Bad Mommy Bad Writer: Writing From Home While Keeping the Kids Alive

One woman's quest to make something of herself. During nap time.

Me: Mother, wife and writer watching forty climb the front steps like a peddler pushing time, and me with nowhere to hide.

The writer part used to come first, the forty used to be thirty, and marriage and motherhood were abstract activities I thought I'd try someday. Ah, growing up. If only it was the thrill promised when we were six.

I have written hundreds of articles and essays that have been published. I have written a book that has not been published. It has been rejected. Repeatedly. Eventually, I set the whole stupid manuscript on fire. Did that stop me on this preposterous quest to publish a book? No. All I want in the whole wide world besides being a good mother to my two tiny daughters is to be an author.

But writing is hard. And the publishing industry is a beast. And I am terrified of failure. And most of my days are spent trapped under a pile of plastic princesses or scraping peanut butter off of the wall.

Will I pull this author thing off? Or will I ditch writing, adopt a Xanax habit, abandon my own identity and live the rest of my life vicariously through my children?

Hmm, let's find out.