Curled,
clinging against me, Doubt wakes me up every morning at 6 a.m. sweating.
“You’re still alive,” she pants, “But you’re a failure. So fat and old and I think
you might have cancer, also you’ve wasted your whole life, and you’ll never
catch up, no matter how hard you think you can work. Redemption is impossible.
You have ruined every opportunity.” Clearly, she’s been having nightmares. Every
morning, I peel Doubt off, tuck her back into the comforter, and go downstairs
to make sure my 13-year old son eats breakfast, a lunch packed, and makes it on
the bus to school, and then before grabbing my waking 3-year old son, I grab my
notebook, and start my morning pages, a habit I learned from “The Artist’s
Way,” and can’t quite shake. About halfway through those longhand pages of
brain vomit, I open up a tarot card app on my phone, look up the card for the
day, and then free write until I finish three pages.
After
that, my writing day gets a little haphazard…
Five
out of seven days, I go to work at Starbucks around 5:00. I get home around
11:00 and the night belongs to my husband, to sharing music, videos, food,
movies, and television shows.
Between
the hours of 7 a.m and 4:30 p.m. some of the things I have to do include: feed
the children, bathe the little one, do laundry, take out the trash, work on one
or both of the magazines I edit for, look for and apply to jobs that actually
have something to do with one or both of my Masters degrees, make doctor’s/
autism therapy appointments for the kids, go to those appointments, other
random emails and errands, clean and vacuum the dirtiest rooms, play with/ read
to the little one, make sure the big one gets his homework and chores done and
make sure that he is ok, connect with other writers on Twitter, grocery shop,
take the dogs out, mop the kitchen floor, get the little one down for a nap,
try to take a nap myself, take a shower, get ready for work, and of course
write, read, and submit work.
Once
upon a time, I met Kelly Link at Vortext, a writing salon for women. We were
talking about something, when found myself going on about how hard it was to
find time to write, to work with the consistency, focus, and intensity I felt
like I needed to. I don’t know what was actually going through her mind as she
stared off into the distance, but it looked a lot like, “Excuses, excuses,
excuses. Blah, blah, blah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I felt a little shamed by that
look. A little chastised. Called out. Life is hard and busy and impossible for
every person and every writer. Valid or not, no excuse was going to grow my
writing, complete my projects, or grant me a writing career. Only working was
going to do that. Only actual writing was going to do that. I was going to have
to get dedicated and I was going to have to get scrappy.
For
the beginning of 2019, I decided to write a professional development plan for
my writing just as I would for any career. It was basically a process of coming
up with big goals for the year, and breaking them up into smaller goals, all
things I could control, like what projects to work on/ finish, how many
submissions to get out, what residencies to apply for, how many open mics to
participate in, that kind of thing. Each month I take those year goal tasks and
come up with month goal tasks. Every week, I come up with weekly goals. Submit
to two places. Write a blog. Read a book. Finish the first draft of a story.
Then I look at my work schedule for the week and all the errands and
appointments, and I assign myself some daily writing task goals. On my busier
days, it might just be 30 minutes of writing. On June 1st, I started taking
another stab at my novel, and my every day goal is 500 words. I give myself
more tasks on days off or less busy days. I’m also working on a story
collection, and write flash fiction whenever an idea or voice comes to me.
I
am a planner, a to-do lister, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy for things to get
done. It just means I’ve thought about what I want to accomplish, so I’m not
floundering when I have a minute to write. I rarely just have a minute to
write. I make sure to make very realistic daily goals, only pushing when there
is space in the day. Keeping the kids alive is my first priority, then comes
the writing and the dishes. I have no set time. My young son is beyond
rambunctious, and he gets into actually everything, and he climbs on
everything, and he is wild and dangerous, and is only distracted for minutes at
a time. Sometimes he watches a movie while I sneak 20 minutes at the kitchen table.
Sometimes I write from the couch and he climbs on me with his 27 elbows and I
hand him a notebook and pen so he can write too. Sometimes I catch a minute if
he goes down for a nap without me accidentally passing out too. Sometimes my
husband or sister is around to watch the kids, and I sit down at the table to
write (no enclosed office) and they talk to me about politics, television,
work, developments in science, etc, and I ignore them, and try not to let it
slow my pace and muddle my concentration. I just find whatever time and space I
can the minute my kids basic needs are satisfied and all major comfort of life
threatening errands are done. I make writing my second priority. If my husband,
sister, or older kid have a problem with a dirty floor, they can clean it
themselves or wait for me to get around to it.
This
is not ideal, but it is working. If I miss a day, I let myself know that it’s
ok. Because it is ok. Because life is hard and we have to forgive ourselves
when we have a hard time keeping up or when we need a rest. But I write pretty
much every single day, and work is getting finished, submitted, sometimes
accepted. I am getting closer and closer to my goals and dreams, 5 minutes, or
20 minutes, or a note on my phone while hanging out with my husband at night,
at a time.
At
the end of every writing day, I call Doubt downstairs, share a couple of
cookies with her and, out loud I say, “We worked really hard today. That was a
good job. I did a good job today.”
Caroljean Gavin is a
writer, storyteller, sometimes poet, who lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina
with her husband, two sons, and a one-eyed Shih Tzu named Moxie. Her work has
appeared in places such as Barrelhouse,
The Ampersand Review, Voicemail Poems, The 2011 Press 53 Open Awards Anthology and is forthcoming from Bending Genres and The Conium Review. Currently she edits for Luna Station Quarterly and is working on a novel, and one or three
story collections.
No comments:
Post a Comment