Friends, I am so delighted to reveal my brand new children’s series (yes, a series!) that has been eight years in the making! Please, allow me to introduce you to Millie and Stella, Best Friends Forever.
Millie and Stella’s very favourite thing is riding their ponies together. But gates are being left open in their paddock, and Millie and Stella are being blamed! Can the girls figure out who is behind the mischief before their beloved ponies are put in danger?
Join best friends Millie and Stella for a week of friendship, adventure and a little bit of mystery . . .
This is the first book in an uplifting and inclusive series that celebrates friendship, family, neurodiversity, creativity and a love of animals and books. By the bestselling author of The Tea Chest and The Wonderful Thing about Phoenix Rose.
a one-of-a-kind collage artwork, featuring a purple hoof print from my Sparky pony (who is also a character in the series), dried lavender flowers from my property, and other floral features to symbolise the glorious ‘mindful walk’ garden at the entrance to Millie and Stella’s school.
a postcard of Sparky and myself, signed on the back (and snuffled-kissed by Sparky),
a Millie and Stella bookmark, and
optionally, if your young person would also like a lock of Sparky’s mane, I’m happy to provide that as well, but I do appreciate that non-horsey people are not always fond of locks of hair… 🙂 If you win, you can let me know.
How To Win a Prize Pack
Pre-order a copy of Millie and Stella, Best Friends Forever (The Lost Ponies) before 15th April, 2025 (pre-order links below, or order from your local bookshop).
Email a copy of your receipt (along with your name) to: submittojo@outlook.com
That’s it! I will draw five winners out of a jar on 16th Apri!
Loves, I made my first ever gingerbread house from scratch and it really, really elooks it 😆 I think the world is breathing a sigh of relief right now that I became a writer and not an engineer because this house is held together with determination and a half kilo of spakfilla!
The recipe quantities were wrong so there were last minute ‘recipe rescue’ emergencies, AND it’s gluten free (which always adds a difficulty factor of 150), and I had to use paper stencils rather than cutters. But… it is really yummy! 🥰
The point of the gingerbread house is that I made it with my kiddo and it was fun and he got to see that things go wrong (quite a lot!) but we can work through it and we can still be proud of our efforts and progress. Progress is something I think we should be applauding far more than we do. We tend to celebrate achievements and ‘the best’ of everything, the top academics and the fastest runners (which is absolutely worth respecting and valuing) but I’d love to see a world that ALSO champions effort and progress and the courage to mess up and try again.
So, yep, I’ll be serving up this gingerbread house on Christmas Day because it too is an achievement of which we can be proud. (And also ‘cause it took hours to make so there’s no way we aren’t going to enjoy it! 😆)
It is only recently that I have come to fully accept this as a potentially permanent situation and learn to heal the internalised shame of this particularly frustrating dilemma. But to explain how this happened, I’m going to have to go back in time.
I learnt to read early. I was an enthusiastic reader. I had very specific interests in stories, especially anything with horses or animals or fairies and magic. I can decode text. I am not dyslexic. I was a good student and, generally speaking, excelled in almost everything (until senior years when I had exceptional highs and lows and nothing in between (I was never going to be mediocre, only top or bottom… but that is a completely different story).
However, despite being a good reader, I was always baffled at how quickly other (good reading) kids finished books. I distinctly remember thinking at a young age and beyond: I’m a good reader so why can’t I read as much as the other good readers? I was an accurate reader and I had high comprehension but I was not fast. I realise now that I compensated for a lot of this by being the best student. I did all the work. I spent whole days working on one project. The moment I didn’t get a near-perfect mark, I was asking for tutoring. I made copious colour-coded notes and taped them all over the house. I read out and recorded my study notes onto a cassette tape and played it back to myself while I slept. (I’m not even kidding.) In short, I worked and worked and worked (setting up a lifetime pattern of burnout).
As an adult, I’ve always been truly confounded by readers who say, ‘Oh, I loved it and finished it an a day.’
A day?! What?! How?!?
For me, even if I LOVED a book as hard as you could LOVE a book, to finish a novel in TWO WEEKS would be a fast rate for me.
