"I would write every minute that the baby was sleeping": How To Balance Family Life and Writing Life

« One Word: Magic Cure for Writers' Block | Main | "You have to pray that the right person opens your book": How To Find the Right Readers for Your Book »

Nov14

"I would write every minute that the baby was sleeping": How To Balance Family Life and Writing Life

Jason Boog

November 14, 2006

Know More: Creative Writing, Five Easy Questions, Heather O'Neill, Writing Resources 2.0, Five Easy Questions

"People gave you a hard time about being a kid at twelve. They didn't want to give you Halloween candy anymore. They said things like, 'If this were the Middle Ages, you'd be married and you'd own a farm with a million chickens on it.' They were trying to kick you out of childhood."

That's a passage from Heather O'Neill's novel, Lullabies for Little Criminals. Today O'Neill tells how she wrote that book, balancing a novel and family life.

Welcome to the second installment of my deceptively simple feature: Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a serialized set of weekly interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web publishing...

Jason Boog:
You've worn many different hats in your work life. How do you balance all these different jobs without going crazy? Any advice for the fledgling writer trying to balance a day-job and a writing life at the same time? Continue reading...

Lullabies for Little Criminals

Heather O'Neill:
I would say that you have to put aside time everyday to write and respect it religiously. You develop stamina when you write everyday.

You can't just start out writing six hours a day--which is what you eventually have to do to write a novel.

First, start out with an hour or something. It begins to be something that you need to do like eating or breathing.

I had a baby when I was twenty and it was really hard to find time to write, so I would write every minute that the baby was sleeping. You just have to use what time you have, I guess.

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