Writing Balance

 One cautionary hub for the on-a-roll writer.  Your family places importance on your presence in their lives.  You're in you chair, cranking out words like a Gatling gun, hitting your marks with intense accuracy.  These moments don't just drop by and sit a spell.

As a writer dedicated to your vocation, you ride the wave of paragraphs cascading into chapters and you feel like Michael Jordan in his prime with a rookie guarding him.  You cannot miss.

Until your family cries foul.  You look up, electrons still dancing in your pupils, dazed and refused by the disconnect from your relationships.  Don't they understand?  Your manifesto is fermenting like hops in an Anheuser-Busch brewery.  In fact, you know you appear soused.  You're still in that nether-land where your muse runs wild over the electronic landscape and you have but to re-place fingertips to keys to keep the magic sparkling.

Your daughter lends you her saddest eyes while your wife struggles to quell razor glances.  Bewildered, you know something's amiss.  The playing card walls surrounding your writing space flutter on these intrusive breezes and your heart is stabbed by the clock on the computer screen that screams your treason.  Hours have elapsed since you first entered your writing domain.

Over dramatized?  Maybe.  But as writers with families we must be cognisant of the day, amount of time spent behind the keyboards and books and who is home.  We also need the interaction of family to remove us from our self-absorption.  That which benefits us as writers can also hurt us in our relationships.

Most non-writers do not understand.  No amount of explaining will reach them.  They may say they could never do what you do, but they do not know what it's like to be going strong and try to stop at a designated time.

Stop we must.  There is a time for every purpose, and to override valuable time from your relationships for your writing will cause a resentment toward that which you love from those whom you love.  This conflict does not help you as a writer.

Besides, writing - while enjoyable on many levels - stands as a poor substitute for familial support.  With the support of your loved ones, writing's ups and downs can be weathered more easily.  Encouragement flows and confidence likes to ride on the wings of support only those close to you can give.

A writer should never discount the fact that a lot of material for future writing projects are locked up in these people close in heart.  They should never be discounted or left feeling short-changed.  Writers who understand this learn to sacrifice personal time for their craft.  They cheat their sleep here and there.  They keep pen and paper around at all times.  They fire up the laptop even if they only have twenty minutes to themselves.

A lot can happen in twenty minutes of writing.  Five hundred words could be written that detail the suspects alibi in a story or the finishing touches on a difficult non fiction chapter.

This is not to say that writers are at the mercy of those around them, but if you've informed loved ones you'll be writing between noon and five o'clock, don't walk out of your writing space at ten o'clock and expect a warm welcome.  Be courteous to your stated times to write.  Get out of your writing mode as close to 'on time' as possible.

I would suggest thanking your loved ones for respecting your writing space and tease them a little with what you wrote.  I like to sneak out a tidbit to see if I can pique their attention sometimes.  Once out of the writing mode, make the shift into your role whether it be mother, father, sister, daughter, etc.

Writing feels like a license to become Henry David Thoreau.  If you're single, that works well.  If you have family you live with - not so good.  Family time is a recharge time.  It allows you to re-ground yourself and refresh.  Remember, the support of your family can mean the difference between reaching your goals or crashing them into an emotional mountainside.

Love your family by giving them your presence when the time is appropriate.  Your writing will not suffer, and neither shall you.