Nicole Locke - Get Me Out of this Car!

I’m a stay-at-home mom. Doesn’t that sound divine? To be fair, I know I have it easy. My husband makes the majority of the income, so I’m able to do the other stuff.

The other stuff is enormous. Huge. It’s so big, my husband has to help, too (the garage does not clean itself). I work as well. I do this writing thing, and it has deadlines, and some days it’s incredibly hard.

Add in this moving thing I did in December, and well…. My ship is sinking. In fact, I’m typing this at 10pm because it can’t wait until tomorrow, or the next because I have deadlines looming, and my 7yo daughter has this concert, oh wait, two concerts, and my 14yo son is in need of clothes because I’ve shrunk everything (or is he getting bigger--again!).

In truth, maybe if I had this home schedule all along it’d be easier because I wouldn’t know any different. But I’m in culture shock. London school life was so different.

There, I walked my daughter the half a mile to school every day. That got in my exercise and times-tables quiz time. All moms brought their kids to the gate, we visited, and then got on with our days.

 

My son had been getting himself to school and to his after-school activities by age 12. Other than making sure he did his homework, I didn’t have to worry about him at all.

In America, my son starts school at 8:45am. The bus can’t get him there on time unless he leaves much earlier. Since we are new, I’m not putting that burden on him. So I schlep him out of the house at 8:20. Unfortunately, my daughter has to come with us. Really unfortunately, her school doesn’t start until 9:30. So she’s stuck in the car an extra 45 minutes (we do her homework and run errands).

I’m not even going to mention that my son gets out of school at 3:15pm, and my daughter at 4:10. Or that some days he can’t get himself home. Like Tuesdays, when I have to pick him up, and drive him to the library for volunteer time. Then drive to pick daughter from school, only to return to the library (while she eats in car) to pick up son. Continue driving to another school so my daughter can have orchestra practice and where my son can take a bus home. She and I don’t return home until 7:30pm when we eat dinner (maybe…if I prepared it earlier).

I can’t start work until 10am and on good days I write until 2pm. And I don’t want to think about my house, that I’m living in a suitcase still or the fact our container full of clothes hasn’t arrived yet (though the moving company has had it since December 6^th). It’ll be Spring and I’ll still be wearing my winter wools….

Am I crazy. Is this driving all around schedule normal for parents in America? How have you been doing it all this time? And why is the image of stay-at-home moms all about eating bonbons? It’s not that way in the UK. Here, I feel I have to justify my day with people I meet. Do you?

Whew. I’m glad I can share this. I truly do want to know how you do it, and if I’m missing a trick. Please tell me there’s a magical time bending necklace I didn’t know about….

Nicole :-)

 

Nicole Locke is the author of Harlequin Lovers and Legends series. For more information about her and her writing, check out her website and follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest.

 

A Year in the Life of an Author - February

This is my second installment in my year long series here in what happens in an author's working life over the course of a year. I suppose that is sort of self-evident in the title, but you never know. LOL. If you are interested, my January post can be found here.

February was a working mom's nightmare. Two words: sick kids. For two full weeks. I think they went through the entire litany of flu, ear aches, and finally settled on bronchitis. Then came the double-whammy of four snow days--of course when the kids were healthy. I watched in frustration as my writing schedule and goals evaporated into thin air to the sound of hacking coughs.

To write, I really need a block of uninterrupted time. To dive in and just live in the story. Unfortunately, I saw little of that, so my page goals are rather in ruins. I have high hopes for March, where I have (fingers crossed) four full weeks (counting this one) of uncommitted time to write. I'll still be behind, but if I can stick with catching up, I won't be SO far behind.

My other project for February met with a little more success: the re-release of my first three books, BRAZEN ANGEL, BRAZEN HEIRESS and BRAZEN TEMPTRESS, as digital books. Hurrah for ebooks, they are giving new life to stories long out of print. Not only did I bring out all three individually, but they can also be had in a boxed set edition. You can find these on Kindle, Nook and Smashwords. The iBook edition is coming.

Bringing out a book on your own makes you realize all the steps that go into publishing behind the scenes and make you thankful for your publisher. I've had to learn the ins and outs of epubbing, formats, ISBNs, and jump through all the hoops of the various vendors. I've spent a lot of late nights filling out forms and uploading files to get it all to fall into place.

