Hello and welcome! I’m Tamara, and I’m excited to use this blog to share my writing progress, pitfalls, wins, and thoughts on balancing writerhood with motherhood. Thank you for being here.

I think the best way to start is to invite you into my current situation: 

It’s my baby’s nap time. He’s six months old and hasn’t napped in his crib since he was a newborn. I’m nursing him in the Big Bed while he sleeps, and I’m typing this one-handed in the notes app on my phone. Every now and again, his little hand wanders to my face, caresses my cheek, then grips my nose, hard. I put the phone down, gently peel his fingers from my nostrils and cuddle him back to sleep, before picking up where I left off.

I wrote the whole first draft of Freddie and the Magnolias (current work-in-progress) while horizontal.

Before becoming a mum, I needed my environment to be perfect to even think about writing. I needed the right lighting, the right playlist, the right warm beverage. Even then, usually when I sat down to write, I’d spend more time reading through past work, making pointless edits, and researching literary agents, than actually writing. 

When I found out I was pregnant, I made peace with the fact that my writing would not be my top priority. In reality, it hadn’t been my top priority for years. I felt like I had missed the boat, and the next one wasn’t coming any time soon.

I didn’t write anything except the odd journal entry for the first six months of my baby’s life. 100% of my time was dedicated to my son. If I wasn’t with him, I was looking at pictures of him.

But during that time of not writing, something happened that hadn’t happened in a while. 

I started getting ideas.

Something about this curious little boy in my arms reminded me why I love to tell stories. And something about not having the time to write them down made the idea of writing a whole lot more alluring.

A couple of weeks ago, after I put my son to bed and crept out of the room, I decided to sit down and put pen to paper. My eyes burned with tiredness, but I promised myself to try for just half an hour. It felt like coming home.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks later, and I’ve written more new words than I did in the entire year before my son was born. 

Now that my son is here, I desperately want to teach him to be brave with his creativity, put himself out there, and never give up on the dreams that make him excited to be alive. 

So, I’m doing my best to walk the walk.

Thank you so much for coming along with me.

I would love to connect with you and hear your experiences of finding time to write in the beautiful chaos of a full life.

Featured image by AvocetGEO.