Writing, Parenting, and GUILT

Lately I've been feeling a lot of guilt.

This is mostly because:

When I'm writing, I remember the pile of laundry that needs to be done. When I'm doing laundry I think I should really be spending time reading with my five-year old. When I'm reading with my five-year-old I feel bad about the sinkful of dirty dishes. When I'm working on the dishes the baby starts crying and I know I should just hold him for a minute. When I'm holding the baby the big kids start fighting about what to watch on TV and I think I really should get them all dressed up in warm clothes and send them outside for a half hour to play. When they finally get outside I feel like I should be writing.

It's a vicious cycle.

I think it's impossible to be a parent and not feel guilty every now and then. Being a parent is hard and it takes SO MUCH TIME and ENERGY. It's physically impossible to accomplish everything I need/want to do everyday in 16 waking hours. I often feel overwhelmed.

Then I get reminded of just how great my life is.

A few weeks ago I was putting my oldest to bed she gave me a big hug and said, "Mom, I know you work real hard to clean the house and write your book, and I think you're doing a great job."

I may not be anywhere close to perfect, and I may never be able to do everything I wish I could, but I do have very sweet kids and a wonderful husband who love me despite my imperfections. That's got to count for something.

Do you have mom guilt, dad guilt, writer guilt, etc.?

A healthy dose of PERSPECTIVE

I'm very sick right now. Three of my kids are sick too, including the baby. My family hasn't all been healthy at once since January, and because of that I haven't written anything all month. I'm snuggled up in bed right now with baby, trying to keep warm despite a wicked case of the chills. I've been feeling pretty sorry for myself for the past couple of days.

And then I read about the earthquake in New Zealand. I realized that Chistchurch is where my dear friend Wen Baragrey lives. Any of you that follow Wen know that she and her family have had a very trying couple of months. Her premature grandson was born in November and seemed to have complication after complication before he finally came home in January only to head back to the hospital last week.

Thankfully he and all of the rest of Wen's family made it out of the city okay, but it was a scary time for everyone. Wen detailed the experiences of her family here.

It's so easy for me to get caught up in mylife and my worries and not realize that other people are suffering far greater challenges. But today my thoughts and prayers are with Wen and the people of Christchurch, NZ.

The Author Website

We've had a whole lot of yuck at my house this week. The baby had an ear infection and now he and my 3-year-old have RSV, and my girls are recovering from strep. Not fun.

So I'll keep this short and sweet.

For months I've known I needed to create an author website.

My agent recommends that ALL writers who want to submit their work have a website (not just a blog). Websites are nice because agents and/or editors can look through in just a few minutes and get a pretty good idea of who you are and what you write.

I worried putting up a website would be a ton of work and/or super expensive and/or very time consuming. I didn't want to think about it, so I put it off for months.

Last week I finally decided it was time. I now have an author website www.nataliebahm.com. It's nothing fancy, but I think it will be sufficient for now. And to my surprise, it wasn't hard, it wasn't expensive, and I got it done in just a couple of days.

Do you have an author website? If not, have you thought about creating one?

SPEAK and Free Speech

I usually steer clear of controversy on this blog. I don't like making people mad (and I hope I won't make anyone mad today!). But this is something I've been thinking about for a long time.


Last week I finally read SPEAK by Laurie Halse Anderson. I've had it on my list ever since all the hubbub last fall. For any of you who missed it, this should give you the gist of what went down.


I know I'm super late to this discussion, but I wanted to say a few things now that I've read the book.


First, I thought SPEAK was excellent. A must read. The subject matter (recovering after rape) was painful, but so important. I felt like both of the scenes dealing with rape were done well. They were not gratuitous at all, but still showed the violence and horror of the act. I agree one hundred percent that the Missouri professor was WAY off base calling it soft porn.


It is absolutely a book I want my kids to read when they get older.


All of that said, I want to address one of the issues I had with the uproar last fall. While Laurie Halse Anderson and all the bloggers and writers who rushed to her defense had the right to speak up and defend something they believed in, so did the guy in Missouri. And though I don't agree with what he said, I do believe he had the right to say it.


In the U.S. free speech is a right for everyone, not just writers and artists. Not just people with whom we agree. EVERYONE. Whether a person is conservative, liberal, communist, or just plain crazy they have a right to say what they believe. Sometimes I think we forget this.


Here's an example:


About a year ago, I was on Twitter when a published author tweeted about reading a Goodreads review of her book. She was livid. The reviewer found some of the things in the book offensive and rated it low.


So, the author went to the Goodreads review and left a scathing comment about how the reviewer was an idiot, and the review was tantamount to censorship. AND THEN the author posted a link to her reply on Twitter and encouraged her followers to leave more mean comments on this poor person's Goodread's review. Goodreads! This was not some national reviewer. This was just a reader who picked up a book and didn't like it.


I thought the whole thing was very TACKY. And wrong. The author had the right to write her book. She had the right to include any content she wanted to include. But the reviewer also had a right to voice her opinions. Having the author and twenty of her twitter followers jump down the the reviewer's throat, and attack her personally, for sharing her thoughts was more than a little hypocritical.


Needless to say, I deleted the author from my twitter feed.