Then I had my son and it all ended. I couldn’t read anymore.
What I didn’t know back then, which I do now, is that I am Autistic and ADHD and knowing what I know now, here is what I think happened. When I had my son (and I got book contracts, and I had to move house and renovate a house and wind-up a charity and lots more), my poor brain’s less-than-optimal executive functioning skills were pushed to levels they’d never been to before. Our brains are very clever, though, and mine worked this out and made the choice for me: my son was the priority. Essentially, my brain shut down a whole lot of other pathways in order to prioritise my child. Reading was cut from the list. I also now know I was in Autistic burnout, which I had been for most of my life since the age of 15 and burnt out brains have no qualms about dropping your hard-won skillsets.
For the past ten years, I have essentially convinced myself that this is a temporary problem. But reading ability has never recovered.
Reading and ADHD
Difficulty with reading is a common ADHD complaint. Every AuDHDer is different but for me, these are some of the ways reading poses challenges for me.
I have ADHD impatience but I also have the strong Autistic need to finish something I started and do it really well (preferably perfectly), but having a slow reading rate means it simply takes me too long to get there and those conflicting drives create stress.
The AuDHD brain craves novelty and keen interest. If the content hasn’t grabbed me by the second chapter, I’m out. I simply CAN NOT go on. (I do want to make it super clear here that often people think ADHDers have a choice in their behaviour… that if they just tried harderor if they just focused more they could get it done… but it doesn’t work that way. That’s a longer conversation for another day, all about transmitters and dopamine.)
Inertia: once I get interrupted, it is difficult (sometimes impossible) to initiate the task again.
My sensory processing difficulties (e.g. noise, smells, temperature, clothing, body position) are such high distractors that I can lose focus and have to start again.
I can’t read off a screen. (I don’t know why exactly but I just can’t.)
If I do get distracted, I need to go back and re-read passages or pages over and over because I need to feel that I have read it deeply and properly (I do not skim read!). This becomes tedious and fatiguing.
Unfriendly font types and lack of white space are a problem. I have been reading about dyslexia-friendly fonts lately and exploring those but I don’t feel I’m knowledgable enough about them to say more about that at this stage.
Having to be still is a big problem for me. Until recently, I had NO IDEA how much I fidget. Something is always twitching. This is challenging for long hours of reading. (I also can’t sit through an entire movie.)
I will finish with a final (but exceptionally important) challenge, and that is that I am a highly visual and sensory reader. If there is trauma on the page, I don’t read that in a theoretical sense with a bit of sympathy… I FEEL it. Literally. In my body. In my organs. And I SEE it in minute detail in my head and it NEVER GOES AWAY. So often, I am traumatised by fiction and simply cannot read on.
Non-fiction books
I have been able to read more non-fiction in paperback form than fiction, which I think is largely due to the amount of white space, bullet points and diagrams that break up long-form text. It’s also easier to put down a non-fiction book (whose content is grouped in chapters and sections) and then pick it up again later because the next chapter doesn’t necessarily depend on having read the previous chapter, whereas reading fiction requires that you keep a lot of story-world and character information in your head in order to link earlier information to later information to make sense of the whole story.You can also often flick through non-fiction books and skip the bits that don’t have high interest, unlike a novel, which requires you to read all of it.
A Hereditary Problem?
We know that ADHD is highly heritable. Interestingly, both my mother and maternal grandmother were also great readers until they hit a point in their life where they said they simply couldn’t read any more. I’m guessing this was about when they hit burnout and their executive functioning took a long walk up a mountain to rest.
So What Do I Do?
Firstly, I read almost exclusively on audio. If it’s not on audio, I can’t read it. (So please, publishers, can we have everything on audio at all times? It’s an issue of equity and access for all.) For example, with tremendous irony, I am waiting to ‘read’ Sally Rippin’s book, Wild Things(which is ALL about kids having difficulty reading, which my son does too) but I can’t read the book and so I am impatiently waiting to get it on audio at the end of this year. Oh, the irony 🙂
Over the years, several people have said to me that ‘audio books are cheating’ or that ‘it doesn’t count as reading if it’s not a book’ or that ‘it’s lazy’. Loves, this hurts.
