Being a writer sounds like a fab idea, right? Spend your days in gardens, coffee shops and at your Scandi desk, pouring out your soul onto a blank page, making up stories and painting pictures with words. Sounds idyllic, right?
This could not be further from my reality, so here's a little behind the scenes:
My most common writing place is the sofa, yes I have a beautiful desk upstairs in our spare room but I write whilst looking after children so sitting at a desk isn't the best place. I also share the office with my husband and he can't work with a baby getting into everything at the same time. He's on calls a lot too which irritates me when I'm trying to delve into storytelling mode. Sometimes I write in the garden, if it's sunny and the baby is napping, this is peak writing conditions for me!
I get interrupted approx every three minutes by children wanting a drink, food, something else on telly, me to return their sibling to the womb etc... I often have crippling mum guilt that I say no to playing because I'm trying to "just finish this chapter".
I would say that of all the hours I put into making a book come to life, about 30% is actually writing. There is of course, the editing, the research, the thinking, the social media planning, shooting, posting, interacting, the website, the blog posts and the hours wondering if this is possibly my most ridiculous venture yet.
I'm not even going to touch on everything else that gets done if you are self publishing because honestly I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of that and still have a lot to learn.
I do all this whilst looking after two kids, (one occasionally at nursery), running a household, trying to take care of my wellbeing, both physical and mental, keeping some form of social life and getting enough sleep.
This is my writing reality, fitting it in when I can, making it a priority and sometimes falling short. It's not easy but I love it and I wouldn't change it for the world.
Sx
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