“You’re Pregnant? You’ll Never Be A Writer Now.”

When I was six months pregnant with my first child, I was accepted into a writing class taught by a famous novelist in his home in Los Angeles. I walked up his fancy white paved driveway to this beautiful modern house with a thick wooden door, which swung open as I approached. Before me stood a short, fit older man with white hair, impeccably dressed. The smile on his face faltered as he looked down at my belly with horror and said: “Oh my god, you’re pregnant? You’ll never be a writer now!”

I gaped at him. Did he really just say that? He went on: “Are you going to give birth in my class?” I said I hoped not. At this point, maybe he noticed that there was an actual human attached to this stomach protrusion and that the ‘said human’ was offended. He stammered, “I mean, once you have that baby, you’re never going to have time to write. It’s impossible to write during a life transition.” As if that was supposed to make me feel better! Maybe he was hoping I’d leave, and take my belly with me. I said, “Well I’d better get busy now then, right?” And I marched into his house, plopped my big old belly at his dining room table, and waited for the class to begin. (I didn’t wear this swim suit to class, but I should have!)

He was not the only nay-sayer. Many other well-meaning people said words to the same extent, even fellow mom writers. I took it as a challenge. I would write! And I did. It wasn’t easy, but I’ve written several books while raising my kids, now teens. I’ve published two acclaimed young adult novels, both with big publishers: Penguin and Disney-Hyperion. And you can too.

Maybe you are a mom attempting to write a novel right now, during the pandemic, doing #nanowrimo. I teach a group of mom writers, and like I do for all of them, I want to cheer you on! You can do it! If you want to be a novelist, and you’re pregnant or you have young kids, you can do it. I did it and here are a few tricks that can help.

1. Get an ugly journal

Yes, an ugly one! Not a fancy one. In The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron recommends one of those 8 by 11 notebooks with the spiral binding that kids use for their schoolwork, the kind you can pick up in the grocery store. No fancy journals. Mine doesn’t have lines because I might want to go out of the lines or draw a picture of a scene. Make sure your journal is big enough to allow for big, fast, sloppy writing.

You can use this to do your morning pages, but mostly, this is to carry everywhere you go so that you can write in playgrounds, while waiting in the car with a sleeping baby, outside ballet lessons and in line ups at the grocery store. Writing will now happen throughout the day, in every spare moment. As a plus, parenting can be really boring (be honest now), and you’ll find these chances to dive into your imagination will help feed your brain.

2. Time Block Your Daily Schedule

As a mom writer, you need to plan your daily writing time or it won’t happen, not with kids. There’s no delaying. If you say you’ll do it ‘later’, it won’t happen.

In Indistractable, Nir Eyal suggests time blocking your entire day, so that you know when you intend to do things, so that you have an accurate measurement of whether you’re getting distracted from what you intend to do. He says to block out ‘me’ time — your writing time — as well as work, errands, family time and even social media time. This way, you don’t need to delay your writing time to do these things because you know that they are also within your schedule and they don’t need to happen in your writing time.

When my kids were little, I wrote every day during naps. My first kid didn’t nap unless I was in the bed next to her, so I had my computer ready, on the bed. I nursed her on my side, then slowly pulled away, and then I wrote. I think the rhythmic typing on my computer kept her sleeping longer. Our second girl napped very easily. I just nursed her, put her in the crib and wrote. Do it however it works for you, but I’m begging you, don’t clean when they’re sleeping. This is your prime ‘you’ time.

If you have school-aged kids or you work in an outside-the-home job, the best time might be before anyone wakes up. Or maybe it’s during lunch break or right as you arrive at work, in your car. Whatever it is, block it in your calendar.

If the scheduled times don’t work, reschedule them. It may take some experimentation to figure out what works best for you and your family. This is me with my first. Sometimes, she woke up for hours in the middle of the night, wide awake, so I cuddled her on my lap and wrote.

3. Say: “I Am A Writer”

As moms, we can sometimes lose ourselves in our kids. This is why so many playdates are about moms commiserating about the various difficulties of raising kids, which can be very boring for everyone. Don’t do this to yourself. Continue your identity as a writer. If you need to, put this up in your mirror. “I am a writer.” Now, say it ten times: “I am a writer.”

You can now add detail to this identity. “I am a writer who . . .” or “I am a fantasy writer.”

According to James Clear in Atomic Habits, your identity creates your habits, not the other way around. So, if you identify as a writer, and not just as a mom, you’ll stick to your writing schedule. You’ll research and read things connected to your book. You’ll go on research adventures with your kids. You won’t get sucked in to endless volunteering or driving your kids everywhere on their every whim. You’ll keep your writer identity, and this will make you a far more interesting person, both to yourself and others, and it’ll make you a happier parent too.

4. Make the Commitment

Without a minimum commitment to our goals, we don’t get any kind of success. Instead, we have this lurking hope that we’ll someday do the things we want, which ends up making us feel badly.

So, right now, ask yourself, can I commit to a minimum of one page a day? The fabulous middle grade writer, Kate DiCamillo, writes a page a day, first thing in the morning, and she’s won the Newberry . . . three times.

If you write a page a day, you can finish a book in a year. Slow and steady wins the race. With this minimum commitment, you’ll be able to work an outside job, parent and write. You’ll have tough days or days that you miss, but there are 365 days in a year. Even if you only write six days a week, you’re all good.

Commit to an average of one page of double-spaced 12 font fiction or seven pages per week. Tell yourself: “I commit to following my writing schedule.”

5. Set Alarms

Maybe you think a commitment is enough, but the mind is a fickle thing. Set an alarm on your phone for the moment you intend to write each day. If it’s the same time every day, great. If not, change your alarm for every day, and label the alarm something that encourages you, like, “Time to Write, Great Glorious Writer!”

This alarm setting is the action behind commitment, so that tomorrow, you’ll remember your intention. It’ll take time to establish a habit, and you’ll be shocked about how easy it is to prioritize other things, such as social media. Alarms ensure you follow through. Otherwise, it’s going to be very easy to “forget” or procrastinate.

The alarm also helps your kids to know that it is your writing time if you’re going to write while they’re around. If they’re school-aged and remote schooling, set it for a time that they don’t need your help for their classes. If you have a baby and you intend to write when they nap, set the alarm before nap-time as the time to get your writing supplies ready for the moment your kid is down.

Program in those alarms right now before you do anything else. It’s a small thing, but alarms will save you from yourself.

Good luck, fellow writer mommas! Below is a photo of my debut novel, Trafficked, published in 2012, when my kids were eight and five. It took five years to write several drafts of it and get it published, but I did it, and you can too.