Some people have very rigid beliefs and ideas. I mean, if a blind person listens to an audio book, would you tell them it was cheating?! No, because (a) what does that even mean?! (b) I doubt you are that rude and thoughtless because it is perfectly okay for someone to access a story in whatever way supports them best; and (c) story is story! It still teaches you empathy, history, culture and mood. (Hello, our Indigenous populations thrived for many thousands of years on oral storytelling.) You can still visualise the story in your head. You still cry and laugh and shudder and gasp. You’re still transported to other worlds, relax and get excited. Your brain is still working; it’s just working differently. (At which point, I’d like to refer everyone in the world to Chloe Hayden’s book, Different, Not Less.) To say it’s cheating or doesn’t count is such an ableist, elitist, privileged, crappy thing to say. Please don’t take away our joy, and don’t shame us for not being able to do what you can do.
Okay… taking a deep breath… and moving on.
Secondly, I HAVE pushed through a handful of paperbacks in the past decade in order to review them or support author friends but it is agony and NOT because their book is agony (their books are great!) but because it is just so difficult for me: it takes so much energy. It makes me feel like there’s something wrong with me, which I guess is how kids with reading difficulties feel too. Big, huge, warm, fuzzy hugs for all the kids struggling with this right now. It gets better, I promise.
Thirdly, in my book club, there are two of us who need books on audio (one of us with ADHD and one of us with vision requirements) so we will only choose books that are available in formats that suit us all. Easy.
Where to From Here?
I am now taking ADHD medication. Will my reading ability (as slow as it was) come back? Only time will tell. And maybe when I finally get hold of Sally Rippin’s book I will know what to do 🙂
I am learning, though, to be kinder to myself. Neurodivergent individuals hear, read and absorb a staggering amount of negativity in their lifetime. We become exceptionally good at taking on this criticism and turning it into our own internal voices.
I have been carrying a big load of shame about being an author who cannot read. I’ve also had to start saying no to requests for cover quotes for books (something I see as a tremendous privilege and honour, and something I know is extremely important to authors) because I simply cannot read the manuscript. (It can take me a week, or more, simply to read my own manuscript during editing phases.)
I am learning that, as much as I might want to, I will never be able to keep up with a lot of stuff that goes on in the publishing world and that I will never be able to contribute as much in terms of reading and reviewing and talking about others’ work as much as I want to because I am atypical. And I’ll never be able to travel as much and speak as much and be as productive business-wise as I truly want to be. Honestly, that makes me pretty teary.
Difficulties with reading and writing (and learning disorders, ADHD and Autism) may contribute to poor self esteem but what I want to do more than anything is be a role model for my son, to help him learn to undo the damage that’s been done to his sense of self through the schooling system (side bar: we are now homeschooling) and know that some of us (actually, quite a lot of us in the world) do things differently because we need to and that’s okay. What’s not okay is that we don’t yet have full supports in place as normal access rather than them being ‘extra’ or ‘special’ supports.
But I am nothing if not a hopeful person who sees a problem and tries her best to change it. So here I am, talking about the stuff I still find hard to talk about because as Glennon Doyle always says, We Can Do Hard Things.
—-
In #2 of this series, I will look at the ways ADHD has negatively impacted me as an author. In #3, I will look at the ways ADHD has positively impacted me as an author.
*Autistic burnout (Sidebar: I run Autistic & ADHD Retreats on Burnout on the Sunshine Coast, just in case you know anyone who needs a retreat.)
P.S. I’m just going to finish here by encouraging anyone who thinks they have a child with a neurodivergence of any kind to seek early assessments and support as soon as possible. It is much more difficult to rewrite your understanding of yourself and your brain, and learn what supports you need in life, and to avoid myriad damaging flow-on effects and co-occurring conditions when you are in your 40s than it is when you are still in primary school. We need to know why we struggle. We need to learn how to navigate this world.
Thrillers, romance, suspense, fantasy, contemporary, rural, memoir, historical and kids…. whatever you read, you’re sure to find something in this list, with plenty left over to fill your gift buying needs for a long time to come!
