Is Summer Over Yet?

I don’t know about other writers with kids at home, but I’m ready for school to start. Trying to get anything done lately has been well…let’s just say, my personal writing and blogging is taking a very big backseat to everything else.

It’s funny because the reason I started this blog was to 1) get myself writing again after having my baby girl over a year ago and 2) share with all of you who write with kids at home that you’re not alone in trying to balance it all. So here, I am writing about how I am having trouble with the balancing act this summer. The irony of it all. Well it’s not as if I thought I was perfect. Heck, I laugh half the time and cry the other half when I get emails from fellow writers commenting, “Virginia, you amaze me. I just don’t know how you do it all.” In truth…neither do I.

I do have to say I am lucky to have the support of many fellow writers, known as the SFC Team, helping me out. I also have partnered with some great writers as well. They give me support, encouragement and that need kick in the @$$, which I do need from time to time. I don’t know what I would do without them. Oh, I know…find a very deep hole to crawl into and cry.

I would love to say my family is supportive and I couldn’t do it without them. However, when the kids are fighting (mostly the girls), my son is saying all the things teens say when they have to do something they hate (mostly because he has to get off World of Warcraft so I can do my job) and my husband makes comments under his breath about seeing the back of my head yet again…it’s hard to find or see the support. Of course, when a nice paying freelance job is on the table, they are all very supportive and make sure I have the time to do what I need to do. But why can’t it be like that with my personal writing? I guess the dollar signs and “mom” taking them out for a nice dinner is more of an incentive. Oh well. I love them anyway.

And even though I have been enjoying the triple digit weather that living in the southern desert of Utah brings each summer, I am looking forward to 4 hours of uninterrupted writing time. Oh how I hear the bliss of back-to-school calling as I walk the store isles looking for the items my two oldest will need when school starts back up once again. Now to figure out a way to get my littlest (now almost 18 months) just to watch Tangled three times in a row. Now that would be just total bliss. The amount of writing I could get done. The things I could do for my company SFC Publishing…and still do all the freelance stuff as well.

I guess the truth is you can’t have it all and you can’t do it all. We like to fool ourselves into believing we can, but we can’t. I wouldn’t be able to write at all if my kids didn’t understand how much it means to me. I would not be writing at all if my husband didn’t support the fact I need something to do or I’ll drive my family bonkers. No really! I also wouldn’t have built SFC Publishing into what it is today without the support of my past and present SFC Team, the contributors both past and present (non-paid and now paid), my fellow writing groups in-person and virtually, and of course all of you…my readership, supporters, fans, etc.

It’s been a long time coming, but I want to say…THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart. I don’t know what I would be doing if it wasn’t for all of you. Wait, I think I covered that already…climbing into the deepest hole I could find and crying. So thank you for not letting that happen.

Interview Friday with Author Maggie Lyons

Maggie Lyons was born in Wales and brought up in England before gravitating west to Virginia’s coast. She zigzagged her way through a motley variety of careers from orchestral management to law-firm media relations to academic editing. Writing and editing nonfiction for adults brought plenty of satisfaction but nothing like the magic she discovered in writing fiction and nonfiction for children. Several of her articles, poetry, and a chapter book have been published in the children’s magazines Stories for Children Magazine and knowonder! VS: I want to thank you for being my guest here on The Writing Mama today, Maggie. To get things started can you share what you do to help balance your writing life with your family life? Maggie: Very fortunately for me, I’m retired and my son left the nest some time ago. That doesn’t mean I have no other commitments, of course. In fact, I’m very busy as a freelance editor, but I do have the privilege of being able to control m...

American Chronicle | Get to know Rodger Dodger Dog and His Author, Jan Britland

In 1986, Jan was driving her children in a new town to start school. On their way, they would pass a beagle type dog chained to a huge Magnolia tree. Some days they would see the chain hanging down from the tree. "I think we just assumed the dog was in the house until one day we realized he was up in the tree. From that day on, Rodger Dodger Dog as we called him became a favorite. It was a 45-minute drive, which can become boring so as we passed him, I would start telling a story about Rodger Dodger's adventures up the tree and beyond. Because I am so dyslexic, the stories had to rhyme so I could remember them from day to day. They also started the same to get me going," shared Britland. However, it wasn´t until 2008 when Britland received a phone call from her daughter Kelly, who had young children of her own that the Rodger Dodger Dog started to even think about becoming a children´s book or series for that matter. "My daughter was complaining her son ...

Interview Friday: Author Sands Hetherington

Sands Hetherington credits his son John for being his principal motivator. Sands raised his son as a single parent from the time John was six. He read to him every night during those formative years. He and young John developed the Crosley crocodile character in the series during months of bedtime story give-and-take. Sands majored in history at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) and has an M.F.A. in creative writing and an M.A. in English from UNC-Greensboro. He lives in Greensboro. VS: I want to thank you for being my guest here on The Writing Mama today. To get things started, Sands, what do you do to help balance your writing life with your family life? Sands: Hi Mama and thanks for having me over. Actually, my family life was part of my writing life. I was a single (male) parent of a six-year-old son. We always did bedtime stories. One night John invented a red crocodile named Crosley for an after-lights-out companion. This evolved directly into...

VS Grenier ~ Award-Winning Author, Speaker & Podcaster

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