Stage Mother

So not to be a stage Mother or anything, but my daughter is writing a book.

For the last few weeks I've been giving myself permission to be really serious about writing without feeling silly about it. I have rearranged my schedule and my thinking to really give the work a priority space in my life.

A huge step in this is how I handle the family priorities. I no longer run errands while Little Guy is in preschool, those are my work days. I make the kids wait until 7 AM for breakfast instead of abandoning my laptop as soon as they're up (I know, flagrant neglect, please don't report me). If I am working on something during the day, I tell them they'll have to wait a few minutes to have my attention because I need to finish my writing. I actively ignore the laundry (okay, maybe I did that before, but now I do it with purpose).

And though it will take some time to really kick this thing to the next level, I feel like I am on the right track. Writing is no longer, in my mind at least, a hobby.

So the kids are soaking it in, maybe more than I realized. A few days ago, Girlie spent her entire computer screen time writing a story. She says wants to be a writer. She even wrote an essay about it at school. She wrote, get this, that I am her inspiration.

I was thinking that over the weekend, I'd take her to a coffee shop where we could hang out and be writers together. I already gave her some feedback on the her story - focus on the conflict, get to it sooner, the story behind the story, etc. Chances are that she'll want to be a million other things before she lands on it, but right now I am going to enjoy this thing, hers and mine. She's nine, so next week she could want to be a chef or a lawyer or one of Katy Perry's backup singers.

But as for the writing thing, maybe she's got a shot at it. Her book seems to be coming along much faster than mine.