How to make time to write as a parent
Having children presents some unique challenges to writers, but you also have some unique opportunities for creating story ideas. Whether you have kids in diapers, preschool, or elementary school, you’ll have to find ways to keep them occupied while you keep pecking at your keyboard.
How to Find time to write when you have a baby
Writing a book or getting any kind of work done when you’re taking care of a baby can be extremely challenging. If you have more than one child, you may be able to take advantage of a few minutes here and there when the kids are playing together. But since you’ll always want to be within earshot if not within sight, you need to be able to work wherever your baby is playing. You will need a portable device, like a laptop, tablet, or even your phone.
While you might write the occasional word or two while you’re watching your little one play, the bulk of your writing time will probably be during a time when your child is asleep. Any parent of a young child will tell you how precious nap time is. The problem with using nap time for writing is that you’ll have to figure out how to take care of other household chores when your baby is awake.
Do Your Chores with Your Baby
For a baby who isn’t mobile yet, the best thing you can do is to invest in a good sling. You can carry your baby around with you when you vacuum, cook, and shovel snow. Infants love being part of the action, and you’ll enjoy a much closer bond with your baby as a result. Shoveling snow is a lot more fun when you can kiss on your baby between bursts of hard work. If you’re lucky, your baby may even enjoy sleeping in the sling while you’re writing your book. However, don’t be surprised if your baby prefers you to be moving. After all, that’s what she was used to from being carried around in the womb.
Another thing you have to do when you’re the parent of a young child is asking your partner to chip in with household chores and baby care. Whether you’re a stay-at-home parent or a full-time employee, you need some time to relax. Plus, your partner needs time to bond with the baby, too. It will help both of them. Last but not least, when you have a young baby, try to let go of perfection. Your house doesn’t have to be perfectly clean. After all, you’re not expecting the Queen of England to visit, are you?
Cut Yourself Some Slack
Since having a young baby is exhausting even when you’re not trying to write a book at the same time, it’s important to cut yourself some slack. Your little one will grow up before you know it. It’s much more important to savor the time you have while your child is so little and needs you around the clock than to write a book. In fact, it might be a good idea to set very low expectations for your novel writing until your baby is a little bit older.
One of the most difficult things new mothers have to deal with is lack of sleep. While there are no miracle cures that will make your baby sleep through the night, there is something you can do to get a better night’s sleep: you can try co-sleeping with your baby. With co-sleeping, your baby may still nurse all night long, but you don’t necessarily have to be awake for it. Of course, you have to follow safe co-sleeping practices to make this a viable option, but co-sleeping has numerous other benefits besides helping you get more shuteye.
I have to mention again how important it is to share the responsibility with your partner. While fathers can’t breastfeed infants, they can still help with diapering and rocking the baby to sleep. It might be a good idea to talk to your partner about when they can help out. Mothers might be able to get work done during the day when their partners take the baby out for a stroll. Dads can also use an infant sling while doing other activities to give you a little bit of time to do something else.
But even with all of these tips, if your baby is still young, you probably won’t get as much work done as you’d like to. Please do not feel guilty about it. Instead, try to enjoy your little one as much as you can. You can always write a novel later, but your child will never be a baby again. And while all ages of childhood are precious, young children need your love and presence the most.
Make Exceptions
One of the most important rules to follow when you have a new baby is to learn to make exceptions. Today might not be the day you clean the kitchen, vacuum the living room, and write another 1,000 words, because your baby has a runny nose and is teething. Simply take it in stride. This too shall pass.
Practical Suggestions to Help You Find Time to Write
The good news is that babies grow up. In the meantime, here is a list of concrete suggestions to start typing some words in your novel when you have a baby:
Schedule writing time and ask your partner to be in charge of the baby.
Don’t make other plans for nap time.
Use a sling to do household chores while your baby is up.
Spend time outside every day with your baby to help him differentiate between day and night (and sleep better as a result). Outside time is good for both of you for a lot of other reasons, too.
Lower the bar a little bit but don’t give up writing altogether (write for 3 days a week instead of 5, or write 500 words each day instead of 1,000).
Take a day off when your baby is sick or teething (no use trying to accomplish anything) and enjoy snuggle time.
Take good care of yourself with proper nutrition and exercise to keep your energy levels up.
Take naps with your baby on days that you are too tired and worn out to get anything done.
Schedule some time for other activities that allow you to recuperate and rest (such as a reading a good book or soaking in the tub).
Schedule Weekly Work Dates
Everybody always tells parents how important it is to spend time with their partner after the baby comes, and that’s true. But it’s also important to spend time doing the things you love to do and work on your own goals. For this reason, I recommend scheduling personal time for you and your partner at least once a week. Sunday morning or afternoon might be a good time to do this if it works out for both of you.
It doesn’t matter when you schedule this time as long as you get (mostly) uninterrupted time to work on your book. If you’re a nursing mother and have an infant, you’ll need to take breaks to feed your child. But other than that, your partner can take care of diapering, rocking, and playing with your baby.
