To Succeed As A Writer, First Be A Mother

Persistence is the game, and Moms have that down.

If you’ve read any of my snarky pieces, you might think you’re in for a laugh. Here we go, you’re saying. She’s got some joke up her sleeve. I bet this is about writing and stinky diapers.

And it is, sort of. Except Anne Lamott beat me to it with her famous line about shitty first drafts.

But for me, perseverance and writing is about as serious as wearing a mask.

Like clockwork, whenever I teach a group of students who start out with a burning desire to write, we come to the part when they hit a wall and want to give up.

Often, this happens to new writers when the dream of winning prizes, earning big money, and scoring the right to bed celebrities fades away. Or, someone in the class points out their story has more plot holes than a hunk of Swiss cheese. Or, their characters are one-dimensional, whatever that means.

But the quitting season also descends on writers with a book or two under their belts. Their new novel has presented a challenge that seems far above their pay grade, and selling widgets suddenly regains its luster as a career path.

This is when I know perseverance has raised its ugly head, and it’s time for my lecture on motherhood.

Talking about fatherhood works too, but my pitch for students to stay the course, literally and figuratively, has the ring of authenticity because I speak about my own gig as a mother.

And when I say motherhood helped make me a writer, I’m not talking about cleaning up dirty diapers, though that played a part.

But before I get into my war stories as a mom, let’s talk about what drives writers over the edge.

You know the old saw, if writing was easy, we’d all have a best seller.

Yet, when you look at the number of books published every year, it seems everyone and her crazy neighbor is dropping the next great novel.

The best piece of writing advice I got from the thousands of dollars worth of classes I took back in the day was that there were three secrets to writing a best seller.

You could hear the rumble as we all inched forward to hear these words of wisdom.

The teacher waited until we were on the edge of our seats, paper and pencils in hand (way before the internet and iPads). Then he said wickedly, “But nobody knows what they are.”

Picture mental F-bombs a-flying.

In other words, we all have to figure it out for ourselves.

As I said, if it were easy, everyone would be doing it.

So, it’s inevitable, when you’re trying to create something out of nothing, and you lay yourself open to the voices of self-doubt on a daily basis (is there any creature more insecure than a writer), you’re going to reach a point when you have to say to yourself, sure, writing is hard, but just suck it up.

Like a mother.

And I don’t mean a mother****er. I mean an actual mother.

Or a brain surgeon. Or a traffic cop. Anybody who makes the world work will do.

Indulge me for a moment and picture yourself as a mother. Imagine it’s 2 am, you’re fast asleep, your toddler starts screaming bloody murder for the fifth night in a row.

Do you say as you open your bleary eyes, “I didn’t sign up for this?” Do you put your earplugs in and go back to sleep, complaining to yourself, “I’ve had it with motherhood. Let the blinking kid cry herself to hell and gone for all I care?”

Or, it’s dinnertime and your family is begging for you to fill their empty stomachs. Do you say, “Sorry kids, I’m busy with my crossword puzzle. Maybe I’ll cook dinner tomorrow. Or not. Stay tuned. I’m on the fence about motherhood?”

Let’s say you’re having brain surgery for this pesky tumor that’s messing with your sight or your balance. Or worst case, your life. And halfway through, your surgeon takes off his rubber gloves and stomps out of the OR.

“I’m so bored with doing the same old, same old, every day. I think I’ll take up motorcycle racing.” How would that make you feel?

Or the traffic cop quits for a lunch break just when the 4-way signal blows out in a power outage, and it’s every driver for herself during rush hour at the busiest intersection in town.

What would you say to these folks? No problem. You do you?

Actually, there are laws against people quitting in these situations. But giving up on your writing isn’t very different.

Okay, hold on, you’re saying. I can’t compare my writing to brain surgery. Or motherhood.

In a way, I’d agree. Writing doesn’t save anyone’s life. Not in the way removing a cancerous tumor does. Or caring for a family, or directing traffic out of harm’s way.

