Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about writing-life balance, and what it looks like to live an author life. This topic has been on my mind because I’ve been secretly working on a new project for DIY MFA. This project is a free event that we’re planning for this Fall where I’m interviewing a bunch of different writers and experts about the author life. So far, we’ve had some amazing guests and I can’t wait to share this event with you later this year!
Living the Author Life
The life of a writer isn’t easy. As you may recall from my last newsletter, publishing is a tough business and you have to be resilient to stick with it for the long haul. There’s a lot of rejection and heartache on the path to publication, and sometimes we lose sight of why we’re doing all of this in the first place.
It’s also a challenge to balance writing against all the other things we have going on in our lives. Most of us don’t have the luxury of writing full time and doing nothing else. Even if we are able to make writing our “day job” there’s a lot of other peripheral stuff we have to do, like marketing our work, building our platform, etc. And this doesn’t even take into account all of that personal life stuff that can sometimes get in the way of our writing dreams.
Many of us have families and home responsibilities. As you may already know, I’ve got two kiddos of my own, Little Man and Lady Bug. Little Man is now 12 (so turning into a “Big Man”) and Lady Bug is 9 (going on 19… yeesh!). Between music practice, school concerts and homework help, this spring has felt like a marathon of “kid stuff.” Don’t get me wrong, I love these kiddos more than anything, but all that love doesn’t make it any less exhausting. (If you’re a parent, you know exactly what I’m talking about…)
I know for a lot of folks in our community, caring for aging parents and relatives is a big part of their lives. Those responsibilities can take up a lot of time, energy, and mental bandwidth. And a lot of word nerds have extremely time-consuming day jobs that make it hard to work writing into their schedule. Many of them have to get their writing done in the wee hours of morning or night, or eke out a few words during their daily commutes.
All in all, we have a lot on our plates. And that’s life.
Honor Your Reality
At DIY MFA we have a saying: “Honor Your Reality.” This means that yes, life is part of our reality and sometimes it gets in the way of our writing. But we also have to acknowledge that writing is part of our reality. Without writing, we don’t feel complete. Our creative work is not just a luxury we squeeze into the off hours between items on our schedule. It matters. It’s important. When we are not writing, we are not being our authentic selves.
A lot of people talk about writing-life balance as though it were something rigid and precise. They act like our existence is a set of scales, with our life responsibilities on one side and our writing on the other. According to this model, the only way to find “balance” is if both sides of the scale are perfectly level.
But life isn’t like that. It’s messy. It’s weird. It’s constantly throwing things at us that we least expect.
I think of “balance” as being on a boat. If you try to stand rigidly upright, the rocking of the waves will knock you off balance and make you fall flat on your face. Instead, the way to stay on your feet is to rock with the boat. When a wave pushes one side of the boat up, we lean into that side. When the other side rises, we lean that way. We can’t fight the waves or make them go away, so the only way to deal with them is to lean in.
This means that we have to acknowledge the role that life plays in our reality, but we also have to attend to those writing “waves” when they come up. If we never address the waves on the writing side of our boat, then our lives will be lopsided and the boat will capsize. The way to find “balance” is to recognize that writing and life are a messy mix, but somehow we’ve got to fit both things into our reality.
One way to do that is…
Don’t Write Every Day
(At least, not unless you want to.)
A lot of big-name authors and writing experts say that in order to be a “real” writer, you have to write every day. Personally, I beg to differ. I don’t think that writing every day is necessary—or even healthy—for some writers. Sure, some writers might clock in a precise number of words every single day, but for others (like myself) writing is more like feast or famine. There are days when the muses smile down on me and I knock out thousands of words in one go, and then there are others where a hundred words feels like a slog. If I had to clock in an exact word count every single day, I’d probably have given up on writing a long time ago.
I’ve also heard of many writers who need thinking time before the writing can occur. One writer friend of mine says she spends a lot of time thinking through her book and mapping out each scene in her head. Then when she sits down to write, all the words pour out in a rush. For me, thinking time is also crucial. It’s where I work through different ideas—sometimes sketching them out on paper, sometimes just in my head—and it’s how I discover ideas for new projects as well.
For me, a lot of this thinking time is spent journaling, which I don’t really consider writing per se, even though I am putting pen to paper. I journal just about every day, in the morning before I get out of bed. Most of my journaling is whiny, boring, repetitive stuff, like me complaining about mundane things that probably won’t matter beyond that instant. Yet sometimes, in my journal, I hit on a random idea that I can mine for gold. If I didn’t spill all that whiny, boring garbage onto the page first, I probably never would land on that golden nugget of an idea.
But let’s get back to “write every day” and why maybe it’s not the best strategy. Another thing to consider is that there’s a certain luxury associated with writing every day. Many of us have messy, busy lives that make writing every day an unrealistic goal. Sure, for some writers, writing every day is doable, but we shouldn’t beat ourselves up if we can’t do it.
