Writing in the Cracks

How to adjust your expectations around writing and motherhood.

Hello, Writer Moms!

I’ve been doing this writer mom thing for 5 1/2 years now, and I’ve discovered so many things about myself, my stories, and my goals. There’s been a lot of self-reflection at work (more on that in another post), and I’ve figured out a few things.

Those few things let me write over 200,000 words in 4 years, with a full-time job and 2 kids (1 of whom woke hourly for the first 11 months of her life).

Throughout these Writing in the Cracks posts, we’ll go over each of the strategies and methods that allowed me to self-publish 2 books with a potty-training toddler and a nursing infant, without losing any more sleep than Baby E was taking from me anyway.

But to get to that point, we have to start with a hard truth.

Your writing is going to look different as a mom.

This was my toughest lesson. Before kids, I could sit down for 2-3 hours at a time and crank out 5,000 words, but now even 1 uninterrupted hour is rare.

I’m lucky if I get 20 minutes to shower.

When I finally got back to writing postpartum, I often felt overwhelmed and overstimulated, or I felt too lost in my story to even get started. It took too long to figure out where I was, so I didn’t know how to get where I was going.

I left every writing session feeling disappointed by the changes in my writing process. I had less time to write, and each of those writing sessions was shorter than I was used to. Surprisingly, my babies didn’t respect the time I’d set aside for writing, and I had a hard time getting back into my story after being interrupted.

When I did actually have time to work uninterrupted, like after bed or during naps, I was so exhausted and overstimulated that I couldn’t write, or it turned into forced words that I knew I’d have to rewrite anyway.

The process I was used to, and what constituted a successful writing session, didn’t match my new reality. I had to change my expectations and redefine success—without lowering my expectations—before I could be happy with my new writing reality.

So how did I fix the problem?

My solution actually came from a fieldtrip.

When my daughter was 1, I went on an outdoor education trip with my 7th graders, where we got to practice orienteering. If you’re not familiar with orienteering, it’s a sport where you enter an unfamiliar area, like a forest or other natural area, with a detailed map and a compass. The idea is to find your way through the wilderness by finding checkpoints along your path until you reach the end of the course.

So how does that relate to writing?

Orienteering Basics: Figure Out Where You Are

You can’t go forward if you don’t know where you are or what’s ahead.

(Well, you can, but you may end up walking in the wrong direction and having to double back.)

So how do you figure out where you are?

• Practice self-reflection. Take an honest look at where you are in your parenting and writing journey. When I was in the early weeks of motherhood, still healing physically and trying to establish my milk supply, getting no sleep, surviving on granola bars and chocolate, I was not in a good position to write. That’s not everyone’s story—some people cope by writing through those changes, and that’s great—but that didn’t work for me. I was very overwhelmed, and my energy needed to go to meeting my physical needs and those of my baby.
• Locate Checkpoints. In orienteering, you’re given a map with checkpoints along your path, but the actual route you take to get to each checkpoint is up to you. Your writing checkpoints might be:
  • drafting
  • revising
  • sharing with beta readers
  • editing
  • querying
  • publishing
• …and they may line up with checkpoints on other writers’ maps, but the route you take is yours. You have obstacles that other writers may not have—and they’ll have obstacles you don’t have.
• Identify Obstacles. Speaking of obstacles—figuring out where you are on your map and determining your obstacles, and your path around them, will help get you to your next checkpoint. Here’s an example: I’ve already told you that my daughter woke hourly for the first 11 months of her life. It was awful, but it was my reality—she was awake, and since I was breastfeeding, I was also awake. That was a huge obstacle for me, especially since I was trying the typical writing advice of “get up earlier/stay up later”. That wasn’t working for me. I was trying to get over a river by buying better hiking shoes. So I oriented myself in my problem in relation to my nearest checkpoint—finishing my draft—and I adapted. Since I was already awake 7-10 times a night, I did my writing then. I went to bed early and slept as late as I could, and I wrote when it made sense for me and my obstacles.

What This Means for Your Writing

If your writing reality is currently “so overwhelmed that I don’t know where to start”, maybe you don’t need to start with finding time to write. Instead, focus on smaller steps like…

• rereading your story to get back into the vibes
• reading articles about story-related topics
• revising older chapters on your phone
• daydream about future scenes
• read other books in your genre
• build up your presence and connect to other writers on social media

Those are all important parts of the writing process, even if they’re not “sitting down at the laptop and typing”. It all gets you closer to your goal.

Next Steps

Before you can build a successful writing routine, you need to orient yourself in your parenting and writing journey, and identify your checkpoints and your obstacles.

To help with that, I’ve created a Writer’s Orienteering Guide (or get this and other downloads for free when you subscribe to my Substack, Write Like a Mother). If you have Canva, you can click on the Editable Guide and fill it out digitally, or download the Printable Guide if you prefer to have it laid out in front of you.

Then let me know how things are going in the comments. If you’ve identified obstacles but can’t find a solution, we can help you. When you figure out where you are in relation to your checkpoints, we’ll celebrate with you!

And just a reminder…

You’re awesome. You’re creative. You can do this!

Keep writing!

~Rachael