Loneliness and the freelancing mother

One of the key points of advice given to both freelance writers and mothers is this: understand how lonely it really is. You don’t have built-in work friends; you have to balance your work with the work of making, and maintaining, social contacts if you want to be happy.

Now, for an introvert like me, that never mattered so much. I was perfectly happy making contacts with other adults solely for the articles I was writing. My favorite interviews, granted, were the ones where I developed a strong enough rapport with the source to trade humor and personal anecdotes; I often wished I could work with them again. (I don’t have a “beat” like a newspaper reporter, so I never had the opportunity to forge relationships–however professional–with regular sources.)

When I became a mother, however, was when the full understanding of “loneliness” sank in. Because it wasn’t just that I didn’t have as much time to work with sources anymore. It was also meeting other mothers at playdates and parks, and realizing how much more “into” mothering they were than I was. Getting on the floor and playing with their kids wasn’t just enough; it was what they lived for. I really started to think something was wrong with me because I didn’t feel that way, because I had this elephant in the room telling me I had to keep writing.

Even after I found other freelancing mothers–what a precious few we are!–let’s face it, we’re all busy. Many of us don’t have time to come online and chat with each other, and of those who make the time, you don’t always “click.” So as a freelancing mother, the temptation is there to get to be friends with anyone you can get your hands (or keyboard) on. Including your sources.

Becoming friends with a source when you freelance is a bit grayer than when you’re a “real” reporter in a newsroom. Prevailing wisdom is that it’s unethical, because you lose the ability to be fair and impartial. Beat reporters are advised to get off the beat if that happens, to tell their editors–and not to write any more stories with friend-source as focal point.

But when you’re a freelancer, even though fairness and impartiality are still important, again–you’re not working a beat; you can afford to stay in touch. You might, as I often do, work with PR professionals whose only job is to set up interviews with their corporate contacts. Not much to deal with as far as impartiality there, so it’s easy to trade talk about your kids and jobs and life.

But what if you click with a source so well that not only do you stay in touch about kids and jobs and life, but they keep coming up with great story ideas, which they’re more than qualified to provide interviews for? Such was the position I found myself in this past spring, with an investigator I’d worked with before on articles. And, honestly, we’re still hashing out the ethical stuff.

It’s moot to argue that your friend doesn’t mind, in fact welcomes, if you ask tough questions (as mine does). What matters is when readers (especially if they overlap among magazines you work for, as they do in certain trade markets like mine–public safety) notice the same name popping up in your articles. Even the question about whether you can really be impartial is enough to undermine your credibility, and your source’s, too. No writer needs that, not if you want to make a serious career out of it.

I think it’s important always to keep your editors apprised of the situation, and to think of ways your friend-source can still work with you without compromising either of your reputations. That may mean that friend provides only background information, and either sends a different source your way or lets you pick your own. You may also co-author articles (though most editors don’t like having to split pay.) If you know another freelancer you trust, send your friend to that person with her article ideas. And if you decide you’ll no longer work together on articles, but still want to work together, think of a different project: a classroom course, or a book.

Above all, though, don’t compromise your humanity for your career. If you really mesh well with a source, even if you agree never to work together again, it’s not worth your happiness to walk away from a great friendship just because you’re afraid of ethical quicksand. Freelancing while you mother is one of the loneliest jobs out there, and the neverending work doesn’t get it. Think of it this way: would you rather your kid sees you working and miserable, or surrounded by friends and happy? So keep your friend–the career will fall into place.

Back at it

It’s official: I’m back writing articles again. I am thrilled and terrified. Thrilled because I missed it far more than I thought I had. But the charge I got, writing first about the Clinton campaign headquarters hostage incident and then about cellular carriers’ role in criminal investigations, made it clear that this is an aspect of my career I should not neglect.

I’m also terrified, though, because trade magazine article writing is by far the most time- and labor-intensive aspect of any of my work. Editing is easy to do one sentence or paragraph at a time, in between requests for sippy cups and book-reading. Parenting articles are easy because they often involve first person, and I don’t necessarily have to track down expert sources.

And those two above articles? Well, the first involved just two sources: the police chief in Rochester, NH (someone I know from way back when I was an Explorer at that PD) and the tac team commander, who was really easy to talk to. The second article, meanwhile, was done at the request of a source I’ve worked with before. Future articles, however, will involve people I don’t know and have never talked to before. They may or may not be as patient if they hear small voices in the background, or with my fudging my schedule to avoid those small voices.