Here it is, the full list of 100 books up for grabs in the giant book raffle, raising much needed funds for flooding relief support for residents of Townsville and beyond. A huge thank you to all the Aussie authors who have donated their books to this cause and another round of applause to everyone who has already bought tickets in this competition. Your ticket money will be going straight to GIVIT, the charity coordinating the distribution of donations. You still have time to buy tickets, with 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes being drawn on Friday 29th March at 9am.
Without further ado… here they are.
Josephine Moon
Three Gold Coins + The Gift of Life + The Beekeeper’s Secret +
The Chooclate Promise + The Tea Chest
Monica McInerney
The Trip of a Lifetime
Lia Weston
Those Pleasant Girls
Rachael Johns
Lost Without You
Michelle Johnston
Dustfall
Michaela Daphne
Purlieu
Rachel Bailey
The Finn Factor
Liz Byrski
A Month of Sundays
Karen Viggers
The Orchardist’s Daughter
Michael Trant
Ridgeview Station
Christian White
The Nowhere Child
Annie Seaton
Diamond Sky
Lisa Ireland
The Shape of Us
Anna Campbell
A Scoundrel By Moonlight
Wendy J Dunn
Falling Pomegranate Seeds
Barbara Hannay
The Summer of Secrets
Kirsty Manning
The Jade Lily
Darry Fraser
The Widow of Ballarat
Tess Woods
Love and Other Battles
Anna Daniels
Girl In Between
Jane Gillespie
Journey to Me
S.D. Wasley
Downfall
Fiona Palmer
Sisters and Brothers
Vanessa Carnevale
The Florentine Bridge + The Memories that Make Us
Christine Wells
The Juliet Code
Helene Young
Return to Roseglen
Kali Napier
The Secrets at Ocean’s Edge
Michelle Endersby
Awakening Around Roses
Louise Guy
A Life Worth Living
Emily Madden
The Lost Pearl
Jodi L Perry
Nineteen Letters
Louise Allen
The Sister’s Song
Charlotte Nash
Saving You + The Paris Wedding + The Horseman
Donna Cameron
Beneath the Mother Tree
Kylie Ladd
The Way Back
Fiona Lowe
Home Fires
Sally Hepworth
The Family Next Door + The Mother-in-law
Jay Ludowyke
Carpathia
Lauren Charter
The Lace Weaver
Nene Davis
Whitethorne
Esther Campion
The House of Second Chances
Beth Prentice
Dangerous Deeds
Phillipa Nefri Clark
The Stationmaster’s Cottage
Eliza Henry Jones
P is for Pearl + Ache + In The Quiet
Rhonda Forest
Two Heartbeats
Lisa Ireland
The Shape of Us
Kelly Rimmer
The Things We Cannot Say + Before I Let You Go
Pamela Cook
The Crossroads
JoanneTracey
Happy Ever After
T.M. Clarke
Nature of the Lion +
(Child of Africa; and Slowly! Slowly!) (to go together)
Just today, I was having coffee with a friend of mine and we got onto the topic of just how important it is to do something you love. I mentioned that doing the ‘wrong’ thing, for me, led to chronic fatigue syndrome. And my life changed. Here is a piece I wrote for the Sydney Morning Herald in 2014 urging us all to try to find some space to do exactly what our soul calls us to do, before we’ve lost the chance.
xx
__________________
It’s 6.45 am, our toddler is in the bath and my laptop is perched on a sliver of the kitchen bench because, frankly, it looks like we had an out-of-control party here last night. Meanwhile, the dogs are trotting muddy paws across the floor, and my husband is nuzzling my neck.
If I died right now, I would actually die all over again of shame, knowing that someone would find me in this disaster. But then I’d get over the fact that the cat is eating out of the cereal bowl and there’s the smell of something rotting in the air, and I’d only be sorry I hadn’t got more books out into the world.
Because that is my calling in life: to write. It’s a calling I almost missed while I was busy leading the wrong life in the corporate jungle. But I didn’t truly start to listen to what I had to do until I had chronic fatigue syndrome and couldn’t work any more. Until the eczema spread all over my face and I couldn’t ignore it when I looked in the mirror.
