I’ve had plenty of time to think of this, especially during the first year of my time as a stay at home mother. I loved my job. When Aidan was small and the challenges of new motherhood seemed so much bigger than I was capable of handling, I wondered if I wasn’t a little crazy to give up my much-beloved career.

After all, what did it say about me that I was willing to trade in an engaging career for a never ending river of spit-up?

Don’t get me wrong, staying at home with Aidan has been and will always be the right move. It’s in line with my goals and priorities as a parent, it fulfills me in ways no career ever could, and I can see the benefits of it every time Aidan decides to behave himself.

The writing certainly helps. I have a stimulating hobby that manages to not only give me a creative outlet but also makes me feel like I’m still doing something tangibly worthwhile with my time. It helps. And it’s fun.

Now that I’m pregnant and have let my writing simmer on the back burner, that old post-feminist pestering is back. My ambitious nature goads me daily, telling me I should be working, not napping. That I’m willingly letting my dreams get hijacked by two little people who don’t even realize it.

Someone I follow on Twitter recently asked whether it was always necessary to choose between kids and goals, and why that was. I notice a lot of my peers struggling with this same frustration. They have goals, dreams, and ambitions and feel stymied by the limitations incumbent to a mother with young children.

I struggle with this myself. I hesitated to get pregnant again because I had so much I wanted to do first. Finish another book, get another book published and out there, maybe attend another writer’s conference.

Instead, I got pregnant again because it was important to us that our children be close enough in age to be able to relate and enjoy a relationship with each other.

All that to say, what ultimately made the decision for me was having a hard discussion with myself about my priorities. My kids are my most important priority. Everything else comes second. Not because I think my darling precious angels are the be-all end-all of my existence, but because they deserve to be my focus right now. I am half responsible for bringing them into the world so I darn well owe them the best I can possibly offer.

If that means my writing will have to wait until they’re both in school to really get going, I’m cool with that.

There. Struggle over.

The disservice I think post-feminism does women my age is it makes us feel like choosing our children is weakness of character. Like if we settle for anything less than running ourselves ragged trying to raise great kids and have ambitious careers all while wearing the jeans we wore in high school, we’re doing it wrong. Settling for less.

And what I think it’s producing is a lot of guilty women who are at war with their circumstances. If you only have a set number of hours in the day and trying to fit everything in is making you crabby and miserable, prioritize and let things go.

That’s my take on it, anyway. Maybe I’m just a big ol’ quitter. If so, at least I’m a big ol’ quitter who’s happy. I’ll take happy over stressed out and miserable any day of the week.

My goals and ambitions will still be there waiting for me when I have time for them again. My little kids, however, who need love and attention and guidance? Won’t be.

Why?

Because novels are squirrely. At least, mine are. They start out as one thing, then do an abrupt about-face that leaves me trailing after them holding scraps of now-useless research asking, “WHY?!?!?!?!”

Characters I think will turn out to be a big deal excuse themselves from relevance, throw-away side characters extract themselves from the woodwork and steal the show. It’s a silly business, writing a book. For all the good plotting does me, I might as well just wing it and stop wasting my time on preemptive research.

When I started typing novel #3 on November 3 (I know, two days late. Whatever will I do if I don’t finish?!) I had every intention of writing about a ballerina jewelry thief. I had the story all laid out, I was excited about it, I even had the first line all typed out in my head.

Wanna read that first line? Here:

She arched one impossibly long arm over her head, bowing it over her outstretched leg like a taut branch supporting the weight of a bird. A tiny chorus of pops and crackles from behind her as the muscles in her back warmed up, stretched, remembered their soreness from yesterday’s class.

But then…I couldn’t get past this paragraph. I tried changing point of view, I tried starting somewhere else. Nothing. Writer’s block. Muy no bueno.

So, I started writing about something else. I had no idea where it was going, I was just writing for the kicks of it. And then I started meeting this entirely new character. And thought maybe this could be that zombie apocalypse novel I’ve always wanted to write.