Last but not least, February was rounded out with a quick trip down to Huntington Beach, California, where I spoke at a Reader's Tea for the Friends of the Huntington Beach Library. Lovely group of women, truly delightful company and tea! Okay, I am such a sucker for a tea. But it was a chance to get some sunshine--Seattle winters are GRAY and DARK--and meet some lovely readers. And I have to admit, I love speaking to groups. After spending most of my time working alone, the chance to get out and talk to real live people who are not in my head keeps me from living in my sweats and muttering too much to myself.

And so ends February. Off to March and writing. Fingers crossed for a ton of pages and a fun trip to PLA in Philadelphia.

Reading like a reader

Reading like a reader is a gift.
Before I started writing seriously, I always read like a reader. It is why I love fiction – its ability to immerse me in worlds and characters. Then as I studied the craft of fiction writing, the reading like a reader came to be harder. I wanted to know how other authors crafted their work. So I began to read like a writer or an editor. After finishing any book, I wrote a synopsis. Eventually I began to notice the craft far more than the story. It is one of the downsides of being a writer. Inevitable, I suppose.
But I also discovered that I missed the excitement and thrill of reading fiction. I still wanted to glory in the beauty of the rainbow, even though I knew the why behind it. I found myself watching more television. But the internal editor started to filter through to movies and television shows.
Then I had a conversation with my editor and how they were trained to read like readers first, and editors second. In order to understand how to edit, you had to understand the readers’ responses. It was a lightbulb moment. I could do this as well.
So once again, I tried to retrain. Rather than critiquing everything, I tried simply to experience. And yes, it was hard. But the enjoyment came back into my reading. Yes, I can see the craft and sometimes, you have to wonder why certain editors did not point out certain things. But I suspect people could say that about my books...
Recently, my daughter had to make her A level choices. In the English school system, at sixteen, students have to decide which four subjects they are going to take for the next two years. Then when they apply to university, they apply to study a specific subject and it can be very hard to change your major. Very different from the American system which I experienced. Anyway, she deciding against taking English because one of the major works studied is Pride and Prejudice which is one of her favourite novels. Her reasoning was that she wanted to keep loving the book, and she knew that studying it would mean that she would end up hating it. She is taking science instead. I am just pleased that my daughter knows the value of reading like a reader.


I am not doing a contest this month as I am off to Venice for a few days. BUT all next week, Barbara Vey who blogs on Publisher’s Weekly about romance is having a huge blow out party with giveaways from hundreds of romance authors. So you might want to check out her blog.

Multi-Tasking for the Multi-tasker

by Jenny Gardiner

Okay, class. Today’s lesson is on multi-tasking. For the uninitiated, multi-tasking is the process of doing as many things as humanly possible in the same space of time: fixing dinner, cleaning dishes, feeding the dogs, writing a book, scrubbing the floor, fighting for world peace. It’s one way to maximize the limited 24-hour day.

It is a skill that has been honed throughout millennia by women in particular. Often times they receive their inaugural multi-tasking trial by fire upon the birth of their first child, whence they are called upon to perform such challenges as soothing a screaming newborn over their shoulder while picking up the burp cloth that’s inconveniently fallen on the ground with their toes while simultaneously attempting to clean up the projectile vomit said screaming child has just emitted while letting the barking dog out because the barking dog is what caused the child to scream in the first place. Oh, and cook dinner, dust the bookshelves and make the bed. While carrying a basket of laundry up from the basement.

Of course, when the husband comes home at the end of the work day and finds the new mother looking as if she just gave birth (again) and asks, “What did you do all day, honey?” implying that it looks as if she’d parked her butt in front of Oprah and didn’t even get up to go to the bathroom, a woman has to learn to cast that sphinx-like smile and just glibly tell her man, “oh, a little of this, a little of that” (either that or club him). But we know better.

Women are excellent multi-taskers. I have female physician friends who I’m sure could readily perform a C-section, bake a pie and clean the dishes, if only the operating theater were within reach of the kitchen.

Another friend of mine wins the award for multi-tasking. I saw her one time, shortly after her baby was born, on a neighborhood stroll. The baby in a jog stroller, the dog on a leash, and a book in front of her face. If that’s not an ambitious undertaking, killing three birds with one stone, nothing is.

I have found over the years that I can multi-task with just about everything. I read while brushing my teeth. Sometimes I clean my sink while blow-drying my hair. Check my e-mails, talk on the phone, feed the dogs, and clear my desk. You get the drift. I like to think of it as hyper-efficiency. My husband calls it ADD.