Still, the local paper estimates that next year, people in our state will pay an average $2500 MORE for home heating oil than we did this past winter. That’s just brutal, even if I hadn’t missed article writing so much. So of course I signed the four new contracts I got shortly after I turned in this last article. Because really, did I have any choice?

The Yummy Mummy Manifesto: A review

I have been trying to break out of the domestic mold for some time now. I bought girl clothes, attended a grown-up party, and made a new friend whose children are so close to being out of the house that talking kid stuff is just not a temptation. So when MotherTalk presented the opportunity to review Anna Johnson’s new book The Yummy Mummy Manifesto, I jumped at it.

I was not disappointed. More than a guidebook, the manifesto (as all good ones should be) is an intricate call to action: getting away from the “Juicy sweats” and ponytail that often seem easiest and most practical for mothers of young children to wear, and recognizing and fulfilling ourselves. Not to be selfish or to escape from our children, but to be better mothers.

Johnson covers all aspects of early motherhood, from pregnancy through childbirth and into the toddler years. While I had a hard time relating to pregnancy fashion (I’m done) and sexuality (HA), Johnson’s treatment of sensuality in pregnancy is right on. Linked to the process of birth itself, her discussion may seem a bit odd at first blush, but how right she is that one must reflect on childbearing as “a state rather than an act.”

Having first labored naturally, then having had to endure an emergency Caesarian section, Johnson can afford to advise women: “Drug-free, peaceful, and private birth is the ideal, yet for every alternative, there are ways to humanize, personalize, and empower your birth. Seeing it first and foremost as your own sacred rite of passage is primary to feeling strong and connected.”

Johnson is wonderfully, refreshingly honest about so many aspects of mothering: postnatal sex (”Coming back into your sexuality after a birth is wed pretty tightly to coming back into your power”), fighting with one’s mate (”At the heart of most really awful fights between parents is the same challenge ripping at both the mother and the father but often in different forms”), fitness (”The depletion of muscle tone, loss of agility, and dull weight of new-mother exhaustion pin us down”). Many chapters provide lists with tips on how to achieve Yummyhood, and even if none of the ideas fit you, they should provide a decent springboard from which to find your own way.

Occasionally Johnson edges into what my friend PT-LawMom calls “SanctiMommy” territory. Her chapter on pregnancy diet is delivered like a Jo Frost lecture on discipline, and she strays a bit from her message–finding the woman under the mommy–in her chapters on play and simplicity, which left me feeling like an utter failure. I quite literally draw a blank every time I sit on the floor to play with my children, and I do rely on television and obnoxious plastic toys, but I admit - I am afraid to try more radical mothering, fearful that despite Johnson’s claims of the boon to her creativity, my own will be subsumed.

Johnson understands, though, and her following chapters include “Crafts for Women Who Hate Them” and “Mummy’s Room: How to Build a Sanctuary,” which brings with it a number of ideas for all kinds of spaces in all sizes of home. To that end, The Yummy Mummy Manifesto isn’t just a silly idea of becoming more in tune yourself through fashion and flirtation, but about all the ways in which womanhood and motherhood are inextricably intertwined.

At the core of her book, indeed, Johnson discusses “Gut Reaction,” the criticality of maternal instinct to our lives as both women and mothers: “Blazing your own trail through all the dogma, right and left, and following your heart and senses as much as your logic, will not protect you from the fatigue of the job. But it will help you stand by your choices and know that they were truly your own”–the reason we must all find our own path to Yummyhood.

Afloat in the ether

When I was working tech support, we used to joke that emails that were never delivered and never got bounced had been “lost in the ether.” You know, because the university had Ethernet.

Okay, geek joke. One that turned out to be not so funny this week when I realized that not only had a message of mine been lost in the ether, but it had also resulted in one of my articles not getting printed. Worse, I never would have figured this out had it not been for a source.

Weeks ago, he’d asked me for copies of the two articles he’d contributed to: one in April 2003, and the other in 2006. I found the first, but couldn’t find the second. It should have been archived online, but wasn’t. I figured this was just a data entry error and went looking for my back issues. (I’m a packrat, at least for my own clips.) I also found my pay stubs from that year and compared them to the finished articles.