And, Heaven help me, I think it just might be. Wes and I combined our considerable imaginations and came up with an entirely new (to us, anyway) kind of zombie, and now I’m 9,951 words into a book I have trouble not writing because it’s so dang fun.

I’m still behind on my word count. By the end of day seven I should technically be at 11,669 words, and in order to pull that off I’d have to write an additional 1,700 words today to cap off the 1,400 I already wrote this morning.

So, I might not catch up today. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe the day after that.

Who knows? By the time I catch up the novel may have changed again, morphing from a zombie apocalyse book into some kind of heartwarming tale of redemption and kindness and cracker sandwiches.

Stay tuned.

It’s November 3. And all my projects are done, way ahead of schedule. Dare I start NaNoWriMo late? Do I have the stones to thumb my nose at the prospect of failure and just toss my hat in the ring for the funsies of it?

HECK. YES.

I could fail. It’s possible, and maybe even likely. Instead of 30 days to write a novel, now I have 28. I’m like February over here.

Still, I can’t stop feeling angry whenever I see people hunched over laptops in coffee shops, writing what I’m sure are thousands of words of novels I want to read.

Screw prudence! I’m doing it. 50,000 words, I’m coming for you.

To pre-order, click on this link and then use the promo code Fall2011 to receive your discount. My teeny little story is in there with some truly beautiful photography, interesting articles, and short stories that first grab and then rivet you.

If you feel like supporting local art or just want some new reading material, this is definitely worth the money.

As for me and my house? We’re going to be pretty mellow tonight. Halloween candy, a photo op for Aidan in his tiger costume, and then a showing of The Nightmare Before Christmas with my brother and his wife. Mellow, relaxed, and sugary. Just the way I like it!

The reason we’re going to celebrate Halloween in such a chill manner is because Wes and I are exhausted. Maybe me moreso than him, but that’s tough to qualify. The reason? Sick toddler.

Aidan started teething a couple weeks ago, so he and I both stopped sleeping well at night. Then, when the teething looked like it was almost done, he caught a bit of a cold. Then he spiked a fever. A fever that came and went for four days.

Yesterday morning he was so lethargic and feverish and un-Aidan-ish I couldn’t look at him without crying so I got him the soonest doctor appointment I could find.

It turns out he had a 102 degree fever and a double ear infection. The poor guy was miserable!

So now he’s on antibiotics and he slept the night through last night for the first time in weeks and HALLE-FRICKIN-LUJAH and oh my gosh I’m so tired I could collapse.

And do you know what starts tomorrow? November. And NaNoWriMo. And the holidays.

You guys…I don’t think I can handle NaNo this year. The whole point of wrapping up my revisions for Enemy Accountant early was so I could rest for the last two weeks of October, but my child had other plans. Now I’m entering into a writing marathon sleep-deprived, exhausted in almost every way, and feeling about as inspired as a dirty gym sock.

I love NaNo. I love the thrill of it, the sense of community, the adrenaline. But I refuse to pick battles I know I can’t win, and this has failure written all over it. Never mind the fact that I have a freelance writing thing I’ll actually get paid to do this month. Never mind that I still need to write a synopsis and query letter to the agents who requested to read Enemy Accountant

The fact is, I’m just worn out and I can’t have fun writing this next novel if I feel like crap. And what’s the point of writing a novel if it isn’t fun?

There isn’t a point (unless you’re under contract) so I’m bowing out of participating in NaNo this year. I’ll get a pang every time I get a NaNoWriMo email, and I wish all of you who are participating the very best of luck, but this is not my year.

Maybe next year…Oh, wait. I might have another baby lurking around by then. Well, shoot. I’ll write another novel between now and then, I suppose.

For now, I’ll just eat my candy, and dress my kid up, and catch up on sleep. Or maybe I’ll just watch Deep Blue Sea while Aidan’s napping…

Nick and I haven’t lived in the same state for twelve years, so to actually be close enough to see each other often is a rare treat for us. We’ll see how long it takes before we’re bickering just like normal siblings.