But I’ve found there’s one task that absolutely thwarts a person’s ability to seriously multi-task, and that is driving. Now, to a certain extent, we all multi-task when we drive. It’s an inevitable side effect of the process: checking mirrors, scanning the horizon, glancing over your shoulder before going into the passing lane. Even to the point that you might be eating a burger, licking an ice cream cone, or drinking hot coffee with one hand while driving. Who hasn’t steered with their knees occasionally?

Of course the cell phone has enabled those of us who spend an inordinate amount of time behind the wheel to at least partially fulfill the need to multitask. As a mother of three, I’ve spent several hours a day over the past decade or so couriering my charges to their various and many activities. At least with a cell phone I can take care of returning phone calls that are only interruptive when conducted at home, or catching up with someone I’ve neglected to contact in ages.

But I yearn for the ability to do more behind the wheel and long for the day that technology will catch up with a mother’s need to achieve while driving: how about a plug-in blow dryer so I can dry and drive at once? Or a way to fix dinner while stuck in traffic at 6 p.m.? We’ve all see those ambitious ones who boldly do the idiotic while behind the wheel: applying make-up, curling eyelashes, shaving, for God’s sake. That’s about as crazy as trying to perform a pedicure while tooling along the road. Those undertakings are obviously foolish. But really, I think the blow-drying idea is imminently do-able, provided of course that styling brushes are not required.

Having now ushered two kids through driver’s ed, where they learn to drive the way we’re supposed to drive, however, I realize that my days of ambitious achievement above and beyond the task of getting to and fro have drawn to a close: I now have a driving-age backseat drivers who are ready and willing to correct every little transgression I might possibly make while in the course of my daily driving.

Because after all, while idly sitting at a traffic signal catching up on my reading is a useful way to spend the forty-five seconds during which I’m stuck at the light, it’s probably more incumbent upon me to pay attention to other drivers. That is, not looking at what they’re wearing or how funny they look belting out a song alone in the car, but rather whether there are last-minute light runners who might impede my forward momentum once the light does change to green. Alas, it looks as if my days of multi-tasking are now limited to off-road moments. And that’s a good thing.

When They Leave the Nest

Hi, All! I’m back to blog here and so happy to do so! I thought I’d write about what is on my mind these days of soon-to-be fall. Things seem to happen in fall, even though most of us don’t have to go back to school any more. My fourth romance Intimate Beings will be published in October, which is exciting, and I am actually back at my college teaching. No leaves have fallen yet, but I feel that change in the air, the hope and optimism that things will change and be better. I always felt that way as a child—maybe, I would think, this school year I will get good grades! Maybe this year I will figure out math!
But for adults, I’ve noticed fall means different things, and for many of us right now, it means our children are going to college, flying the coop, leaving the nest.

Yesterday at work, a good friend and colleague casually mentioned that she was taking her son to college the next day, driving him down to Southern California and doing the parent dorm move in weekend thing. She looked down, arranged her books in her arms, looked up, trying to hold in the tears and succeeding. The space around us seemed to quiet. If I had said one thing about a quiet house or empty bedroom, we would have been sobbing together in her office.

I said, “It’s going to be exciting.”

She looked at me as if I were crazy.

“I mean, for your son,” I said, but really, I meant for her, too. She just wasn’t ready to see that yet. Maybe it will take her longer than it took me to find the joy in not being a daily parent. But in the empty space things can happen. Life could happen. It just didn’t seem that that to her yet.
I had my children at an early age, when I was physically but not truly psychically ready to have them. We were also always broke. When they were little and my former spouse and I were living on first one and the two teacher's salaries, I took them to every free event in the Bay Area to make sure we got out of the house. I can still recount the free days at the Oakland Museum and the San Francisco Zoo. We bought summer park passes to the Knowland Zoo. We went to all the public pools. I know by heart all the parks in the greater Bay Area. Back then as I was packing up my VW Van for the day with bagged lunches and juice boxes and sand toys and sweaters, I could only imagine a day when they would be out of the house and not my total and utter responsibility. What would the day be like where I could go to the bathroom by myself or make a meal for myself and then sit and eat it while reading the newspaper? What would it be like to not have to pour sand out of my shoe every evening?