And… concluded that the second article had never been printed.

Flummoxed, I emailed my editor to ask what had happened. Had the article not met her needs after all? Had they held it and somehow forgotten about it? No to both: she’d never even filed it, which meant she’d never received it. And yet I had the original email from me to her, with attachment, sitting in my Sent mail.

Now it was time to ask myself what happened. How could I have missed this? Well, what was going on in 2006? I was pregnant, for one thing. At the time that I submitted the draft, I was 1) anxious that a test had come back screen positive for Down Syndrome and 2) seriously contemplating a move south. (In fact, we headed to North Carolina the month after I submitted the draft.) In July, when the article was supposed to have run, I would probably have figured that the editor decided to hold it. And at some point, I forgot all about it.

I may still be able to wring some life out of the article, if not at this then at another publication. My editor did ask me to resubmit and she’ll be reading it this week (she skimmed it and said it’s all “new” to her). Meanwhile, I have to deal with the guilt of knowing that I basically let two people down: my editor who was depending on me to deliver, and my source who needs the article to help him prove his status as an expert witness in an upcoming trial.

No one appears offended or aggrieved so far, but I do have to wonder whether this would have come about if I hadn’t been doing the freelancing mommy thing. And then whether it really matters if, as I believe, things happen (or don’t) for a reason, and everything works itself out in the end.

Scare people for a good cause

Shroud Publishing has a new anthology in the works. Proceeds from the sales of Northern Chill (tentative): 100 Terrifying New England Tales to Tell Around a Campfire will go to the American Cancer Society. Why? At the Shroud forum, an email from author Nate Kenyon discussed the impact of cancer on his life. His words have all the more impact as we approach Mother’s Day:

When I was eight years old, my mother was diagnosed with an advanced stage of ovarian cancer. A short time later, my father was killed in a freak automobile accident, leaving my mother alone to care for two young children and battle a terrifying disease, with no hope for a cure.My mother never let anything destroy her remarkable spirit. When I was only 4, she and my father left a comfortable life in Seattle and drove to Maine with nothing but a Volkswagen full of their personal belongings. My father set up shop as a small-town lawyer while my mother, a former teacher, learned to build passive solar houses. Then she built our home, from the ground up, with her own two hands.

I tell you this to illustrate her incredible strength and determination. She lived another five years after my father’s death, four years longer than her doctors predicted, astonishing everyone. But even she could not beat this disease forever, and when I was thirteen, she passed away peacefully with her family at her side.

I cannot express how devastating this was to me. It has taken me many years to begin to face those days from an adult’s perspective. The simple fact is, an experience like this damages a child in ways that are permanent and life-changing.

My mother loved the arts, and always encouraged me to draw and write as much as possible. Her enthusiasm and support made me want to become a writer, which brings me to where I stand today. Bloodstone, my first published novel, was released this week in paperback by Leisure Books. It is (I hope) a fun, scary read full of ghosts and demons and possession and old, long-buried family secrets. But there are also many references to cancer in the novel. I didn’t do this intentionally, but it crept in from my subconscious all the same. I guess it was also an exorcism of sorts for me.

The guidelines are as follows:

Flash fiction (no more than 700 words) told in the FIRST person (to allow readers to re-tell the story) set in a New England location. The anthology will be separated into 4 sections (tentative titles):

• Haunts- Stories of ghosts, specters, and phantoms
• Beasts- Stories of monsters, critters, and wild animals
• Humans- Stories of eccentric people, serial killers, mad men
• Other Oddities- everything else

Format: Submit as a Word .doc or .rtf attachment. SUBJECT LINE MUST SAY: “SUBMISSION–NORTH–TITLE”

Contact: via http://www.shroudmagazine.com/info.html

Multiple submissions allowed and encouraged.

No reprints

No simultaneous subs

Payment: (.01 cent a word or you can donate your stories)

I donated mine, a story right at the 700-word mark about a sailor, a werewolf, and what happens when you let your loins make the decisions. Who wants to join me?

Social graces? What social graces?

A few weeks ago I attended a Women’s Expo in Portland ME. It was okay. Lots of crafts, makeup, food, jewelry… you know. Chick stuff.

But there was also a corner reserved for Usborne books. I flipped through a couple and was immediately struck by the colors, the facts, the quality. They were having a buy-5-get-the-5th-free sale, so of course I picked some up. I had trouble choosing.