While I was helping them unpack, I received a thrilling email: A very short story I wrote will be published in a literary journal next month!

Line Zero, the journal publishing my story, is an emerging print journal dedicated to the arts. The managing editor, Renda Dodge, is also the municipal liaison for Seattle’s NaNoWriMo, so I’ve known (of) her for a few years.

They sponsored a flash fiction contest with the prompt “Avarice,” giving applicants 300 words and 24 hours to come up with a story. I wrote one that I had a lot of fun with…And I won!

This is a big deal for me. I have a lot of respect for that journal, and I think it was a fun writing prompt (how can you not have fun with avarice?!) so you can imagine the happy dance I did when I found out I won.

I’ll share the story on my other website as soon as the journal comes out, along with links to purchase a copy of the journal if you’d like to read some other really fun stories and look at pretty pictures.

Winning a contest and getting to see my brother. I doubt I’ll be topping yesterday anytime soon!

I read a fascinating Slate article today on how to write faster. This is, either fortunately or not, something I never struggle with.

Blogging helped me learn how to write quickly, for one. Blogging is a terrific way to hone writing skills, because it’s almost always really easy to write a blog post when you’ve got one roiling around in your brain. NaNoWriMo helped too, because you have such a huge daily word requirement that you have no choice but to just get stuff on the page.

So how fast is fast? I’d consider myself a fast writer. I can consistently churn out about 1,000 words per hour, but this number can go up or down depending on how much research I have to do. If writing was all I did every day, I could conceivably write a handful of novels and short stories every year providing my fingers and supply of ideas held up.

Still, there are pros and cons to writing fast. On the pro side, if you have a short attention span (like me, and almost everyone I know who’s my age {darn Internet, making it easy to access short, easy-to-digest morsels of information}) it’s much easier to stay engaged and interested in a story if you’re able to write it quickly. Plus, it’s a huge rush to complete an entire novel in a month or two. I met people at the writer’s conference earlier this month who’d been writing their books for years. I was almost a little afraid to tell them I wrote my first draft in a month.

On the con side, quantity doesn’t always equate to quality. The more I learn about writing, the more I realize this. For example, the value of an outline. I don’t outline, as a rule. I like to meet my characters, get them in trouble, and then watch how they get themselves out of it. It’s fun to write this way, and can lead to some surprising twists.

However, this also means I end up with some pretty ragged first drafts. Take the novel I’m working on right now, Enemy Accountant. I wrote the first draft last November, and now I’m “revising” it. And by “revising” it I mean I’m rewriting the whole freaking thing because I know I’m capable of telling the story so much better and I’m unwilling to send it off to agents and publishers when it’s anything less than the best I can possibly do.

One could argue that my first draft has become my outline. Bob Mayer has a great quote about this, he says, “I would offer that all writers outline. Some just write a really extensive outline called the first draft.”

My writing style is consistent with my personality type, though. I’m a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kinda person, whose spontaneity works out great sometimes and gets me in huge trouble at other times. I admire people who think things through and have a perfect plan and know exactly where they’re going with their writing. That’s just never going to be me.

So I guess it’s a good thing I write so dang fast. This way I can just proliferate bunches of mediocre first drafts every year, and then spend the rest of my time cleaning those drafts up and rewriting them entirely. This makes me feel like a crappy carpenter who’s perpetually measuring once and cutting twice, but hey. It’s working for me so far.

Still, I’ve been in the boot for four weeks now and I hate it. It was all fun and games when I was all, “Ha ha, this is my first broken bone” but now I just want to be able to walk across the house without feeling like a dang pirate, y’know?

Also, I’m keeping the weight off but I’ve noticed a gradual…softening…going on. All my hard-won muscles are melting back into chub and it’s driving me bananas. I mean sure, I could keep going to the gym to exercise my arms and core, but I very much dislike weight training and it’s just too frustrating to go to the gym and only get to do the stuff I don’t really like doing.

