Featured Mom - Heather Cook the Writing Mother

Heather Cook is this weeks Featured Mom. She is a fellow Canadian, a fellow Calgarian, a fellow writer and a fellow Heather. Read her post below. It's fantastic.

There are many days that I don’t see myself as a creative person. In fact, if I didn’t hate math so much, I’d probably look and sound more like a mathematician.

Calculating the minutes I can stay in bed until I absolutely have to get up or I’ll be late for work. Counting minutes down until I can go for lunch. Crunching sales numbers at a Real Life Job that pays the bills in an insanely expensive city. Measuring the time between home time and bed time for the kids and my own bed time and cross referencing the number of words I need to get written to stay on track with the articles and the books.

I’m a writer. Despite that regular job and no formal training, I’m a writer. A writing mother. In fact, I run a site just for writing mothers called (wait for it…) TheWritingMother.com.

But I don’t juggle being a mom and an employee and a freelance writer. There’s no juggling. There’s planning and executing because that’s how I am. Somewhere between God counting all the hairs on my head and getting to know me in utero, he hardwired me to be what my husband calls A Planner.

(My team at work calls me The General. Gee, I don’t know why.)

But being a planner (or a General) works for me because I am at peace and calm when I know where everyone is, what everyone is doing, what we have and want to do and how much time we have to do it in.

And when I’m at peace and calm, I am able to be creative.

I have a six-year old boy, and a 19-month old girl. Their schedules are what set my own schedule in motion. For the longest time, I just assumed that it was ‘being with’ my kids to just be in the same room as they were. Boy was I wrong. My second Chicken Soup essay (Chicken Soup for the Working Mother’s Soul) was all about the learning experience I had – my kids didn’t want a writing mother, they wanted a mother. I was spending so much time saying “just a sec, honey” or “I’ll be right there, honey” while I tried to peck out a few paragraphs that I wasn’t able to be a fully present mom in the few hours that I have with my kids each day.

Because I work full time and I write whenever I can, my kids are in school and day care. I get off work at about 3:30 pm and then I pick up my children on the way home from work. From 4 pm until bed time, I spend my time making supper and hanging out with my kids. Tonight it was a game of hide and seek all over the three levels of our townhouse. Both kids got into it, my daughter screeching every time she found her big brother. She’s not learned the fine art of pretending not to notice that foot sticking out from behind the door.

But once bedtime arrives, once the stories are read and the baby rocked and the prayers flung upwards… then I can sit and release my creativity. I’ve heard a lot of writing mothers bemoan not being ‘inspired’ to write at the end of the day. But it’s not about inspiration. Writing is about perspiration. It’s about showing up at the keyboard at the same time each day (for me, it’s after the kids are in bed) and writing. It’s about being present at the keyboard so when the muse shows up, you are there to greet her. Because let me tell you, she doesn’t wait around at the keyboard for you!

Heather Cook is a freelance writer from Calgary, Alberta. She has over 250 articles and columns to her credit and two books due out in 2008 and 2009. You can find her online at www.heather-cook.com or www.thewritingmother.com

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