I didn’t see why it had to be either/or. . . . If you have a job in the daytime, you write at night. It’s all a question of how much you want to do it.
—Margaret Atwood
We think we’re too busy. We think it’s impossible. We’re parents now. There’s no way we can start that company. There’s no way we can finish that project. We have to be realistic. We’ve got to put it aside for now.
There just isn’t enough time.
As a young, struggling novelist, the writer Susan Straight would walk her daughter in the heat of Riverside, California, until she fell asleep. For naps. At night. It was the only way she could get her down. And the second her daughter drifted off, Straight would stop wherever they were, sit on the curb next to the stroller, and write in her notebook. She finished an entire novel that way. Even as passersby would offer her money, thinking she was homeless, she kept at it. Little did they, or she, know that the novel would go on to win major literary prizes and launch a wonderful career.
We talked in November about how parents have to look for the double opportunities—the ways to spend time with your kid and do what you need to do. Part of that is also looking for the moments inside the moments, when we can find the time, squeeze it like an orange for all it’s worth, and get our work in too.
We can do this. We have to do this. It’s not impossible. It’s been done by people who had it harder than us. Toni Morrison did it. Susan Straight did it. You can do it. Whether it’s writing or going back to law school or training for a marathon, you can find the time.
You don’t have to give up. You don’t have to be realistic. Just be creative.