Instead of going to the gym, I’ve been waking up early to write. It’s been nice. I hobble to the kitchen, brew some coffee, and then write my little face off until 8 AM, when it’s time for me to start my day of stay at home mothering.

There’s a plus side to everything, I suppose. Flabby arms in exchange for progress on my novel? Meh, I guess I’ll take it. I suppose my stomach muscles are going to be destroyed by Future Baby anyway so I might as well get used to it.

This is yet another reason I’m waking up early to write. Newborns don’t afford many opportunities to sit down and write, so I’ve got to do it now while the getting’s good. I think it’s absolutely realistic to write a novel and finish revising my current book sometime in the next few months, don’t you agree?

In case you missed my post last week, I’ve spent the last four days at the Pacific Northwest Writer’s Conference. This was my first conference and it was, for the most part, exactly what I expected it to be. I took an obscene amount of notes, learned a ton, felt encouraged as a writer, and met some new author friends. All good times.

What I wasn’t expecting was to feel so much ambition thrumming in the air. The other writers at this conference were hungry. I even had one guy say to me, “Are in this for the honor or the money? Because me, I’m in it for the money.”  Fancy that.

There were literary agents and editors at the conference, and these poor people had to run around the conference with AGENT or EDITOR written on their name badges, basically turning them into lights at night in the middle of a moth enclosure at the zoo. I can’t even imagine how many pitches these men and women had to listen to.

Speaking of pitches, I had no idea how important a writer’s pitch is but be ye not so misinformed: A pitch is a big deal. There were three separate sessions at this conference dealing with how to write and deliver a pitch to an agent, that’s how big of a deal it is. I wrote my pitch before the conference, then took the sessions and re-wrote it about ten more times.

Imagine this: I have ten minutes before my agent meeting and I’m wolfing down a stale sandwich I bought from Tully’s while furiously scribbling all over my notepad, trying to incorporate some feedback I got minutes ago. Five minutes before my meeting I have no idea what I’m going to say so I pop a piece of gum in my mouth and decide, “Screw this, I’m winging it.”

And I did. And it worked.

I met with an extremely decent human being who is a literary agent and she was very kind. It set me at ease and I just started talking about my novel (Enemy Accountant, if you’re curious) and it came out sounding relaxed and interesting. She gave me her business card and asked me to email the whole manuscript to her. I thanked her and then commenced clutching that business card for an hour straight because I was afraid it would plumb fly away if I didn’t.

Just in case you’re not of the publishing world, an agent’s job is to get publishers interested in buying your book. If they do manage to get a publisher interested, they help negotiate the contract in your interest and advocate for you throughout the publishing process. It’s a very, very good thing to find an agent who loves your work.

So, now I have two agents interested in my novel. And a head full of new writing tricks to try. And, oh hey there manuscript I wrote a few months ago. Let’s get you spiffed up and ready for your date with these agents who are interested in meeting you…

If you need me, I’ll be eyeball-deep in revisions.

I apologize for rambling, I’m just a tad nervous. You see, I’m heading out to a writer’s conference on Thursday to rubs elbows and mingle with whole heaping bunches of other Pacific Northwest authors. I’ll be in seminars all day every day for three days, pretty much just coming home to shower and sleep.

It’s going to be…A lot of work, but hopefully worthwhile. I’m hoping to make some new friends, learn some new tricks and skills, and maybe (just maybe) avoid doing anything I can gleefully blog about afterward (meaning, I hope to avoid making a total donkey of myself).

For now, my whole job is to work on my pitch and find a place to get some business cards printed. I think networking will go a lot easier if I have some nifty business cards printed up. Here are some designs I’m thinking:

• Unicorn and a kitten hugging in the background of the card, with my name written in swooping font. Nothing says “Blurb my book someday” like a unicorn hugging a kitten.
• Black background with slate gray writing. Because dark colors = serious author.
• A white card with just my name and nothing else, ala Daniel Ocean in Ocean’s Eleven. It wouldn’t be spectacularly helpful, but it would be pretty cool.

How about you? Got any business card or networking tips for me?