But we all know there are many ways of throwing someone a lifeline.

Many ways of saving our own lives. Doing the thing that makes your life worth living is one of them.

Doing the thing that makes your life worth living is one of them.

Ask a writer who has suffered through the travails of a difficult novel and sings hallelujah as she types, “The End.”

Ask any Medium writer who has persevered through self-doubt and low stats to continue writing his or her vision day after day.

The thing about life is you can always count on a moment when perseverance will raise its ugly head.

We push through the hard times when we’re doing something for others. Our children, our bosses, our basketball coaches. And then find it easy to brush aside a commitment to ourselves.

You might be reading this and think it’s easy for me to advise you to stick with it. How would I know what struggle is like? I have a track record. Books on Kindle. A backlist on Medium. What would I know about perseverance?

Why do you think I call on my days as a young mother when I’m stuck? Because I’ve been there. I still go there. Writing is the best thing I do. But it’s also the hardest. It never gets easy. Some days I need every trick in the book to get me through the hard times. When I can’t put two sentences together that sound like English is my native language.

I always tell my students that with the millions of books on bookshelves already, I‘d bet money that the best ones are locked in someone’s desk drawer or on a computer somewhere because the writer gave up before finishing it.

And yet, I’m willing to bet that same writer would rush into a burning building to save a kitten.

Giving up usually happens like bankruptcy. A little at a time and then all at once to borrow a phrase from Hemingway.

You stop writing for a day, then a few days. Then a week goes by and you say you’ll write tomorrow.

Then you realize it’s been a month since you looked at your manuscript or two months since you posted an article.

And then someone asks how your writing is going, and it occurs to you that you haven’t picked up your pen or opened a new page in so long you don’t remember your password.

Quitting is often not so much a decision as an act of omission. At the point where you notice you’ve stopped writing you tell yourself, well, I wasn’t a real writer anyway.

My advice to avoid the slide into quitting is to take your writing as seriously as you take any other commitment in your life. As seriously as you want someone to take their commitment to you.

Then mother your work every day, even for just fifteen minutes.

Hold onto it like it’s connected to you by an umbilical cord.

When you hit the wall and can’t think of the next word, when the work becomes hard, don’t confuse the frustration of the work with quitting. When it gets hard, call on your perseverance.

So what’s the secret to getting past the rough times? It’s one thing to say you’ll persevere, but what comes after that? What primes the pump?

Try one of my five favorite tips to get you over the hill to your next burst of creativity. Or any writing prompt, really. If standing on your head and reciting the seven times tables does it for you, go for it. Just don’t give up.

Here are my tips for getting past “I quit.”

1. Take a break.

If the words won’t come, maybe your brain is saying I need a rest. Don’t write with a club over your head, thinking you can’t end a writing session before your appointed hour. Give yourself R&R. Rest and renewal.

2. Take a walk.

This is a well-known trick for recharging the batteries.

3. With colored pencils or crayons, write 50 times, I will not quit.

Write it in different colors, with opposite hands, upside down, backward, in foreign languages if you know any, in dialects. Make a drawing of the sentence. You may think this is silly, but you’re working with the plasticity of the brain, shaking things loose, allowing your creativity to find other avenues. Don’t have expectations that you will write the greatest work of your life, just finish and go on with your day.

4. Work on a different project.

If you have a craft or outlet such as gardening, drawing, needlework, carpentry, a sport to divert your brain and creative energy.

5. Brainstorm with a friend.

Friends don’t let friends give up writing without talking it out. Do you have a writing buddy? If not, try to cultivate one. Before you quit writing, find a writing partner. He or she can be a lifeline on those days when you feel like quitting.

I’m an editor and writer on Medium with Top Writer status. I’ve published 55 titles on Amazon and edit for private clients. If you’d like to hire me as your editor for fiction, non-fiction, or business writing, please contact me here. If you’d like to read more of my work on Medium, click here to sign up for my newsletter. Thank you for reading and stay safe.