I also signed up to host a home party. I never host home parties. The last two I had gone to, over 10 years ago, were not good experiences. One was a Mary Kay party hosted at the home of a corporate Stepford wife. (All the conformity with none of the social graces, plus her husband was completely whipped.) The other was a PartyLite party at which the sales person actually got mad at me because I didn’t buy anything. I told her I was broke, so she shoved–literally shoved–a pamphlet at me describing how I too could become a sales consultant. I trashed it. I’m an introvert, people. I don’t do sales consulting.

So why in the hell did I sign up for this Usborne party? Well, the books’ quality really impressed me. I felt if I was going to hit my friends and acquaintances up for cash, the least I could do was present a product that is great for kids (Hamlet barely looks at his other books now) and high quality (Puck can’t destroy them).

So I contact a bunch of people: preschool moms, other Raising Maine bloggers (figuring I could meet a few in the deal), online friends. I got a few RSVPs and a few online sales. Things seemed to be going all right. I went out the morning of the party and got cheese and crackers, Chex mix, things like that.

No one showed.

The sales consultant and I did have a really nice chat. We have many things in common and it was nice to have adult conversation (even if half of it had to do with children). After she left, a shocked Rain Dog told me we could nosh on the leftover snacks for dinner. And now I sit here blogging and musing on my lack of ability even to plan a social event, let alone be part of one. Little wonder I write post-apocalyptic zombie fiction, I guess.

So here’s the part where I completely dispense with all social graces and solicit my readers. Feel like buying kid books? Visit my web party at this website linked in this sentence. Now, I understand the economy sucks and all of our budgets are going down the crapper right along with it. I am there myself, believe me. But just look, and if you see something you like–even just one thing–go and buy it. I think you’ll like the books’ quality just as much as I do (and I don’t make recommendations lightly) and I think you’ll like how your kids get into them, too.

Vestiges of a life: someday

Ordinarily, it’s easy for me to ignore the fact that I never get out. That my brainpower is most often put toward trying to read the minds of small people who can barely communicate, and in fact that most of my interests–writing, reading, gardening–keep me here at home.

On occasion these ideas break through, such as when our friends from Rhode Island come up to visit for a weekend and talk about all the fun and interesting things they do now that their children are grown and gone. Someday, I remind myself. Someday.

Other times, though, “someday” isn’t good enough. Opportunities for living come up that we can’t ignore, that we in fact don’t want to ignore. To wit:

Last month a source contacted me wanting to know if I was available to work with him on an article. I’ve worked with him before–this would be the third time–and it’s great fun. We established a good rapport right away (rare for a law enforcement source) and we keep in touch outside of the job. So when he mentioned that he’d be retiring in a few years, that he planned to travel the country and stop in for a visit and even a glass of wine, I started to salivate. Social contact. With wine. And I won’t even be nursing by then!

I was nursing (quite a lot, actually, as it turned out Puck was sick) this past weekend, when we attended a party at a new colleague’s home. There we discovered we had quite a few interests in common with Tim, his wife Jenn, and their friends: horror fiction (including movies), the Civil War, good music. I so wanted to stick around for the jam session, but by then Puck’s fever had spiked to 103F, and Hamlet was showing signs of weariness. Someday, I reminded myself, they will be old enough to stay awake. And so will we.

Fortunately, last Friday I was able to meet with another new friend, Raising Maine blogger Raye Tibbitts, who at least understands my dilemma. We also found that neither of us is able to play with our sons, and we feel similar emotions over this conundrum.

For now, “someday” has to continue to be good enough, along with the knowledge that good friends–the people who are meant to be in your life–will understand your situation, and will wait for you to be ready for their company. With or without wine.

Tagged for a book meme

Patti tagged me for one that’s making the rounds right now. The rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open it to page 123
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

The book: one I am reading right now for the purposes of reviewing - Mothers Need Time-Outs, Too (Susan Callahan, Anne Nolen, Katrin Schumann, New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008). Let this be a teaser:

Humans are better, happier beasts when their personal, emotional needs are being met. “Cerebral virtues–curiosity, love of learning–are less strongly tied to happiness than interpersonal virtues like kindness, gratitude, and capacity for love,” says Dr. Martin Seligman, author of Authentic Happiness. It’s the gentleness and appreciation that couples share in their best moments that nourishes them in a way nothing else can.

