How To Balance Writing and Motherhood
Prioritizing Your Creative Career Even When It Just Looks Like a “Cute Hobby”
I discovered writing while I was on maternity leave. Or rather, I re-discovered writing. I’d written poems and a very bad version of Hamlet-with-vampires in high school, but it was just for fun. It had never occurred to me that writing could be a career. That the novels I read came from actual human beings who got to spend their days making things up for a living.
So when I finally figured this out (at the age of 30), I wanted it. But the problem was, I was already a lawyer and also Mommy to a very sweet little girl, which were two full-time jobs on top of the new one I coveted.
Still, I was on maternity leave, and my parents—who had always supported my random dreams (they let me major in Russian literature and language in college, for goodness’ sake)—offered for me to stay with them for a bit. They would spend the daytime hours with their delightful granddaughter, and I could hole myself away in the Rancho Cucamonga Public Library and hammer out what would become my first manuscript.
We don’t need to talk about that one. It was bad. I thought it was a masterpiece at the time and I was honestly shocked when agents didn’t come storming my door to represent me. But that’s okay. I had fallen head over heels for writing! I had never loved doing anything else more. (spoiler alert: I loathed being an attorney. I had only gone to law school because no one offered jobs to Russian literature majors, and Harvard Law decided they wanted me—probably because I was the only Russian lit major in their applicant pool and that made me “interesting.”)
Anyway, I had written a book-length thing and it was horrible, but I was hooked and I wanted to write more. So I decided to take a leap of faith and quit law to be a struggling, unpaid artist. (The theme here is that my dreams are not always practical, but they sure are fun.)
I want to jump forward in time for a sec and show you that it all worked out, and then I’ll go back and tell you how. I’m now a New York Times bestselling author who has published eight novels with Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Macmillan, and Disney, with another book coming out later this year. I also partnered with Netflix in a groundbreaking literary/film collaboration called Damsel, which starred Millie Bobby Brown, Angela Bassett, and Robin Wright.
Along the way, though, I also wrote ten manuscripts that got rejected, and a book whose release date has been indefinitely delayed (that’s a total of 20 books if you’re keeping count, so I’ve got close to a 50% rejection rate). I am on my third agent (all of whom were right for different stages of my career—I promise to write another post about that soon).
And I did all that while juggling motherhood.
There are two big secrets:
Secret Number One:
When I was just starting out, I attended an SCBWI conference where award-winning and bestselling author Laurie Halse Anderson gave a talk about protecting your creativity and making time for it. And there was one piece of advice she gave that really stuck with me: She gave all the parents in the audience permission not to feel guilty for not volunteering in their children’s classrooms.
If you’re a mom—especially to adorable little ones like I had at the time—you know exactly what this guilt feels like. Don’t you want to volunteer every Thursday for art class? Can you please come in on Wednesdays for math circle because we could really use an extra set of hands? And while you’re at it, you’d be perfect for Room Parent, to be in charge of wrangling all the other parents to volunteer for everything that comes up.
It was hard to say no. It was hard to explain to the other parents that even though I didn’t have an agent or a book deal yet, that even though my writing just looked like a “cute hobby,” I was actually trying to build a career. I needed the three hours my daughter was in preschool to be my time—to write, to revise, to learn how to tell stories better.
Thank goodness for Laurie Halse Anderson. It was only because she straight-up told us to Say No to Volunteering that I was brave enough to do it. I wanted to be a writer, and so I would have to give myself the space and time to become that. I also wanted my daughter to grow up seeing her Mommy pursuing work that she loved. I knew it would make me a better mother in many other ways, too.
Secret Number Two:
Deep Work. If you’ve read my post How I Wrote 4 Novels in 365 Days, you’ll know I am a dedicated disciple to shutting off distractions and re-training your brain to sit in The Quiet. It is extraordinary how much you can get done—and how much smarter you suddenly become—when you go all-in on Deep Work.
I won’t rehash it all here, because I detail it all in my other post. Read it. Get yourself a copy of Deep Work from the bookstore or library. And commit. Your writing will thank you for it.
