"Muuuuuuuuuuum!", or Writing While Parenting.

I’m going to give you my number one tip on writing while parenting small children. It's rolled gold, this one. Guaranteed. My absolute best advice, honed to perfection, after years of thought and experience.

 Here it is:

Don’t do it. It's really hard.

No one wants to hear that. I don't want to hear that. But I have another piece of advice to go along with the first one:

If you must write, if you just have to do it, then do it when the kids are somewhere else or asleep. No other time.

I genuinely believed that I was going to be one of those mothers who write a series of epic novels while my baby napped. "Oh, I just ran out of things to do, so I thought I'd try this," was what I would have said if I'd had a baby who napped. I didn't, though. I had angry insomniacs who thought sleep was for the weak.

I've tried so many things over the years. Occupying my kids with other activities while I write. Doesn’t work. They only want to know what’s on my screen and then complain that it isn’t Paw Patrol. I’ve tried drifting into my office for ten minutes at a time to get a few words down when I can. Doesn’t work. They follow me in to roll around on the floor like puppies or burst in to announce that they’re “sooooo huuuuungry!” even though they were fed  0.5 nanoseconds before I left the room..

Most of my first novel was written at the library. My husband would look after the kids one afternoon each weekend, and I’d furiously write as many words as I could sitting in a corral in the study area of our local library. I loved writing there, and I was productive because I was surrounded by high school students studying for their exams. I didn’t want to look like a slacker. I was secretly hoping they were looking at me, thinking, "Wow, look how amazingly productive that tired-looking woman is. I feel so inspired to study for this Ancient History exam now. I wonder if I should ask her what life was like in classical Greece? She looks so old, she was probably around then."

Also there was nothing else to do there but work so I got a lot done.

Later on, I tried writing early in the morning before the kids got up or at night after they went to bed but I was too tired.

Now my children go to preschool and school. I have three days a week where I can write in that slice of time between drop-offs and pick-ups. It’s marvellous.

Here’s my third and best tip: sometimes you have to wait until life gives you a break and that's okay.