Back then, sleep was something that was always interrupted (though please, let's not talk about peri-menopause and sleep issues here) and the day all about keeping them occupied and making meals. Every single day was about driving to or from preschool and then grade school and the various lessons they had through the years--tumbling, ceramics, basketball, drawing, clarinet, aikido, drama. It was about the worries and vicissitudes of adolescence and driver's training and getting into colleges.

And then they were gone. Poof!

And then they were gone and I had to figure out who I was without them.

Now, I miss them. Some days, I’d pay anything to have to pour sand out of my shoe. As they grew older and became more of who they are, I grew used to the rhythms of our lives together. That life changed when I left my husband, but I am still accustomed to the way they fit in along with me. I can picture Alexander out on a deck of one of the houses we and I have lived in reading a book. Nicolas is out there with him, too, both with their shirts off, getting some sun. I can hear them laughing at a movie they are watching. I can hear the clomp, clomp, clomp of Nicolas’ heavy boots on the wood floor. I can hear them talking in their rooms to their girlfriends, the slow, steady murmur of love talk.

I can see Nicolas rehearsing a part from a play in the living room of my second small apartment. I can see them both as they drive away, toward home.

As they grew older, I had to do less daily maintenance on a physical level and became more important emotionally. They needed to talk, and I was there. They had troubles, I could help. But I could sleep and I didn’t have to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches except for my self.

I miss the peanut butter and jelly sandwich life sometimes, wishing I could go back in and be a better mother. I made so many mistakes, pretty much all the time. My mothering life is a string of mistakes, corrections, further mistakes, more corrections. I wish I hadn't worried so much about things that weren't important (traffic and schedules and who took what class when and who would drive them there). Wishing I'd listened more. Wishing I'd slowed down. I know I did my best, working one then two then three jobs (writing being one of them). Between the two of us, my former spouse and I were able to pick them up after school and spend time with them. We ate dinners together and watched television together. I helped with homework. We traveled all around the world during the summers, and yet, I have regrets.

And here's the deal. You know your children are really gone when they have attachments to a place not home. This past holiday, my youngest insisted on leaving for "home" early because of his girlfriend. He missed her. She was back home. My oldest has a home too, a home not here. They have lives and people and jobs and activities that aren't where their father and I are at all.
The good news for me is that I have a home, too. I have the job and activities and life that continues to keep me busy, but as my boys are adding to their lives, bringing in more, pieces of mine are falling away.

I guess that's what happens. We build and then let it go, a bit at a time.

So if I could go back to me, that young mother, I would tell her this, and she wouldn't be able to do much differently. But I think she could look around, take in those beautiful boys, and know that it was temporal, ephemeral, soon to end. She could hold them and touch them and know that never again would it really be like this. That it was a blessing, the best blessing that this human life has to offer, no matter how many of us are crowding the planet.

Here I sit writing, pictures of my boys all around me, and I want to tell them thank you.

Have you had to deal with the letting go of the old life and moving into your own? Do you have any advice for my friend? I am sure she is sick of mine.

Jessica

http://www.jessicabarksdaleinclan.com

My Plan

I freely admit it - I'm not as organized as I used to be. I had lost my ability to multi-task and worried I would never get that talent back. But it all came back to me in one heart-stopping moment. Allow me to back up a few steps. :)

In about mid-May, my editor emailed to say she would be sending me her notes on the revisions and edits she would like for my December book, Dancing with the Devil. Now, anyone with kids in elementary school knows that the last month of school is crazy busy with field trips, concerts, yada yada yada. So I set myself a plan of how to get everything done in an organized fashion so that when the revision letter arrived, I'd be ready. And I was.

Friday May 23 - editor's email arrived with a note asking if I could please have it back to her by June 16th. Not a problem; I was ready. I spent most of the day reading over it several times and making notes, with the plan to start in on the work on Monday morning. And I did.

My Plan was going beautifully. (can you hear God laughing? Yeah, I wish I'd been listening to Him more carefully that morning.)

Monday night, I was sitting on my couch with my printed out manuscript spread all over, my lap top going, and my note paper beside me. One kid was in bed and the other 2 were going to be shortly. At first, the smell was only a whiff. Then it was a full on "hmmm, that doesn't smell right" kind of thing that got me off the couch to investigate. (Let me digress here a moment to add that my husband was on a business trip in another province at this point). I follow my nose (just like the Froot Loop guy) and whip open the man-door to the garage to find a lovely little fire just a cookin' under one of the work benches. ACK!!! So all at once, I'm the person I used to be! I'm multi-tasking like a crazy woman.