In an ideal situation, either you or your partner will leave the house during your working hours to reduce distractions. If that’s not possible because your baby is napping, or it’s too close to feeding time, you may want to lock yourself into your office or bedroom. It may take a little bit of time to get used to this and be productive, but you’ll feel so much better after getting some time to work on your own project.
Of course, this personal project time should be available to both partners. It can be used for anything you want to do. If you’d rather take a nap or go out to eat with a friend, that’s fine, too.
Hire a Babysitter
You may want to consider hiring a babysitter on occasion to get some work done on your novel. Generally, parents hire babysitters to get a chance to go out as a couple, but babysitters are also useful on other occasions.
You’re probably wondering how you can possibly justify the cost of a babysitter for having some time to write a novel. Think of it this way: if writing your novel gives you a happiness boost, spending money on a babysitter to do that is just as valid as paying for a babysitter to go out to eat.
Hiring a babysitter is not necessarily cheap. And good babysitters can be hard to find. How can you overcome that challenge? Here are a few suggestions:
Ask a family member to watch your child (grandparents, aunts, uncles, or godparents).
Hire a mother’s helper, a tween or young teen, who will watch your child and play with her while you’re still in the house writing your book.
Trade babysitting services with another family.
Working parents often pay for daycare or a nanny to watch their children during working hours anyway. You might be able to extend those hours a little bit to get some work done before you pick up your child. If you’re not comfortable with letting someone else watch your baby during that first year, you’ll have to rely on your partner to give you a break.
Outsource Your Household Chores
Another option is to hire someone to do your household chores instead of babysitting. This may make more sense if you’re nursing or don’t feel comfortable with leaving your child with a sitter. When you outsource your chores, then you can utilize nap times and bedtimes for bigger and better things. Here are a few suggestions for chores to outsource:
Mowing the lawn
Cleaning bathrooms
Doing laundry
Washing cloth diapers
Grocery shopping
Shoveling snow
Cooking
It pays to be creative. If you find yourself spending a lot of time doing activities that aren’t fun, you may want to consider reducing the time you spend on them. When it comes to cooking and kitchen cleanup, you can start cooking in batches, making simpler meals, buying prepackaged dinners, going out to eat, or ordering food.
You could also choose to trade certain chores with your neighbors. This might be less common but just as effective in the long run. For example, in return for mowing their lawn, they might supply you with a few dinners each week.
For many families, it’s easier to reduce the number of household chores or the time you spend doing them than to outsource. For example, while you have to mow your lawn, do you have to mow it every week? You have to do laundry, but does it need to be done every day? Batching grocery trips, cleaning and tidying, and cooking chores can drastically reduce the amount of time you spend on household tasks every week. This is great since our goal is to free up some time for you to write your book.
How to write a novel while parenting a preschooler
It’s difficult to find time to write your novel, especially if you’re also taking care of a preschooler. The good news is that you don’t have to give up on your dream to become an author just because you’re a parent. Here are 3 tips that may just help you finish your work-in-progress without neglecting your preschooler.
1. Get Your Partner Involved
Whether you’re a stay-at-home parent or work full-time, your partner has to pitch in with childcare. The person who takes care of the kids most of the time usually knows best how to entertain them, get them to do certain activities, and generally keep them occupied. In my family that happens to be me.
But because I know how to play with the kids and keep them happy doesn’t mean my husband can’t do the same. When I want to work, I ask him to take care of the kids. However, I learned that I can’t ask him to watch them because inevitably they come and find me, at least the little ones do. So here is what we’ve had to do:
I tell my older girls that they need to ask their Dad if they need anything because I want to get some work done. I ask my husband to do something specific with the younger crew, for example I will suggest that he reads a few books with them. You can also ask your partner to take the kids to the backyard or to the park in order to give you some quiet time. Letting you have the house to yourself can be especially helpful if your computer is sitting in the middle of the kids’ play area.
You could also combine two things in one by asking your partner to take the kids grocery shopping. My husband always does the grocery shopping, and he doesn’t mind taking the kids (yes, he’s even taken all four of them on occasion).
2. Plan Strategically
When you have preschoolers, you have to plan a little bit. Parents are fine with staying home and doing nothing, but preschoolers are constantly on the go. They’re like wind-up toys that never run out of batteries or like the energizer bunny that just keeps going and going and going… In order to get the most out of your day and keep your sanity, you need to plan strategically.
If you know your child is more likely to be clingy and whiny in the evening, then that’s not a good time to try to write. Of course as a parent you’ll probably get used to writing with lots of interruptions. But ideally, you’ll work when your child can find other things to occupy their time with.
There are different ways to keep kids occupied and keep them out of trouble. Here are a few suggestions:
Let them eat a snack in the living room and pretend it’s a picnic.
Get out a few special toys that they can only play with when you’re working. They might even start encouraging you to work to play with those toys.