So many women have amazing creative skills and yearn to leave their “day job” in favour of this passion. There’s a sadness that can’t be healed because that passion, that thing they want to do more than anything else, is also the thing that will, ultimately, make them happy.
I used to be one of those women, leaving for work and getting home in the dark, marching in silence with the hundreds of other rats racing through the tunnels on our way to the towers of soul-destroying “real work”, numbing ourselves with earphones in an attempt to ignore the fact that our true selves, our innate creative selves, were dying inside.
Some women love that life and if that’s you, I’m happy for you, truly. But for me, that life nearly destroyed me.
Unlike a virus that knocks you down for a few weeks before you start to recover, chronic fatigue doesn’t just get better. It takes time, lots of time, with an unknown finish date. Time I didn’t have. I had bills. I was a freelancer. I was a single woman. I was stuck in a horrible cycle of knowing that I needed to invest money in myself to get better, but not being able to make money to do that.
I accrued enormous debts, treading water until I could earn more money, believing one day I’d wake up and be better and everything would be fine. Eventually, I had to accept that I might not get better, that this might be as good as it got. And if that was the case then I had to start living the life that brought me joy.
It was like that saying – people work hard all their life to be wealthy, then retire and have to spend their money to save the health they ruined by working hard. Except I was only 29.
I made tough choices and changed lots of habits, not least of which was learning to accept myself rather than striving for (imagined) perfection. I had to learn to lower the bar. Do less. Expect less. Earn less. Work less. And then I had to start doing more of what truly nurtured my body and soul, even if it was by taking just one tiny step at a time.
Western medicine said it couldn’t offer me much, except perhaps for cortisone, which I didn’t feel was right. I couldn’t afford the plethora of complementary medicines being pitched my way. But I had to keep eating, so that was where I started – with food. Organic farmers’ markets became the place where I began to, finally, invest in myself.
None of these changes happened overnight. You can’t steer a ship in the wrong direction for 30 years and then expect it to turn on a dime. It’s an ongoing process.
We’re always waiting for the perfect time. And we bargain with ourselves by saying we’ll just be happy when we’ve paid off the bills, finished that degree, got that promotion, had three kids, got a cleaner, got a new car … whatever. And yet we all know the truth: there is only the now. And you can’t be temporarily unhappy to be happy.
Deep down we know this, yet we find myriad ways to delay our dreams. We think creativity is something separate from life. But it is life, not something you do for an hour on a Saturday afternoon. We’re running ourselves into the ground with pie charts and timetables and life coaches trying to find the work-life balance when there is no such thing. There is only life. And you only have one of those.
I want everyone to have what I have now – a career that fulfils me and financially supports me. One that gives me energy, not takes it away. I know that seems rare. But it doesn’t have to be. You can have that too. I honestly believe that. You just need to start and keep going. Don’t worry about how long it will take you, because you’ll still be the same age whether you do it or not. Don’t wait for the perfect time because that time is here, right now, messy kitchen and all.
So, speaking of the Christmas Spirit, I thought I’d share with you a few of my favourite charities in case you are looking for some ideas of where to spread your Christmas cheer too. I donate to these charities every time I get a royalty statement too, so thank you for supporting my books because you in turn support these charities. xx
To see who’s leading the way of amazing things you can do for the world in my list, head on over to the Kiva site. These are TRULY the gifts that keep on giving. Kiva is a phenomenally life changing micro loan site. That means, your money is a loan to an enterprising individual or group and they pay it back to you in tiny amounts at a time. You can literally change people’s lives with a $25 loan that comes back to you and then… here’s the awesome thing… you can send that same $25 on to someone else! It’s incredible. We can change the world with micro loans. I’ve got tiny loans out to people in Cambodia, Senegal, Phillipines, India, Zambi and Peru. I cannot speak highly enough of this charity.
And if you ever want to feel unbelievably inspired and hopeful for the world, listen to anything Jessica Jackley (co-founder of Kiva) has said. She is one of my heroes in life and I’ll be she’ll quickly be one of yours too.
