10 things that have helped me balance writing, parenting, and working (Guest Post)

A guest essay by Julie Vick

The Pomegranate is honored to feature a guest essay today by Julie Vick, humorist and author of Babies Don’t Make Small Talk (So Why Should I?): The Introvert’s Guide to Surviving Parenthood.

Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash

My oldest kid just turned 14, which means I have been attempting to juggle writing, a teaching job, and parenting for over 14 years.

I say attempting because I’m still not always doing it well! But in the years since my first kid was born, I have managed to do a lot—published a book, published freelance and humor pieces in over 50 publications, written a Substack newsletter, and graded approximately 5 billion student papers.

I am a writing instructor at a university and am fortunate that my job has afforded me some flexibility. I teach a mix of online and in-person classes and have taught more online ones since becoming a parent. My teaching job also means I have more time to write at certain points of the year, like summer (although having kids out of school in the summer presents its own set of challenges).

I realize not everyone has this kind of flexibility in their jobs, and so some of the things that work for me might not work for you!

But these are 10 things that have helped me balance writing, a day job, and parenting.

1. Rejecting some standard writing advice

A lot of standard writing advice doesn’t work well for me. I don’t write every day or have a standard writing routine. While I know many writers get up early to write, I have never been able to pull that off.

When my kids were younger and went to bed earlier, I often wrote in the evenings. Now I often work on writing-related tasks in the afternoons once my kids are home from school and I’ve done what I needed to for my teaching job during the day.

I often take days (or sometimes weeks) off from writing, and I think the breaks can be helpful in letting ideas marinate and preventing burnout.

2. Using parenting as writing inspiration

Since having kids, I’ve written several parenting humor pieces, essays, and family travel pieces, and found that there are a lot of outlets and readers for parenting-related pieces.

I have boundaries about what I will write about my kids, but I’ve realized that there are lots of different ways to write family-related content.

When one of my kids was in preschool, he was obsessed with dinosaurs, and I learned a lot about this topic from the many dinosaur-related books I read to him. I realized I could probably spin this knowledge into a freelance piece, which I did for AFAR.

Paying attention to what your kids are obsessed with or what parenting challenges you are facing can often provide inspiration for writing.

3. Finding a parenting writing community

I’ve met parent writer friends in online communities, by taking classes, and by going to conferences, and found it valuable to have some sort of parenting writing community. I like having other writers I can bounce ideas off of, trade edits with, or just vent to.

I currently have a Zoom accountability meet-up with another writer every few weeks. It feels helpful that we are both at similar points in our careers and parenting lives (and if one or the other of us often has to push the meeting back or reschedule it because some kid-related thing pops up, it is never a big deal).

4. Taking advantage of small pockets of time

The irony of writing and parenting is that I have accomplished more in my writing career than I did in the 35 years that I did before becoming a parent.

I think this is because I am very aware of how little time I have to write, and so rather than procrastinating, I try to use the time I have. This might mean jotting down some ideas in my phone’s notes app or taking advantage of (or extending) my kids’ screen time to write.

5. Setting quarterly goals

After a lot of trial and error, the system that seems to work best for me is to set quarterly goals for general writing tasks I want to accomplish.

When I tried monthly goals in the past, I found that some months I couldn’t get a lot done (I’m looking at you May, August, and December), so it felt easier to deal with a broader chunk of time like a quarter for goal setting and also just plan to not get a lot done at certain times of the year.

I also try to make these goals achievable (like submitting a certain number of times) and don’t feel bad if unexpected things with my teaching job or parenting come up. Most goals can be moved onto the next quarter (or year).

6. Working on projects that I have the brain space and time for

When I was first trying to fit writing in around parenting, I realized that I didn’t have the brain space or time to work on certain things. This meant I often wrote shorter essays or humor pieces because they felt easier for me to work on in small chunks.

While I know lots of writers who have written novels or done longer feature-length pieces while having small kids, those things felt like they weren’t a good fit for the season of life I was in.

My kids are in middle school now, and I feel like I can take on some longer projects, but there are others that I still don’t have the current brain space and time for (maybe when they graduate from high school?)

7. Limiting the amount of pitching I do in favor of writing full drafts

I know some freelancers who mostly avoid writing “on spec”—or writing a full piece rather than just a pitch. But because pitching can be unpredictable—it’s hard to know when (or if) you will get a response, and sometimes editors want a tight turnaround if they accept something—I’ve found that writing full pieces and submitting them often feels easier for me to juggle with parenting and my teaching job.

The downside of this is I may spend time on a piece that doesn’t get picked up, but that is often preferable for me.

8. Taking this one piece of productivity advice.

Several years ago, I read one piece of productivity advice I still find useful. (Ironically, I think I stumbled on it when I was writing a satire piece about productivity and looking for some advice language I could riff on.)

The advice is to work on the thing you least want to do first.

This helps me when I’m trying to manage my to-do list for a given day. If there is a task for my day job that I’ve been avoiding, then I try to do that first so that later in the day, when I have less energy, I have things I’m more motivated to work on.

9. Setting boundaries and taking breaks

When my kids were younger, I was submitting and writing a lot. But after several years of doing this, I started feeling some burnout and realized I needed to set more boundaries around my time.

Now I mostly try to take a break from certain writing tasks on the weekend (like sending pitches, responding to emails, or social media comments).

This means I’m not submitting and publishing as much as I could be, but it has helped me to focus more on projects I’m interested in and excited to work on.

And one benefit of having a day job is that writing is a side gig, so I can pick and choose what I want to work on more.

10. Accepting that I’m not going to get as much done as other people

I’m a slow writer, and the unpredictable nature of parenting means that I can’t get everything done I want to.

It can be frustrating to have more ideas than you have time to write, or to finally get a pocket of time to write and then your kid crashes his bike and almost knocks his teeth out (true story).

But I try to accept that it’s okay to move at my own slower pace and that even small bits of writing time can add up to a lot over time.

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Julie Vick is a writer living in Colorado. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Real Simple, Parents, McSweeney’s, and the notes app of her smartphone. She is the author of Babies Don’t Make Small Talk (So Why Should I?), a humorous advice book for introverted parents. Find more of her writing on her Substack, Humor Me.

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