Pink and Blue Diaries: 5 Steps Toward a Better Book/Life Fit

Deborah Siegel asks: Is any working woman writer with a family (broadly defined) successfully juggling? Is it possible? Is it our goal?

I’m high off the yoga retreat my husband and parents blessedly, mercifully sent me on for my birthday last weekend. But five days later, the glow is already wearing thin. Balance—or rather, the quest for something resembling it—remains a daily challenge. It was nothing shy of wonderful to sit in an empty room with 22 other women (and 2 men) all weekend and focus on my breath. The real challenge, of course, is to bring the peace I felt on the mat back home.

As women and writers composing a life, we are postergirls for stress. Tina Fey’s timely manifesto in the New Yorker (“Confessions of a Juggler”) struck a chord for many of us here at She Writes. The rudest question you can ask a woman, writes Fey, is not “How old are you?” or “What do you weigh?” but “How do you juggle it all?” As a still new-ish mother of twins, it’s a question I get all the time. And while it often feels like a compliment, sometimes I feel like a fake—you think I’m successfully juggling? Ha! Fooled another one.

And so I want to know: Is any working woman writer with a family (broadly defined) successfully juggling? Is it possible? Is it our goal?

I came back from my retreat thinking about a woman’s—and in particular of course this woman’s—book/life fit. Cali Yost is among those redefining “balance” (elusive, inachievable). She talks about work+life fit (a constantly recalibrated equation—note her recent post about how sometimes even a work/life expert's fit stinks). I adapt my term from hers.

Book/life fit = a woman writer’s ability to make working on her book and her current life, well, you know, fit.

Definition of “fit”:

1. be the right size or shape (match, suit, correspond)

2. be appropriate

3. be compatible

4. make somebody or something ready

5. relationship for best function

In an ideal world, and maybe in places like Sweden where they've actually figured out things like childcare, our writing and our lives are one. “[T]here are books that a writer undertakes because she wants to go on a journey, and there are journeys a writer undertakes because she wants to write a book,” writes Dani Shapiro in an interview about the undertaking of her latest memoir, Devotion, which I deliciously consumed over the weekend while curled up on a couch sipping ginger tea between yoga classes (NOT, believe me, my normal life). Previous books I’ve written or proposed have been undertaken because I’ve wanted to write a book. The new one is for the journey. The endeavor feels qualitatively different. More organic. More in sync with my life in its current form (I’m writing about the gendering of childhood, with memoir strewn in). But it’s a challenge, daily, to allow myself to just let that journey unfold.

Like Shapiro, whose memoir is about her search for answers to big spiritual questions, I’m fighting internal demons as well as external ones for the quiet time, the permission, the space to experiment and think deeply and well. “This was very much a journey I wanted to go on,” Shapiro says. “[T]he only way I could really give myself the permission and the time to do it was by knowing that it was what I was doing for work, that I could spend two years cross-legged on my floor and feel like I was working. Otherwise I’m way too type A, and it would have felt both impossible and self-indulgent. I needed to slow down and quiet down deeply into a lot of these questions, yet at the same time what I was looking for, and continue to, is a way to have this exist within a regular, normal, modern life.”

And there, dear ladies, is the rub. A woman’s regular, normal, modern life is generally so full that slowing down and quieting down takes concerted effort, not to mention finagling and negotiating with the colleagues, the bosses, the partners, the parents, the dogs, the children, the childcare, the bills. “Juggle” implies perpetually keeping balls in the air. I don’t want to live in fear of dropped balls. What I really want is to slow down.

Here are 5 ways I’m trying to slow down:

1. The 7-Day Social Media Cleanse Challenge. It worked! After a week of following my own rules (more or less), I find I’m both emailing less and getting fewer emails. I’m less addicted to the constant “hit” of my Inbox, blog comments, and retweets. I’ve spent less time on FB and I’ve been tweeting in a way that feels holistic and enjoying watching the number of followers grow. (For anyone wishing to try the Challenge, read this post, follow the instructions for a period of 7 days, and notice what unfolds.)

2. I’m meditating. Or rather, I meditated two days in a row, for 10 minutes each. Hey, it’s a start.

3. I’m saying “no” to things more often. Even when they’re tempting and, in one recent case, semi-lucrative. I’m trying to be strategically intentional in terms of the paid work I take on. As my dear friend Courtney Martin recently said to me (and I’m botching the quote she quoted me), some things are actual opportunities and some things are distractions in a superfly red dress.