On a sad note… Koalas, our national emblem, our national disgrace.
Did you know it takes fifty (50!) trees to supply food for ONE koala for ONE year?
We are losing our koala trees through deforestation and land clearing and cannot plant them fast enough to save this much-loved, cuddly species from a wipe out. The AKF is very clear: the only way to save koalas is to legislate protection of their habitat.
As their slogan says: No tree, no me.
Twice a year I donate to AKF to buy trees for their tree planting programs, building up crucial tracts of koala networks to save our friends. If it’s too late for the wild populations, then there is always the hope that zoos will have breeding programs to repopulate our land, and if that happens, the trees that AKF are planting right now (on private land, often donated or bequeathed) will be leading the way in providing food for them.
These are our sponsor cows: ‘Teddy’ is on the top and ‘Christina and Batman’ are on the bottom. Teddy is my husband’s cow and the two on the bottom are mine. Cute, aren’t they? We have a real thing for cows. (Actually, we have a real thing for everything, hence why we founded and ran a horse rescue charity for three years and now have a paddock full of horses.) This year, hubby wants to add on a pig. Getting a real live pig is the one thing I have resolutely said we can not under any circumstances get!! I love pigs, don’t get me wrong, and haven’t eaten one for twenty odd years. But everything I’ve read about pigs leads me to expect broken fences, endless ear-splitting squealing and earth destruction! I just don’t think I can cope. So anyway, that’s why sponsoring your favourite animals is a great alternative, and hence why this time next year I’ll probably be showing you a photo of ‘our pig’. 🙂
Book Drive
You’ll likely find a children’s book drive going on somewhere near you. For us, it’s run through our library system in Books 4 Kids here on the Sunshine Coast. Because kids and books just go together, don’t they? And no child should have to be without books, especially at Christmas.
“One person in three in the world lives in poverty.”
Wow, right? How lucky we are.
Oxfam’s slogan is: The power of people against poverty. They help people all around the world, including here in Australia, through industry, agriculture and businesses that provide ongoing employment, education and food resources.
And fortunately for all of us, they supply us with great Christmas decorations and gifts for everyone. We do a lot of shopping with Oxfam at this time of year. 🙂
So there you go! Please, go forth and be merry! xxx
The final proofed pages of my latest novel, on their way back to my publisher, complete with Random Toddler Attack
Top Ten Tips for Being a Mama and Getting Your Writing Done!
I see so many interviews out there where a female writer is asked how she manages to write while also being a mother. And I’m not saying it hasn’t happened, but I’m yet to see or hear the same question asked of a male writer. Now, I could pose a lot of theories of why that is the case, but since it is a topic that doesn’t seem to go away, I thought I’d put my two cents in as well.
Firstly, I want to be very clear in that I don’t think there is any difference between a working mother/writer and a mother who is also working as a teacher, nurse, psychologist, chemical engineer, astronaut, television host or cleaner. Right? It’s all a job or career and so we’re all faced with the same challenges. In fact, the ADVANTAGE of being a working writer and mother is that your time is infinitely MORE flexible. (That can also be a double-edged sword, but see below for that.)
So like all working mothers, working writers have to make choices about what is right for them and their career, their time, their family and their children. Nannies, daycare and grandparents are all considered, perhaps working part-time to allow for some sort of ‘balance’. Or, you might like to work full-time with full-time childcare. In my own case, we battled on with (expensive) in-home nannies for the first two years after our son was born (I got my literary agent five weeks after he was born… yikes!), and then he showed us he was ready to go to daycare two days a week. My dad and stepmother (luckily) adore him and they have him with them another day a week. So that gives me three days a week dedicated to writing. This works for all of us right now.
Before I had a child, I could write whenever I wanted to, for the most part. Now, I have to do it on my ‘working’ days. It’s not always easy but, again, any other job is the same. Some days we don’t want to go, right? But if you don’t show up, you don’t get paid. Sometimes I will work at night or on weekends, and every now and then I throw in a weekend away for a writing retreat to get some intensive uninterrupted time with my novel.
