Writer, Louise Erdrich said:
“By having children, I’ve both sabotaged and saved myself as a writer. […] With a child you certainly can’t be a Bruce Chatwin or a Hemingway, living the adventurer-writer life. No running with the bulls at Pamplona. If you value your relationships with your children, you can’t write about them. You have to make up other, less convincing children. There is also one’s inclination to be charming instead of presenting a grittier truth about the world. But then, having children has also made me this particular writer. Without my children, I’d have written with less fervor; I wouldn’t understand life in the same way. I’d write fewer comic scenes, which are the most challenging. I’d probably have become obsessively self-absorbed, or slacked off. Maybe I’d have become an alcoholic. Many of the writers I love most were alcoholics. I’ve made my choice, I sometimes think: Wonderful children instead of hard liquor.”
As for me, I agree with Louise Erdrich. I have two amazing daughters who are launched into the world at this point, but when I started writing they were still in middle school and high school. I was an 8 – 3 writer, except on holidays and summer vacations, and I was a single-mom, as well. I’d like to think writing actually made me a better mom because–then, as now–I feel at my most authentic when I write.
We writers will do what we have to do to get to write. What about you? Are you a writer, poet, painter or other creative-type with children? How has this limited or enhanced your craft?
P.S. I am an ex-shrink who writes award-winning novels. Check out my books here.
My kids are 5 and 6 years old now. I need quiet in order to write, which means that my writing time is limited, to say the least. However, I think that’s actually worked out. I know that I only have a certain period of the day to write, so I write then. I have other writer friends (child-free) who can write whenever they want, but this seems to give them the permission not to write because they can do it “later” except, more times than not, they don’t because “later” is always an option. Since there is no “later” for me, I write.
Hi Sonje,
I think you’re absolutely right. When you only have a set amount of time to write, that time becomes precious and you grab it when you can. So you may very well have more focused writing time than your child-free writer friends. I got started writing a little later in life because of having children. Though, I don’t regret a second of it. I tend to be a late-bloomer anyway. Great to hear from you. Happy writing!
There’s just one part of this article from Louise Erdrich that I don’t understand and please forgive my naïveté as I am not a parent nor a writer…Louise writes “…If you value your relationships with your children, you can’t write about them. You have to make up other, less convincing children…” I don’t see why the children you would have to write about would be less convincing. I understand that it probably would hurt your relationship if you wrote specifically about or relayed what your children did in what you wrote…BUT that doesn’t mean with imagination and hard work you couldn’t write convincing child characters or reference generalizations of children. I would think with your experience with children; the stirrings in the middle of the night, the diaper changes, the skinned knees and elbos, the helping with their homework, teaching them to drive..etc. wouldn’t that really help your child characters or references to children come alive off the page? Just a thought.
I think you’re right, Jen. I think it all helps. Perhaps she has never felt she wrote convincing children characters. Of the books I’ve read of hers (maybe a couple) I don’t remember children in them at all. But I think you have a very good point.
Thanks for commenting. I hope you’re doing well!