4. I’m inching toward spending more time, rather than less, with my babies. This one sounds counter-intuitive but hear me out: Starting next month, I’ll temporarily cut back on our babysitting so that the time I spend working on the as-yet-un-paying book project is less stressful, less filled with guilt, more free (but no, I am NOT--repeat NOT-- opting out. I am among the vast majority of us who literally can't afford to, long-term).

5. I’ve stopped folding laundry. I mean really, what’s more important: folded shirts, or 500 more words?

So tell me, She Writers: How’s your book/life fit? If it’s out of whack, what steps (including, perhaps, moving to Sweden) might you take to make it work better? Share your strategies, and pass it all on.

TWEET:

How's YOUR book/life fit? She Writers join @TinaFey123 in writing/life struggle. Join the convo http://bit.ly/PinkBlue5Steps #worklife

Image cred: Women Workout Routines (with a bow to Sarah Saffian, who I think first found this pic!)

Tags: #process/craft, time management

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Comment by Mother On the Go on March 3, 2011 at 1:39am: Point no 5: Definitely 500 more words......

Point no 1 : No, No No

Loved your psot. hilarious. Got a totally diff point of view.

Following you. You can catch me at www.mothersonthego.com

Comment by Pamela Toler on February 26, 2011 at 6:33am: Stepping back in here. Several years ago someone asked me what was the best writing advice I'd ever received. I told them it was my mother's example.

I'm a second generation freelance writer. When I was small, my mother was a very young stay-at-home mother with three children under the age of five in a very small house. While there was no doubt that she loved us all, she was not a very maternal mother. She did not make motherhood look fun, or easy. But she wrote, and she published. Her notebook traveled with us everywhere. If there was two free minutes in the day, she grabbed it. One enduring memory of my childhood is walking out of ballet class to the sound of a blazing car horn. My mother had leaned her notebook against the steering wheel and was so deep in her work that she didn't notice when she leaned on the horn.

The lesson I took away was that if you really want to write, you will find a way to write.

Comment by Patricia Caspers on February 25, 2011 at 7:23pm: I just wrote a blog post about this today. I'm just feeling like my work is not valued/valuable because I don't get paid for it and because I have to squeeze it into the off hours, and lately my self-esteem is taking a hit.

Comment by Cathy Kozak on February 24, 2011 at 11:05am: Miranda - I agree, guilt drains the life out of creative energy and what do we get from it? More guilt!

Comment by Miranda Koerner on February 24, 2011 at 5:46am: I think the hard part is also not letting our insecurities and woulda coulda shouldas suck time away from us. I know my anxieties and worries about I should do this or should do that or if I was a good wife take a lot of time!

Comment by Fi Phillips on February 24, 2011 at 4:51am: I'm constantly diving around in the act of juggling. With two children and a house to arrange, on top of running a home business, fitting my non business related writing in can be a challenge but I thankfully have a husband who is also a writer so we keep each other inspired and motivated. Not much time for a social life in there unfortunately.

Comment by Jane Baskin on February 23, 2011 at 4:43pm: Wow. What a topic. My book life fit right now is: Life is Madness. My children are grown but still call all the time, I have a demanding job and am just about to bring out a novel. Last night I got 4.5 hours of sleep, not good. I am trying to teach my house how to clean itself, but I think it's developmentally delayed. What scares me is that it can only get worse, when the book comes out in April, then starts the marketing/pr. So, thanks for the tips and a VERY worthwhile discussion.

Comment by Jessie Burche on February 23, 2011 at 11:46am: 1. Buy food that cooks itself.

2. Work. (Sounds counterintuitive, but now I have the money to pay for writing workshops, classes, website ideas. Plus, I wanted to jump off of the tallest building as a SAHM. Now I'm sane and I have money).

3. Write on my lunch break.

4. Think of story ideas on the way home and in the shower.

5. My husband and I switch off childcare on the weekends. We only have kid (hopefully it stays that way), so it's easy. He takes her Saturday, I take her Sunday.

Comment by Fleur de Lys on February 22, 2011 at 11:17pm: Deborah,

From my own experience with twins and an older sibling, I don't believe there is such thing as "balance" in the short term; there are the all-consuming day-to-day diaper changes, feeding, consoling, doctor visits, role-modeling, and being there 24/7. The balance comes later when the kids are old enough to be more self-sufficient. It was a wild ride for me; only now that my kids are in their tweens and teens can I begin to think about my self-actualization. More power to you if you find a way to have it all!

Comment by Miranda Koerner on February 22, 2011 at 4:26pm: I just went to a children's writing conference, and I had the same epiphany. It's all about balancing your priorities between family and fitness and life...But on those days when you get it right, it just feels so RIGHT.

I just need to keep this positive mindset and not let the drudge get me down!