Balance: Why Can’t I Get Away From This Issue?

A lake view plus a window and a table and chair equals writing nirvana for me.

There is a theory that I am a raging workaholic. It is an idea my right brain puts to my left brain on a regular basis to tell it to calm the frick down. Why do I insist on pushing myself to the limit so much? And here I am again. Only 3 months after telling my husband I was happier than I had ever been and felt like I had finally achieved balance after having a baby, I am swimming in busyness and searching once again for the proper balance. Here’s the crazy ride I’m taking myself on, and yes I’m fully aware it is all within my control to stop this crazy thing any time. Am I insane not to?

~ 60 hours per week, I’m watching my daughter without my husband present

~ 15-20 hours per week, working as Transportation Editor for Inhabitat

~ 10 hours per week (and that’s not enough), growing 29 Diapers

~ 5 hours per week, working on writing my first novel

Where does free time come into the picture? It doesn’t anymore. That’s spent on the novel and the blog. And the worst thing is my ultimate goal is to transition to a novel writing career as soon as I can support it with income from other projects. But doesn’t this pyramid look totally upside down? I’m eager to stay home with my daughter as much as possible as she is only young once, but why am I spending the most work hours on the projects that are supposed to be funding the start of the stuff I’m spending the least hours on? Ga. Serves me right for trying so hard to start a career no one wants to pay me for–yet.

The good news is that this last week we went on a real vacation, and every morning I got up to write while the sun rose and had absolute peace about my life. Writing equals peace and balance for me, so more than anything my guiding light is that if I will make time for the writing, this transition will come more quickly and my right brain will feel some respect. But I still think it’s bullshit to say that writers like Hemingway thrived under conflict and wouldn’t have written as well otherwise. Starting a writing career is hard, and having it make no economic sense up front only serves to make me value it more–it certainly doesn’t make my writing thrive under stress. My proof? I gave myself a week’s vacation with no non-fiction work to do and wrote the first few chapters not only of part 3 of my novel, which I have been very excited about starting (and it just flowed out of me looking at the lake pictured here!); the first scene of my next novel also just popped into my head on vaca. Idleness is extremely valuable to the writer’s brain, and I need to make more space for it. /> lecture to my left brain.

Ah Well…

I wondered how I was going to keep up with this blog and my new baby blog AND write a novel AND write another nonfiction book AND be a full-time mom AND do part-time book editing work for 3-4 different publishers. What apparently had to give was my posting on this blog and answering my email–well, and housework, but let’s not pretend: I never did much of that anyway. I now answer the important messages and have mostly given up on following all the blogs I used to subscribe to. 100 newsletter emails got trashed over the weekend without being read. But I’m still here! And I still love hearing from you!

Right now, I’m working on filling out the characters in my novel, giving them a little more time on-stage and figuring out how to reveal their personalities by illustrating the ways they react to one another. I feel like the next time I try this, it’s going to go 4 times as fast. It’s a lot of fun to figure out how to do this from scratch, but it sure is slow going when I only have a couple hours a day at most to even think about it. I’m going back and forth between feeling dismayed to have discovered that so much more needs to be done on this novel, and feeling good that I’ve figured out how to make it a more complete story. Three chapters are short and can easily be filled out with flashbacks that demonstrate the contrast between the way the characters’ relationships are now and the way they used to be. The trick for me is to catch myself when I write a summary of a scene instead of making it a specific and interesting story. Right now I’m going back and replacing all these “summary memories” with very specific (and hopefully interesting) memories that the main character has of happier days. Every time I do this, it improves the narrative threefold.

Have you written a novel or short story? How did you fill out your characters so they’re three-dimensional, real people? Were they there for a purpose, to move the plot forward, or did the people appear in your mind before the story? Just curious. Thanks for reading! I’ll be back and posting more regularly at some point.

Balance

Balance a tabac, by Jean Poussin

Balance: It’s something I’m seeking in more ways than one right now. Being 5 1/2 months pregnant, I have to pause before I descend the stairs, or I am inclined to descend headfirst. Being 5 1/2 months pregnant, I also have to decide day by day how much work I’m going to pursue as a freelancer and try to predict (ha!) how much work I’ll be able to do once the baby comes. If I take on too much, my life will feel like falling downstairs, and I don’t want my baby to be neglected or overscheduled the moment she’s born.

I think I’m doing a whole lot better at this balance thing than I used to, but that’s not really saying much. Some days I’m happy to put up my feet and absorb the experience of not being harried–I know I’ll treasure it later–others I get anxious that there’s work out there I could be doing that I’m not searching hard enough to find.

Then I remind myself how serendipitous my move into freelancing (and motherhood) was, how things always work out, how God takes such excellent care of us and always makes good on His promises, and I go back to plugging away at the day’s work. One day at a time. One thing at a time. People before things, relationships and health before accomplishments. I look for more work when I feel able to handle it, and if it doesn’t like me back, it wasn’t meant to be. That’s the best I can do. And you know what the big difference is between today-Laura and yesterday-Laura? My best is good enough. Is that balance? It’s a balancing act, that’s for sure.

How do you achieve balance, particularly if you set your own schedule? It’s a challenge for everyone, but freelancers face this issue on a daily basis, and now I’m more aware than ever of what a challenge it is for the unemployed as well. Do you have a mantra that helps you get centered again, or a guidepost of how much is too much work (beyond just knowing you need to work enough to keep the lights on)?