MamaWriters are thrilled to welcome historical–and now paranormal!–author Carolyn Jewel.  With historicals that garner praise across the board–and a hero in her most recent historical release that earned a K.I.S.S. Award from Romantic Times–as well as a new paranormal that is  getting rave reviews, Carolyn Jewel is a hard-working romance writer who does it all while raising a child.

Help us welcome Carolyn as she talks about how she did it, and asks us all how we do it to!

When I became a mother, as any parent viscerally knows, and everyone else understands, my life profoundly changed. When I arrived at the hospital that fateful day, I was, to be honest, most involved with thinking that labor was really no fun at all. As I came in, one of the nurses gave me a perky smile and said, “This is going to be the greatest day of your life.”

I thought to myself, She’s an insane woman. This hurts!

But she was right. The birth of my son was and will remain forever, the greatest day of my life.

And, as all parents soon learn, there is a cost– not that most parents think of raising children in such crass terms, especially since what you get back is exponentially more than what you put in. Raising a young child is labor intensive. It’s physically and emotionally draining. Sleep deprivation can take an insidious toll.  Today, when so many women work both in and out of the home, the price of juggling family and job can feel overwhelming.   A parent lucky enough to stay home full time doesn’t have it any easier (just a different set of demands).  While older children do get easier as they become more independent, the worries deepen.

Writing is hard work and boy, sometimes it’s really discouraging. Every writer, like every parent, faces her own set of issues about writing. Some of us struggle most with plot, others with wordiness, or characterization or going off on tangents that have to be reined in. Name your poison. Some of us are plotters while others are seat of the pants authors. One thing writing requires, though, is time to write. And parents tend to be more time challenged than most.

A writer requires support; a partner or family member who supports the need for time to write. Even if you have less support than you’d like or less time than you’d like, there are ways to carve out time. Jane Austen describes being interrupted while writing and hiding her efforts under the blotter. Not every writer goes public. Some of us require personal privacy or might be in a situation where she feels the endeavor might be belittled or even sabotaged. Sad but true. You may actually need to protect your writing from others.

For a writing mother, time to write can be carved out during naptimes, or when the children are playing among themselves and not in need of immediate intervention. When children are young, the time available for writing tends to happen in shorter increments. When they’re older, time increases. They’re more independent, involved in more time consuming activities, they are embarrassed that you exist and are glad to have you scurry off to your cave. (Which is when you should not do so!)

Every writer, parent or not, needs to face the issue of what do with the time she does manage to have to herself.  Every minute of writing could be spent doing something else that isn’t writing, and those things can even seem quite important. Well, all right, some of those things actually are important. But come on, use your best judgment. Writers who end up selling are, in my experience, the ones who made the choice to write instead of doing something else. I think every writer has had someone say to them, "I’d like to write a book some day." My usual answer is that books don’t write themselves. If you wait for the time to come to you, you’ll never start your book, let alone finish it.

At sports practices and before games, I sit in the car with my laptop and I write.  At the gym, I use the exercise bike so my hands are free to brainstorm in a notebook. I often work during lunch at the day job. Since I already get up at 4:15 a.m., getting up any earlier just isn’t going to happen. For other writers, morning writing is perfect. I get most of my hours in when my son is asleep, pretending to sleep, or when he’s off with friends. My goal is a thousand words a day now, but even at 250 words a day, at the end of a year, you’ll have written a novel. Words on the page gets it done.

Even time-challenged single-parent writers with full-time day jobs can carve out enough time to write until a book is actually done.  Heck, I even managed to write a book when I was a single-parent writer with a full-time day job and in graduate school. Two, actually. I couldn’t have done it without the support of family, and it took me five years, one course a semester, to get my MA, but I did manage it.

I managed because I made choices about where I would spend my “free” time.

So, if you write, what choices are you making? Which ones seem to provide the most bang for the buck? Share your strategies for making the most of the moments you have!