I'm:

1. Hurding the kids outside

2. Calling 911 with one hand while

3. Trying to figure out how to work the stupid fire extinguisher and kicking myself for not having learned before then.

Long story short, the fire dept arrived, couldn't save the garage, but thankfully, they kept the flames from getting into the house. (smoke damage is a royal pain in the you-know-what, though). At this point, it sounds really bad, but here are the good things.

1. My brother in law is a full-time fireman with the local fire department

2. said brother-in-law was acting chief the night of our fire

3. the entire fire department was at practice when I called 911 and the practice hall is literally 3 blocks from our house.

Once the fire was out, my BIL knew there were things I needed. So back into the house he went and brought out my keys, my cell phone and, God bless him, my laptop and scattered manuscript pages. Sure, they smelled horrible, but did that matter? No!!

Needless to say, My Plan has not gone anything like it was supposed to. LOL I did manage to get the revisions done and in on the 16th (though, technically, it was the 17th in New York, but according to the clocks in my house, it was only 11:45ish - LOL). I am learning how to multi-task again, though. It's not pretty, and I'm still pretty horrible at it, but I'm getting there. Because, apparently, just because you have a fire or some other stressful or tragic event in your life, the world does NOT quit turning. Bills still have to be paid, kids still have to get to baseball/hockey/soccer and everyone still needs clean clothes and food on the table. The added 'fun' though is that we need to keep on keeping on while we try to work with 3 different insurance companies (boat, truck, house) and find a place to live and continue to assure the kids that once the restoration company gets everything cleaned, they really will get their GameBoys back (something that is vitally important to all three of them).

All kidding aside, we were incredibly lucky. Sure, everything we own is now in boxes, either here at our rental house, or in storage with the restoration company, and sure we're going to be out of our house for many many months until they rebuild it from stud, but in the grand scheme of things, none of that matters one iota. It's truly amazing how much of our "stuff" we can live without. The important thing is that the kids got out safely.

And so did the manuscript. (come on - all you writers - you know what I'm talking about! LOL)

Where Did My Words Go?

Somewhere along the way I lost my facility with words. It was right around the time I had children. If you’re not a parent, you might not know about the post-partum phenomenon of fuzzy mommy brain (not a technical term, but a decent description IMHO). I think part of the syndrome is hormonal, although I have no scientific evidence to back that up.

Beyond the possible hormone connection, the bigger part of my post-pregnancy verbal issues was simply a lack of practice with words. After working hard at my Master’s program (in English lit, keep in mind) and teaching English at the college level, I was glad to take a little time off after I had a few kids. In fact, I was thrilled. My days consisted of Sesame Street and taking long walks while pushing a stroller, and that was quite alright with me. Problem was, I had next to no adult conversation during that time period and I certainly didn’t have any deep, thoughtful conversations that required meaningful contemplation.

Let’s face it, when you’re knee deep in diapers and truckloads of laundry, it’s all you can do sometimes to catch a shower during the day let alone find time for intellectual stimulation. So I forgive myself for going a bit brain dead during that time. But it’s scary when you’re use to expressing yourself intelligently and all of the sudden you find yourself pausing for long moments during a phone conversation, unable to find the right word. My family would try guessing what I wanted to say since I lost all talent for formulating a thought into words. Sometimes I’d wake up from a nap three hours after a phone conversation like that and the word I’d wanted would come to me. Talk about slow processing time!

After a few of those incidents, I realized what was happening. Verbal facility isn’t like riding a bike where, once you learn, you never forget. A flare with words is a skill that requires exercise. Practice. Immersion. And as much as I loved Sesame Street, Elmo wasn’t working with me at the verbal level I needed to stay sharp.

I started reading more. Working on the occasional crossword puzzle. But most of all, I used my new epiphany to get back to writing. I’d started a novel around the time I started grad school but then got away from it as I got busy with course work. Now that I’d taken a bit of a breather, I got out my old notes from the project and pursued it in earnest.

It didn’t take long before my words came back, helped along by daily writing and by meeting writer friends who wanted to talk about characters, conflicts and plots. I immersed myself in language and stories all over again and it was like coming home. I felt recharged and rejuvenated, intelligent and whole once more.

*** Did you ever have those space-out moments as a new mom or has anyone close to you gone through the fuzzy brain months? Share your experiences on the board for a chance to win Joanne’s sexy new May Blaze, UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL. Winner chosen at random from all posters.