Invite your child to play dress up.
Ask your child to build you a tall tower out of blocks or Duplos.
Give your child an art project, e.g. making a necklace out of beads, playing with Play-Doh, drawing a picture with crayons, or making a collage with stickers.
Ask your child to take the stuffed animals to the vet and make them feel better.
One thing I do not recommend: letting your kids play with water unsupervised. I let my son play with soapy water in the sink for a while because he enjoyed playing with the bubbles. In my case, that led to the drowning of a library book that was left on the bathroom floor and consequently cost me $10. In hindsight, that wasn’t really worth the few minutes it gave me to work on something else.
3. Put Them to Bed Earlier
The best time to get work done is when your child is sleeping. Fortunately, most children need more sleep than adults. Maybe nature designed it this way to help us cope with the task of parenting and avoid burnout. Plus, if your child didn’t sleep while you were awake, you’d never get a chance to do all the things you can’t do when your child is around. For example, you could eat chocolate without having to share, or you could practice making babies with your partner.
Needless to say, bedtime is something we tend to look forward to at my house (minus the actual part of putting the kids to bed). During the evening, we can do the things we want to do without worrying about the short people we choose to share our lives with.
I used to be a big advocate of early bedtimes. When my girls were younger, they would be in bed by 6 p.m. They also got up early at 6 a.m. Back then, I was always flabbergasted when I saw young children at the grocery store at 10 p.m.
While I still like early bedtimes, my boys won’t go to bed as early as that. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that we embraced co-sleeping. Maybe it’s just how they’re wired. But we’re happy when they’re asleep by 8.30 p.m. On the plus side, they also sleep in a little later, although not as late as I’d like them to. One of them is still sleeping in our bed with us, so there is a chance that he’ll go to bed earlier once he moves into a room with his siblings. In the meantime, we have to make do with what we’ve got.
If you have trouble getting your kids to sleep earlier, you may try slowly moving their bedtime. If you do it in small increments, it makes it easier for them to adjust. You still want to make sure they’re getting enough sleep for the day and not waking up too soon. You can try adjusting bedtime in 15-minute increments and wait a week before moving it up again.
When it comes to shuteye, every child and adult is a little different. Some kids don’t need as much sleep as other kids. But if they’re constantly fussy or hungry, they might benefit from going to bed earlier.
You Have to Spend Time Outside
In order to keep your preschooler happy, it’s important to meet their needs before you ask them to play alone. If you try to get work done in the morning, they will whine and nag all day long asking you to play with them. It’s much better to take them to the playground, the park, the zoo, or wherever you like to go in the morning and allow them to run around and play. Afterwards, they’re more likely to want to sit in their room or in the playroom and play quietly with toys while you write your novel. Outside playtime is a good thing to add to your schedule every day. Going outside is the best thing you can do with a young child, and it doesn’t even have to cost anything.
4 Tips on how to get your novel written while taking care of a school-age child
When your kids are old enough to go to school, they are generally old enough to understand what it means when you have to work. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always stop them from bothering you while you’re in the middle of writing an exciting chapter. The good news is that there are some things you can do to keep them occupied and away from your computer without turning on the TV.
1. Work alongside Them
Your kids may not be writing a novel, but they probably have to do homework on a regular basis. What’s better than working on your novel while they write an essay for school or work on their math problems?
If you own a laptop or tablet, you can sit at the same table with them. This way you’re still around to help them when they need you, but you’re also making progress on your book. If your kids get to see you work, then they might feel more motivated to do their own work, too. At the very least, you’ll be setting a good example for them.
2. Take Advantage of Playdates
Kids love to play. That’s a given. And whether you have one or more children, there will probably be a large number of playdates with friends over the years.
While your kids are having fun at a friend’s house, you could be working on your novel. The laundry and the dishes can wait. Similarly, if the playdate is happening at your house, you can work on your novel while the kids play together. After all, they don’t need you, do they?
Working on your novel while they’re playing also gives you the ability to spend time with them when they’re done. It helps you avoid having to spread your focus. After all, you can be much more relaxed after you have met your word count goal for the day.
3. Make Sporting Events Count
Many children are signed up for extracurricular activities. Whether your kids play soccer, football, or T-ball, or whether they dance, do gymnastics, or practice ballet, you can expect to spend a lot of time on the sidelines.
It’s a lot of fun to watch your kids practice and perform, but that doesn’t mean your eyes have to be glued onto your child at all times. In fact, you probably already spend most of the time talking to other Moms or reading books. The next time you have to sit around at a game or performance, try taking your laptop with you and work on your novel instead.
4. Enlist Their Cooperation
School-age kids know what it’s like to have deadlines. After all, they have to do homework almost every day. If you want to write your novel, it might be a good idea to talk to your kids about it. If appropriate, you could tell them what your story is all about. You could also ask them if they can help you get your book written by giving you time to write. They’ll probably be pretty reasonable about it.