I dream of a
giant shark circling me in a dark sea, until I am bumped awake with a foot to
the mid-back by my four-year-old, a.k.a. “Wreckshop.” It’s 5:30am, and I am not
a morning person. I sit up in bed, back aching, hunched over my tablet,
checking social media and email, while Wreckshop presses noisy buttons on her
Disney Princess Tablet. I do some calendar planning, given that I have a couple
of big deadlines this fall – a full-length YA fantasy that I plan to finish
over the next few weeks, and a contemporary YA slated for 2020. My calendar
tells me there is not enough time. No kidding, calendar.
Meanwhile, Big
Kid, a.k.a. “Heartbreaker” eats a breakfast of popsicles and protein bars while
watching Teen Titans Go on Netflix. I don’t approve of any of these
things but am too exhausted to care.
Daddy kisses
everyone and leaves for work. I get us all wrangled into swimsuits and drive 30
minutes to a neighbouring community to take the kids to swim lessons because
our town’s pool is closed for renos. It’s a common theme around these parts—we
have to leave to find the things we need.
As I drive, the
kids watch Herbie: Fully Loaded, and I think about screenplay ideas that
don’t include anthropomorphized cars, until I start feeling guilty about the
several unproduced spec scripts and TV pilots I wrote in grad school. All that
work just wasted in a virtual drawer. I realize that I’m hunched over the
steering wheel and straighten my back. My neck cracks.
The kids swim.
I hot-tub, feeling my back loosen up. We all swim together, and then it’s home
for lunch. One wants hot dogs, the other wants tortellini with a side of tacos,
and neither is interested in the spinach salad I make. We settle on taco-dogs
with a side of fruit. I think briefly about early chapter book ideas, one of
which I pitched without success, and decide that when I have a free minute I’ll
revisit it.
Playtime
affords me about 45 minutes on my laptop. I have an office area, nicely
appointed, with a desk and windows, and all the things, but I prefer to sit on
the couch with my laptop perched atop an old nursing pillow. It’s murder on my
back, but when I have a few minutes like this I spend the entire time writing.
I manage about 2k words on the YA fantasy (writing straight-ahead with no
editing), before Wreckshop destroys something belonging to Heartbreaker, and
then Heartbreaker refuses to play anymore, leaving Wreckshop in tears and me
out of luck.
I note several
emails from my publisher’s marketing department, a bookstore where I’ll be
having a launch, and some community librarians I need to get back to about
visits. I’ll have to respond later.
I take the kids
outside to play and see that the vacant lot behind me is being cleared by an
excavator. I spend a long time watching the arm of the scoop as it smashes
shrubbery and wipes away boulders, and I imagine the glee I’d feel in a job
such as this as I mentally project myself into the cab of the machine. How wonderful
to pull levers and press buttons and see your work as it wipes away the earth
in front of you. The older I get, the more I feel that a writer should have a
non-writing job, especially one that does not involve any work with words.
Excavator, masseuse, dog-walker, cleaner, bus driver, interpretive dancer, whatever.
The words come while we dig.
But first,
karate. All three of us don our gis, head to the dojo, and work our katas until
our arms and legs ache. The sensei corrects my posture several times, pointing
out the fact that I can’t punch someone if I’m staring at the ground. In
between the kicks and knife-hands and rising blocks, some words form—the bones
of a poem—and I repeat the few lines in my head until class is over and I write
it in an email to myself on my phone. Poetry feels like a luxury these days,
both the writing and the reading of, but it’s the gateway drug that got me into
writing in the first place. A full-length poetry collection is the dream
project that I console myself with when I’m burned out on the rest. It’s also
the genre I have the least confidence in.
Later, dinner
happens, somehow, and then Daddy appears, home from the job that allows me the
luxury of full-time at-home mom-writer status. I say hello but I’ve got to go
run errands and be alone for a time. I drive and listen to music and try to sit
up straight, until I feel a bit more like my original pre-mom self.
Home to put the
kids to bed, give kisses, give thanks for their beautiful, dirty faces. Then,
TV time with hubs. We like the dark and weird stuff, choosing an episode of Sharp
Objects followed by Legion.
I do some
online shopping. Heartbreaker needs a new medical-alert bracelet before school
starts. I send the emails I’ve been sitting on all day, and then I head upstairs
to write next to the sleeping form of Wreckshop, who is horizontal in the bed.
I hunch over my
laptop, getting the words in, writing past 2am, knowing it’s probably garbage
but I can fix it later. I fall asleep sitting up, then snap awake after 3am
with my neck cracking. It’s so loud that it rouses the sleeping babe next to
me.
I close my laptop,
sink down into the bed next to her, and think, this.
Brooke Carter
is the author of four novels for young adults, including Another Miserable
Love Song, Learning Seventeen, Lucky Break, and the
forthcoming Unbroken Hearts Club. Her poetry chapbook, POCO LOCO,
was published by Anstruther Press. She lives with her family in BC, where she earned
an MFA in Creative Writing (UBC).