Kyla's NaNoWriMo Wrap-Up
Author: Kyla Sterling, December 2017
Have you ever tried to write anything - and I mean seriously write, not just composing an epic Mafia theory - with a baby?
I have. And I failed.
My daughter was born just shy of 6 months ago. And I was smitten.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve wanted kids since before I figured out what it actually meant to be a mom. Not just changing doll clothes and putting a plastic bottle up to its mouth, but changing diapers and dealing with vomit and irregular nap schedules. (My first steady babysitting job was twins - from birth to age 3. They got chicken pox when they were about 12 weeks old. Bring it on, I thought.) So when I got to experience all of that with the added bonus of not being able to hand her back over to somebody else and go home… obviously I wanted to do nothing else.
Alas, houses and cars and husbands and children cost money, so I couldn’t just not go back to work. So I started scrambling for ideas to let me stay home without bankrupting us. And, me being me, I settled on finally writing any one of the several dozen books that have been floating around in my head the last couple decades. Even if I could sell just one, it would be enough to tide us over until I could sell another one… right?
Oh yeah, I had to actually find time to write. Right.
The biggest problem was, and is, that my husband does not have a “regular” job. He’s the editor of a newspaper, and he goes to work shortly after noon and doesn’t come home until after the paper goes to print. So when I come home from work, and relieve one of our amazing babysitters (either my dad or my in-laws, all of whom are retired), it’s nonstop baby time. I love every second of feeding and changing and cuddling and playing and reading with her, but it definitely doesn’t allow for anything else - certainly not sitting down in front of a computer to get lost in a book for hours at a time.
But then… November approached. National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo for short, NaNo for shorter. The challenge is issued every year for any average Joe or Jane to sit down in front of a blank screen (or sheet of paper) on the 1st of the month, and write at least 50,000 words by the 30th. I had a fantastic idea for a novel - a trilogy of novels, in fact - and prepared myself mentally to get down to writing. I talked things over with my husband so a couple times a week I could leave the house early (and give him baby duty) to get some writing in before work. I committed to writing on my lunch breaks. After all, one of my friends had had a baby on November 1st a few years back and still gotten her words in!
The thing is… she was on maternity leave. And her husband works a normal schedule. And newborns sleep a heck of a lot more than my child, who thinks naps are for the weak. None of that’s a great excuse - and neither are my excuses that I have other commitments that prevented me from writing before work and at lunch. If I’d really buckled down, I could have stayed up later each night or gotten up earlier each morning - when the baby is asleep - to get my word count in.
As it turns out, I went to a write-in on November 1st and pounded out a measly 450 words in the couple hours I was there. My project wasn’t as ready to go as I’d hoped - I only had an outline for the series, and not for the individual books. I still wasn’t done researching some of the historical background and so needed to stop every few lines to look something up. On November 12, I did the unthinkable - I tabled that project and started an entirely new one. I got 550 words in, and my husband announced we were going on vacation.
[Interruption for changing and cuddling of baby]
So basically, my NaNo goals were shot. I actually haven’t touched either of those projects in about two weeks, and unless I take the next several days off work (and still have sitters) the 50,000 word goal is beyond my reach. But next year I won’t have as many excuses - our house will no longer be “new” and we won’t have boxes to unpack and rooms to organize. A 17-month-old can amuse herself more easily than a 5-month-old. My husband might have a more reasonable schedule. If we go on vacation again, I’ll know more than three days in advance and can plan accordingly.
But in the meantime, my dreams of writing professionally and eventually being able to be a work-from-home mom are still there. My ideas haven’t gone away just because they haven’t been written down yet. I’ll carve out the time eventually.
She’s in a rocker next to me as I write, making baby pterodactyl noises and giving me huge smiles. And I wouldn’t trade her for anything - definitely not winning NaNo.