Let me tell you a story about writing every day. I remember reading the book On Writing by Stephen King many years ago when I was just beginning to take writing seriously. This was back in 2006 or 2007, and this book had a huge impact on my writing, but not in the way you would expect. Now, let me be perfectly clear: this is a wonderful book that paints a picture of what it really takes to be a writer. I love this book and constantly recommend it to new writers. But… there’s one tiny spot that I have to quibble with. This is the place where Stephen King says you have to write 2,000 words per day and read 80-100 books per year, or else you’re not a “real” writer.
When I first read that, I thought I had stumbled on The Answer. After all, if Stephen King said it, it had to be true, right? Well, the truth is, that method might work for Stephen King, but it didn’t work for me. I started out okay, writing 2,000 words per day for a couple of days. Then I had a major rush of inspiration and poured out 4,000 words in a day. Yay! But after that I hit the wall and had a bunch of 200-400 word days. That’s when I started to spiral.
You see, I had this idea in my head that I had to write 2,000 words, like clockwork. Every. Single. Day. But I couldn’t do it consistently. Some days I exceeded my goal; others I could barely eke out a tenth of the required word count.
So, I started to beat myself up. Thoughts popped up in my head, like: “Well, if you can’t do 2,000 words every day, you’re not a real writer.” Or “See? I knew you couldn’t do it. You’ll never publish anything.” Or “Sooner or later, people are going to find out you’re a fraud and you can’t write anything.”
Here’s the truth: Beating ourselves up for not writing does not make the words magically appear on the page. I know. I’ve tried. It doesn’t work.
Not everybody writes with Stephen King precision. I admire the people who do, but I’m definitely not one of them. And that’s okay, because the writing still gets done, it’s just a messier process.
So if we shouldn’t “write every day,” what should we do?
The key is to write some days. Maybe it’s not every day, but a few times a week. Or maybe your weekdays are a hot mess and the only time you have for writing is on the weekends. Some writers might clock in word counts with laser-like precision. Others (like me) may have more of a rollercoaster process. All of this is okay.
We all have different lives, with different goals and challenges. To assume that one method would work for every writer is shortsighted. Instead, the key is to find the method that works best for you.
What Makes an Author Life?
The author life consists of a lot of things—productivity, motivation, mindset, time management, and more—but it looks different for each person. Of course we have to write. If we never wrote anything, we’d have to reconsider why we’re even trying to do this in the first place. The writing itself is non-negotiable. If we want to be writers we have to write. The place where things get messy is in the “how.”
For a lot of us, it takes trial and error to find a process that works. When I first started writing the DIY MFA book, I had a newborn and a toddler at home, so I knew that the only way I would be able to do it was if I could get out of the house. At first, I thought the most efficient way to do this was to go to a hotel, check in early, check out late, and write write write for the hours in between. We had some points from a hotel chain so I figured I’d give it a shot.
The first time I did that, I knocked out over 7,000 words. I did my happy dance, went home, then came back a few weeks later to try a second time. That session didn’t go so well and I only made about 4,000 words. Not bad, but not as good as the first time. Then the third time I tried this I only managed about 1,500 words, plus the hotel points had just about run out. It became very clear that if I had to hide away in a hotel every time I needed to write, this was going to be a very expensive book.
So I tried a different method. Every weekday, after dropping Little Man off at preschool, I started going to the local coffee shop around the corner and writing for a few hours until it was time to go pick him up. Another mom from his class was also a writer, so we teamed up and started hanging out at the coffee shop together, working side-by-side. I didn’t knock out 7,000 words at a time, but I made respectable progress on the book five days a week, eventually getting it done. Plus, knowing that I only had that short, preschool-time window to do my writing motivated me to stay focused. Also, having a writing buddy also helped make the process less lonely.
Keep in mind, this approach worked back then because my life was the way it was at the time. Now, it would be a different story. The kiddos may require a lot less grunt work these days, but there are other challenges, like activities and schoolwork. Plus, DIY MFA is in a whole different place now than it was in 2015 when I was writing the book. Back then, the business was just getting started and we didn’t offer nearly as many courses or programs. Now, DIY MFA truly is a full-time job, and taking away an entire morning five days a week would not be feasible. Instead, I have to sneak in my writing during those nooks and crannies between other DIY MFA stuff.
I share all of this because I think it’s important to realize that there’s an ebb and flow to the writing process. You can’t just take writing advice at face value. You have to try different things out and see what works for you. You also have to recognize that what works at one stage in your writing career, may not carry over to a later stage. Your process for writing book one will be very different from the process for books two and beyond. In the end, we have to acknowledge that the author life is unpredictable and we have to embrace the wild, messy adventure that it is!
Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!
P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.
