I come to this analogy as I return to work after my month off, and as the number of writing projects I am working on seems to have rapidly proliferated. All of a sudden I am once again busy all day, and come home to: 1) a novel I have completed and need to revise and query for; 2) a WIP for which I must complete a first draft; and 3) some other ideas for future work that need to be fleshed out.
So, in the analogy, the small child is the day job and the suitcases are the writing projects. You need to, at least more or less, move down the street as a cohesive unit with the kid and the bags. The small child certainly requires the most attention on a continuous basis, and is least under your direct control. It's the most likely to try to run off, and in a pinch you might need to leave the suitcases for a little while and run after it.
And the suitcases themselves need to be juggled and arranged in a way that allows you to move each of them forward. You can't abandon one and come back for it later, or it might very well be gone. On the other hand, the bags are different and you can't hitch them all together and move them forward in lockstep.
I wouldn't want to try to extend the analogy too far. But the upshot is: you've got more than you can really manage and the best you can do is to try to keep it all close as you make uneven halting progress down the street.
4 comments:
This is why I retired from the Very Important Organization. I knew otherwise I'd never write, because I don't have the discipline/energy/moxie/smarts to work a real job and write at the same time. It's way hard.
Yeah, you got that right. I haven't been working full-time in an office for a while but I've got three kids. That equals interruptions every forty-six seconds. That's why I didn't write for 5 years. I just couldn't do it and remain sane. If you can even THINK about kicking the literary ball down the road with all that stuff on your plate, you're a better man than I.
So what do those of us with small children do?
All - I just think it means we can't be too hard on ourselves for moving slowly. Moving at all is an accomplishment.
Sierra - I honestly have no idea how you balance all that plus small children. My wife and I are seriously deliberating starting a family in the relatively near future and this is definitely a concern.
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