Ramblings on Writing ~

I’m going to preface this (waaaaaay long overdue) post by saying this: I love my boys, and wouldn’t trade them for anything. Most days! But five-month-old twins (heretofore individually known as Thing 1 and Thing 2, and collectively as The Brudders) are hard work, more than twice as hard as two kids. I’m going to coin a phrase right this instant, it’s twince as hard  🙂

As their primary care giver – meaning I’m home with them almost all the time – I cautiously hope for the days when they take a nap at the same time. HA! With one early-bird baby and one night owl, that doesn’t happen very often. I scoff out loud and with curse words at baby books that advice you to, “nap when the baby naps.” Yeah, that’s all well and good when you have just one, or maybe even two that sleep at the same time. The Brudders, though, from the day we brought them home, have had this weird sense of timing. They KNOW when I’m about to do something, anything, that doesn’t involve them. Like, they’ll both miraculously be sound asleep. I finally get to eat lunch! I make said lunch, pop open my daily Cherry Coke, sit down, and … WAHHHHHHH!

**for example, I’ve had to stop three times already, just to get these two paragraphs done**

It is tiring, and often frustrating. Never mind lunch, I’ve gotten good at eating one handed. And lucky for The Brudders, they are super cute. Besides, look at these FEET!

Twin feet are twice as cute!

But when I’ve just gotten myself settled and have started to write? Forget it! It is nearly impossible to write one-handed, or with a baby cooing, fussing, wiggling, whatever, in my arm. Plus my mind is just not in it (the zone, I guess) when I’m contending with Thing 1 or Thing 2. They each demand 110% of my attention.

I was inspired to write this after a very normal thing last night: I was posting back-and-forth on facebook with a friend last night around 9pm my time. He’s in Germany, and so it was the beginning of his day. And I remember just getting going on writing around that time of night, and he and I would “chat” while I did so, and often while he was writing, too … sometimes we’d chat for a few minutes, other times it would go on-and-off for a couple of hours.  And now? Now I can barely even stay awake until 9:30pm. While saying a quick good night to my friend, I had a sudden longing for all those late-night words I used to create. My characters almost always spoke best to me after dark set in – often with a little help from some Irish whiskey (they tell me you can’t give that to babies any more …). I’d stay up until midnight or later almost every night, knowing whatever I was writing would need heavy editing in the morning, but that the creative ideas were flowing and to just hold on and see where it would take me.

These days, though? I can barely stay awake until 9:30pm. Especially knowing that The Brudders, Thing 1 specifically, will be up around 4-5am wanting to be fed.

But this isn’t a blog about babies, or being a mom. It’s about writing. Except the two are now intricately intertwined, and nothing I can do will ever untie that. Nor do I want it to, not really. But some days, I’d rather be writing …