour, I’d let myself wander over to social media a couple times, which often led to many minutes lost scrolling. But when I know I only have a limited amount of time to dedicate to my writing, I’m less likely to give into distractions.
Writing in smaller sprints does mean I need to be okay with walking away mid-scene if necessary, and this can be frustrating when I feel like I’m on a roll. But if my options are to take advantage of these small sprints or wait until I have a longer stretch and likely go days, if not weeks, without getting any writing time in, I’ll take the smaller sprints every time. It’s a mindset shift, but one that means I get to keep doing what I love.
3. My Bank of Experiences to Write From is Richer
While becoming a mom changed my writing life in some challenging ways, it also changed it for the better. Moving into this new phase of life has given me an entirely new perspective to write from. My debut novel, The Serendipity of Catastrophe, is about a mother-daughter relationship, and after becoming a mother myself, I was able to add to this story in ways I hadn’t been able to previously because I hadn’t experienced motherhood firsthand. I’ve always believed that in order for us to write emotionally compelling and evocative stories, we need to live rich lives that provide us experiences to write from. And while I don’t believe every woman needs to become a mother to write deep stories, we do need to be willing to spend time living our lives in a way that gives us those experiences to write from. For me, becoming a mother opened up an entire new world for me and has given me a perspective on life that (I hope) shines through in my writing now. Again, this comes down to mindset. Instead of looking at the newborn days when all I could do was feed, sleep, and change diapers as time I could have been writing, I choose instead to look at those days as building up material to write about.
4. My “Why” is Stronger
Another positive change to my writing life is that my son makes my “why” for writing that much stronger. I always wrote because I enjoyed it and hoped my writing would resonate with others and help them understand their life more deeply or from a different perspective. And I always had the vague idea that I wanted my children someday to have a mother who spent time doing something she loved. But having my son made that idea concrete.
When I think about the time I spend writing or thinking about writing, it can be too easy to allow mom guilt to step in and convince me that time could be better spent with my son or doing something for him. But then I think back to my why and realize that showing my son that his mom spends time doing something for her is important. Setting the example for him that a woman doesn’t have to give up her identity when she becomes a mother is important to me, and if I want him to believe that, I need to show him a mother who lives that.
While my son is still young and doesn’t fully grasp what it means that his mother is an author, showing him my novel with my photo on the back cover was one of the proudest moments in my life. It may be challenging to find the time to write but knowing that I’m setting the example I’d hoped to for my son gives me the motivation to keep going and persevere when it gets hard.