I’m tagging Bethany, Brittany, ML, Joanna, and Sheri. Have fun!

 

Achievements?

I never know how seriously to take these things, especially since I don’t actively market my blog. Maybe some of you savvier bloggers out there can let me know whether I’m being spammed, or whether I really am garnering attention?

First, Blogged.com has apparently given me an 8.5 rating. (Even though they rated my old blog rather than the sparkly new WordPress one.) I’m listed in their Books section, along with Maud Newton, Murder She Writes, Paperback Writer, and… Chris. Well, I’m mostly in good company, anyway.

Then came an email telling me that my parenting blog has been found “Buzzworthy” by BuzzLogic.com. As a result, their client is “very interested” in advertising with me. Hmm.

Have I been spammed? I don’t know. I have to sign up at Blogged to “claim” my blog description, even though I don’t have to sign up to post a widget here. BuzzLogic.com wants me to call to find out more about the advertising opportunity. Which, okay, I know that’s how Dooce pays her mortgage. But I don’t know much about it other than that I will never be Dooce. Anyone have any advice here?

Oh, and I also periodically get emails from people who want me to post links to articles on entrepreneur-type issues like avoiding business debt, etc. I would think that if my readers want this kind of information, they could Google it. Am I right on this, or… not?

What’s in my head

At first I was wondering how these writing moms got into my head. Then I realized: we’re all essentially the same. We have similar temperaments, which means we suffer from the same mental disorder that told us we could be successful as writers taking care of small children. So our experiences, anxieties, and thoughts are very, very similar, even if our pre-kid life histories are very different.

Sheri wrote:

i have taken care of a toddler and worked at home and brought in an income every day for over 17 months without, until recently, any childcare. when did this happen? how the hell do i do that?…. oh god, i might be a supermom.

if i were truly a supermom, though, wouldn’t my house be cleaner? wouldn’t i cook something every now and again? wouldn’t i do a lot more active parenting (crafts! story time! field trips!)? wouldn’t i have a whole lot less guilt about the fact that i do only what is absolutely necessary and required to get by when it comes to day-to-day living, parenting hours, volunteering at the school, and so on? wouldn’t i spend a lot more time (or any time) fine tuning and perfecting my actual “momhood”? proving my “momhood” to the world!

or am i a supermom because i even consider these things in the first place?

Then Bethany wrote:

Groceries. Dishes. Laundry. Pick up Dry Cleaning. If the baby took a nap, I wanted to finish the work project. Get to that book I needed to read. Write the review… it went on and on and on. By minute four, the tears stared. What the hell am I doing? To-Do lists on a Saturday? Pre-child these were days of sleeping in til the afternoon, cold pizza, TNT movies, and hell, nothing. Here, I was cramming more than a normal days work of work into a few hours. And that included the day job. The one I am salaried to work in 40 hours.

But I also read this gem at Freelance Parent:

Being a procrastinator doesn’t mean that your work or your mental well-being has to suffer. In fact, when done correctly, procrastination can actually work for you. (N.B.: Read the list. That’s my life, too.)

It may be true that you feel you cannot procrastinate, because you simply have too much to do. But I really think that as writing mothers, we put too much pressure on ourselves. Our mothers’ generation was told they could have it all, except that they still felt torn between the old values and the new ones, so some thought they should have been working while they stayed home, while others maybe sacrificed a little too much as they went into the workforce.

They made sure we knew we could have it all, too, and I think that’s why many more of us work from home… and tell each other, “You can have it all. Just maybe not all at the same time.” Which, of course, doesn’t stop some of us from trying to have it all at the same time.

I wish I had better answers. I wish it weren’t so pat to say, “This too shall pass” or “Try to see the constant neediness as opportunity.” Because when you need a break NOW, none of that provides the perspective that the advice-offerers think it does.

The best I can say is, give yourselves a break. We’re all doing the best we can. Sometimes (okay, often) our best goes toward our children. Sometimes toward husband or work or home. And sometimes we can’t give our best at all. Writes Spyscribbler:

Sometimes, the only thing we have to hold on to is that there is worth in each of us, just by being. Not by what we do, or who we are, or how we act. There is still worth in us, even when we are confined to bed, “useless” to society.

So be nice to yourselves. Whatever we do is good. Maybe not great, maybe not what we think or know we can do. But enough.