Did I ever regret the time I missed out on being in my daughter’s preschool and kindergarten classrooms? It would be a lie if I said I didn’t. But I made sure that when I was with her, I was fully with her—all attention and love focused on my amazing little girl. The flip side was also true—when I was with my writing, I was with my writing—all attention and love focused on my characters and the worlds I was creating.
The Pay-Off: My 1st Launch Party
My first book, The Crown’s Game, was published when my daughter was in first grade. It was a story about a pair of enchanters locked in a deadly, magical duel, set in 19th century Imperial Russia (my favorite time period from my undergraduate studies, because many of the novels of Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Dostoevsky were set around that era). It turned out that my seemingly random dream to major in Russian literature actually did come in handy.
For the launch party for The Crown’s Game, my daughter and all her little friends came, as did the parents, the first grade teacher, and the teaching assistant (hi Mrs. Rivers and Mr. Cruz! Thanks for understanding why I never volunteered!) It was a joyful celebration with a photo booth and crowns and scepters for the kids and grown-ups alike to take photos with, and I hired a pastry chef to re-create the magical pastries from the book. What a joy to show my daughter the culmination of what I’d been working toward!
And let me tell you, it was all worth it. Juggling family life and a creative dream wasn’t always easy. But I wouldn’t change a minute of my unpredictable, meandering path.
Are you a parent, too, with other passions you’re trying to balance? I’d love to hear about your experiences—successful and in-progress and try-agains—in the comments!
Get your copy of THE CROWN’S GAME!
Wordplay Book Club for Writers and Curious Readers
In case you missed it, we’re launching a monthly, super casual, online book club where we discuss books from a writer’s perspective!
WHO: Writers who love reading and want to examine stories more closely, and Readers who are curious about why they feel the way they do about a book
WHAT:
First 30-ish minutes: Book discussion—What makes this book tick? We’ll talk about things like whether the plot worked and if not, why not? Where was the pacing great and where did the tension dip, and why? And why do some people love Character A but others hate him, while Character B is universally adored?
Bonus time: After the book discussion, we’ll have an optional 30-minute hang out to share what we’re working on, ask each other for advice on writer’s block or finding a literary agent or doing book publicity, etc.
I’d love for you to join us!
Reading: What’s on my Nightstand
Not a book rec, but I thought I’d share that the idea for this essay (the one you just read) came out of a comment I made on
’s excellent Substack, Tell Their Stories. Hannah is an expert storyteller (she has been a journalist, editor, and community storyteller for brands like the Guardian, Instagram, Vogue and, now, Substack), and I loved this piece she wrote about the 10 Creative Lessons she learned from her artist husband. I hope you’ll check it out.Book and Movie Release Calendar: 2024
March 5th - Damsel movie tie-in paperback edition
March 8th - Damsel movie releases on Netflix
May 7th - The Hundred Loves of Juliet summer paperback edition
July 30th - One Year Ago in Spain - NEW RELEASE
As a new mom who's writing brain has turned back on during my maternity leave, this resonates hard. My brain is blown that you've written 20 books while raising your daughter (plus still working for those first ones!). Thank you for sharing not only tips and tricks, but that it is possible.
Thank you for sharing some of your story on how you became a successful writer while also juggling motherhood, Evelyn! I think many mother-writers need to hear more stories like this! (Mother-writer is a term I first heard from Laura Pashby here on Substack 🤍.)
I spent many, many spare moments while raising my two kids writing, working through messy rough drafts of manuscripts that I’m not sure I’ll show anyone. I’ve also explored my life experiences in a fictionalized format and wrote a healing memoir (that is unpublished) after my mothers suicide. And, deeply reflective journaling has become a life-long habit.
I suppose I’ve written a few “books before the book”. 😊 It’s also encouraging to read about your 50% success rate. This tells me to keep going, even in the face of potential rejection.
Writing has always been a life-line that has helped me process difficult and amazing experiences and emotions. I’ve just never been able to really figure out that next step - to put my work in front of others or get published. The reality of living a successful writers’ life seems illusive and somewhat mysterious! Instead I’ve tried many life paths, but I always return to the writing!
I’m inspired to revisit that book, Deep Work. And looking forward to reading your post “How I wrote 4 novels in 365 days”. Wow.
And I’m determined to keep writing here on Substack in the hopes of building an author platform as I move into the role of “writer-mother”, now that my children are grown.