The tough stuff for me is when things happen on days that aren’t ‘writing days’: stuff like interviews, photo shoots, interstate travel, publicity events and commitments etc. Then the juggling does get tricky and this takes some whole family commitment to changing timetables and so on. And of course, often those other commitments DO happen on ‘writing days’ (because it is impossible to do a photo shoot with a toddler in his “Hulk” phase testing out his power by upending furniture), so that means that no writing actually happens and that puts pressure on the word count targets.
But I wouldn’t change any of it because I think I have the best job in the world for me.
I do know that the big pressures come when you are as-yet unpublished and are trying to work out how to work, and raise children, AND write a book. That’s tough. But still do-able. It takes a lot of compassion for yourself and belief in your need to write, as well as some creative thinking and support from your family. And it’s okay to ask for help, ya know?
Some tips:
If you can, take back some time by hiring a cleaner to come for a few hours a week and spend every minute of that time writing. And if you have mama guilt about that, USE it to fuel your word count goal to prove to yourself how useful and productive you’re being. (As an aside, I don’t actually subscribe to this sort of fear-based motivation, but if you need to use it in the short term to get yourself moving then by all means DO IT!)
If you can write in ten-minute or thirty-minutes snatches of time, I bow at your feet! If, like me, you’re not really like that, try to find at least ONE HOUR at a time (many writers do it at 4.30am or 9.30pm) and write like a demon for sixty minutes. Better yet, maybe it’s even more valuable to negotiate one whole weekend every month or two and just delve down deep into your book. You might get more done in that time than you would in six months of half-hour snatches.
Writing brings with it incredible flexibility in terms of the time of day you can write and where you can write. This is awesome. Use that flexibility…
…BUT! Be warned. This type of flexibility also means that when the child is sick and can’t go to daycare, when the car needs to go to the mechanic, when the plumber needs to come to the house etc. etc., it will likely be YOU that is asked to give up your writing time to deal with the domestic need. And, often, this happens because ‘your job’ isn’t ‘earning any money’ at that time while your partner’s job is. Oh, the mama guilt that goes with that! And look, the reality is that you do need to keep money coming into the house, right? But just be very aware of this trap. Learn to set boundaries and be patient with yourself as you learn to protect them and learn to claw back that time that you lost with the plumber on another day. Learn to negotiate. It can be tough; I get it. (Even now, as a published author whose income contributes considerably to our household, I still find it difficult.) But you need to do it.
Work while disconnected. I use Freedom, a cheap, neat little program that BLOCKS THE INTERNET on my computer while I’m writing. What a difference it makes! We are too distracted and too distractible. If you’re on limited writing time than for goodness’ sake, suck the marrow out of every minute you have.
Remember that you can plan a lot in your head while you’re playing with train sets and play dough. You can THINK about your book at any minute of the day.
I think having a child actually makes me a better writer. It focuses my attention and time and forces me to move through procrastination and blocks much faster than I would do if I didn’t have the time ticking down to when I had to leave to pick him up from daycare. He is pure imagination and play and makes me laugh all the time and provides an incredible wealth of new experiences, emotions, ideas and material for books. And I swear that reading children’s books makes me a better writer. This is all valuable stuff for your career.
Working on hard copy (writing by hand, or editing on paper) is much easier to do when you’ve got little people around than carrying your laptop around or locking yourself away in a room. Your supervision is still good, the little person won’t try and take over your laptop, you can hand over paper and pens so that you can ‘work together’, and the cup of juice that gets spilt won’t ruin your notebook like it will your laptop. You can always type up words later when you’re tired and don’t actually need too many brain cells simply to read and type, rather than create.
Finally, it all comes down to this. If you want it enough, you’ll make it work. You can do it. You can. You absolutely can. You MORE than can. You can…. I promise.
Want a cool Christmas advent calendar with a fun book theme for your kids?
My clever sister has made a Christmas book advent calendar. She’s taken a heap of Christmas themed books and wrapped them in Christmas paper and put them in a big red box.
Each night during December, her two boys (one-and-a-half and three-and-a-half years old) get to take turns to pick a book (like a lucky dip) to unwrap and read before bed.
What a wonderful tradition to start with your kids (or indeed yourself!).