I think the issue I had with both this situation, and to an extent the SPEAK uproar, was that people did not simply defend the books in question, they also attacked the person voicing their opinion. It is one thing to say, "I totally disagree with you. I believe this book was good and important for XYZ reasons," it's quite another to say, "Because you made this comment you are a pervert/homophobe/idiot/insert- overblown-insult-here."


I think we need to accept that not everyone will like what we write. We may offend people. Our books may even get banned. And while we have the right to defend ourselves against criticisms we find unjust, we should try to do it in a civilized manner. It's importatnt to respect other people's right to speak freely, even if we strongly disagree with their opinions.


Thoughts?

Momentum

I decided last Saturday that I was going to finish my first draft.

I sat down at the computer and wrote for three uninterrupted hours while my husband took care of the kids.

I didn't allow myself email, or twitter, or spider solitaire. I just wrote.

And 3500 words later I was done.

Sort of.

I have some characters, a setting, and a pretty good story, but there is still SO MUCH work to be done. I'm so excited to do it.

I know everyone says to wait a few months before revising. It makes sense to wait and get some distance from the story. It's good advice.

But even though I know the "right" thing to do is write something else and let this story simmer for a while, I just can't wait.

I'm excited about this project. I want to work on it. And, after my 2010 (aka the year of crappy writing), I feel like I need to keep this new found momentum going.

So, I'm jumping into revisions tomorrow. It might be the "wrong" way to do it, but I don't care.

How long do you wait before you start revising a first draft? Have you ever been so into a story you couldn't let it rest?

Why I May Never Buy an eBook

Last week I told you about my new iPad and how I had no idea what to do with it. Now, thanks to the advice of several awesome commenters I have a much better idea of what this little thing can do. Thanks everyone!

After I read all of your comments I immediately downloaded apps for all of the bookstores (kindle, nook, ibooks, etc), and began to browse.

It was AMAZING. I couldn't believe that every book I wanted was just a tap away. Not only that, I had some bookstore gift cards from Christmas, so I didn't even have to spend my own money! The only question was what I should buy first.

Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, I am not and impulsive buyer. Before I could tap that buy button I had to do some research. So I looked up what it would cost to buy a REAL paper and ink copy of the books on my list, and I was surprised to find that for most of the books I wanted, it cost the same or just a dollar more to buy a book instead of an eBook.

I thought about that real book sitting on my shelf. I thought about lending it to friends. I thought about all four of my kids pulling it off the shelf when they get old enough to enjoy it. I thought about reading it in the bathtub and not worrying about a few little water spots, because it's paper and it will dry. And the eBooks suddenly looked much less shiny.

Yeah, I've heard about Kindle's new lending program. But I've also heard about all the caveats, like the fact that only a few books can be lent, you can only lend a book ONE TIME, and only lend it for 14 days.

Yes it would be convenient to get a book the second I want it and store my whole library in one two pound device. But I don't think those conveniences outweigh my desire to share my books with friends and family and smell paper and ink while I read. Plus you know I'm not taking the iPad with me to the tub.

So instead of buying books online I'll be headed to the bookstore to browse the aisles the old fashioned way.

But don't worry! The iPad will see some reading action too. I downloaded an app that gives me access to my library's eBooks and eAudiobooks and it turns out my library has an AWESOME eBook collection. So I think I'll save myself a couple trips to the library every month by doing more of my library reading and listening on the iPad.

I will probably break down and buy an eBook one of these days, but not anytime soon. The sad truth is I like real books too much.

Do you buy a lot of eBooks? What do you like about them? If you're not an eBook fan, why can't you live without good old ink and paper books?

The Tale of the iPad

My husband got me an iPad for Christmas. We don't usually give each other big ticket gifts, but this year he wanted to WOW me.

See, a few months ago, on my birthday actually, he called me up to let me know he'd just bought a car. It was a piece of crap Jeep Wagoneer and it was puffing blue smoke. This was a problem for 5 reasons.

1. He already had a car, a very nice car actually.

2. He'd never fixed a car in his life.

3. It was my birthday

4It was barely a month after my c-section and there was a ton of work that needed to be done in the yard and I couldn't do it.

5. He didn't ask me first (probably because he knew I'd said no).

I was a little upset. He was very apologetic. We made a deal that it would be out of my garage before Christmas, whether it was fixed or not.

He worked on it most nights, pouring time and money into it. I wondered if the dump had a pick up service. Then, one week before Christmas, he fixed the blue smoke problem, put it up for sale, and sold it two days later for a pretty decent profit.

He used that profit to buy me an iPad for Christmas.

It was very sweet of him.

Since then I've been trying to figure out what to do with this iPad. It's a very useful little contraption, with apps to help with everything from calorie counting to tweeting. But I'm finding that we (and by we I mean my three-year-old and occasionally my husband or me) mostly use it to play dumb games.

Truth be told, I have the same love/hate relationship with the iPad that I have with most of the other pieces of technology in my house. It makes me miss simpler times... like last month.

But I'd still rather have the iPad than the Jeep.

Do you ever get overwhelmed by technology? Has your spouse ever bought a car without asking you? Do you play Angry Birds?