shakespearemom

I once met a playwright who bragged that she was the most hard-working playwright she knew, that she usually spent four hours a day writing. And I remember thinking, Wow, if I only had four hours a day to write! Of course, what I want is eight…eight uninterrupted hours to create something on the page. If the house is quiet, I can write ten pages in an hour, and it flows more smoothly than melted butter.

But, instead, even at 7 a.m. (the time it is right now), I have a four-year-old scrunched in between the arm of my recliner and me, asking me how my “best day” is (a question he recently came up with), and my daughter is asking me when breakfast will be ready. At least they haven’t turned on the television yet.

Yesterday, as I began work on a novel I had begun a few years ago, and then dropped because I was not yet ready to work on it, my son kept the distractions going. By 10:30 a.m. he had peed his pants (not a common occurence, thank goodness); had trashed his playroom; had eaten four pieces of toast, two cheese sticks, and a load of crackers; and had created the climax of the whole morning by flushing his favorite Matchbox car down the toilet.

And while I comforted him while he bawled about his car going “where the poo goes,” I thought of Jane Austen, who wrote at a little desk in the hallway, from which she was constantly called to attend to house duties. I thought of J. K. Rowling, who, it was said, walked her infant around in a stroller until she fell asleep, so that she could work on the first Harry Potter novel for an hour or so until the child woke up. That is my world, where writing comes to me through the distractions of getting my oldest ready for school, giving kids baths, trying to get my kids to like vegetables, and doing laundry.

I might wonder whether I would have been more productive without the distractions. I’d love to imagine I would have written eight hours a day, and would have ten books under my belt. But I am inclined to believe otherwise. The distractions, I think, drive me to make the most of my free moments. If I had eight hours, I might waste the first two playing video games, thinking I would still have six hours to write, and isn’t that a lot? I might find myself unmotivated, restless, unwilling to push myself because nothing was pressing at me. I think about some acknowledgements I’ve read at the beginnings of books, where a person thanks her family because they allowed her to spend eight weeks locked in her room at home, writing non-stop. But that is not why I have chosen to stay at home. My kids can’t watch themselves, and I don’t want them to.

My husband tried to give me that separate space when I was working on my dissertation. He set up an office for me, far from the rest of the house. And I simply couldn’t work. I kept thinking I heard my daughter crying. I kept leaving the room to see her. And then I discovered I needed the computer right there in the living room, and I needed her right next to me, so that I could keep an eye on her while I wrote.

In essence, I needed the distraction. It forces me to write furiously when I get the chance, to focus on my tasks in ways I never thought possible. It makes me a better writer.

Okay, so maybe my son’s flushing his car down the toilet doesn’t make me a better writer…but it was really funny.

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