I would like to share a guest post BALANCING A WRITING CAREER WITH RAISING CHILDREN By Kathie Giorgio
I was 23 years old when I had my first child, a son, in January of 1984. 27 months later, I had my second son, and 13 months after that, my first daughter. Then came a gap of 13 years, where I divorced my first husband, married my second, and in October of 2000, had my fourth child, my second daughter.
And through it all, I wrote up a storm, having hundreds of stories and poems published in literary magazines and anthologies. In 2010, my first novel was published, which started an avalanche. In the last 13 years, I’ve had 14 books published (7 novels, 2 short story collections, 4 poetry collections, and 1 collection of essays), all by traditional publishers. I also edited an anthology and started my own business, a creative writing studio that offers online and on-site courses and workshops to writers of all genres and abilities, as well as coaching and editing services. The business is international.
And I’m exhausted.
My children, however, who are now 39, 37, 36, and 22, all not only survived, but they thrived. They always have front row seats at my launches. And they have a very healthy respect for literature and for reading.
I think probably the most important thing I did while raising my children and struggling to write was develop and maintain a sense of worth over what I was doing. I never considered my writing as a hobby. It’s a passion, a lifestyle, a drive, and ultimately, a career. It was, plain and simple, important to me. I let my children see that. They learned very early on that there was more to their mother than being Mommy, or in the case of my fourth child, Mama.
A part of showing this worth and this importance was in taking up physical space. I always made sure, wherever we were living, that I had my own office. Sometimes, it was just a corner of the basement, but mostly, it was an actual room, with four walls and a door. I never wrote at the dining room or kitchen table. I never had to pack up my stuff to make room for something else. The space was mine.
My kids knew that what Mommy/Mama did was work. When I would head into my room, I didn’t tell them I was going to write. I said I was going to work. They understood that. And they knew that, whenever I was in that room, I was to be left alone unless there was something that absolutely needed my attention.
They had their rooms. I had my room. We all respected each other’s spaces.
I think, as parents who write, where we truly hit a bump in the road is when we receive rejections. Writers don’t usually get paid until after they write something, big or small, and sometimes even then, we don’t get paid very much, if anything. So when we get hit with rejection, and we all do, it’s very easy to fall into the trap of believing that what we’re doing isn’t important, it doesn’t have worth, because we don’t earn a steady paycheck. And why in the world are we spending time away from our children to write something that may never see the light of day, and even if it does, it won’t pay enough to pay the electric bill?
At those moments, it’s hard to hear this, but we spend our time writing because it’s important to us. It drives us. We spend hours thinking up words and sentences and paragraphs and when we finally sit down to write, it just feels like we’re doing what we were put on this earth to do. So likewise, we spend a lot of time telling our children to love themselves, that money isn’t the only way of determining someone’s value, and that we always need to be true to ourselves.
Sometimes, we need to say these exact same lessons to ourselves. Always be true to yourself.
I wish I could have the time back that I spent worrying that I wasn’t being a good mother when I sat down to write, instead of sitting down to play with my children, when, in fact, I sat down to play with them after I finished writing. I could do both! But it took a while to realize that, and to accept it.
When did I begin to accept it?
When my children began asking me what I’d written that day.
When my children crowed with me when I showed them the latest magazine, the latest anthology, and now the latest book with my name on it.
When my younger son, in the third grade, ran home from school ahead of his siblings, burst in the back door and shouted, “Mommy! I wrote a story! Come see!” And I did. I dropped everything to see it, even the chapter I was working on. And he knew I would.
When my fourth child, too young to know how to write, asked if she could dictate her story to me before she went to bed at night, and we did and we printed it. Today, at 22 years old, she’s just finishing her first draft of a novel. And that younger son? He is writing a blog, and somewhere on his computer, I know there’s a novel.
My children knew that what I was doing was important because I treated it as important. My children know that they are important because I treat them as important and now they treat themselves as important too.
Embrace your words, and embrace your children. You will all grow together.
Kathie Giorgio
Director, AllWriters’ Workplace & Workshop LLC
Just released 2023: Hope Always Rises, a novel, released by Black Rose Writing
Released in September 2022: Olivia In Five, Seven, Five; Autism in Haiku, a poetry chapbook, released by Finishing Line Press
Author, novels, The Home For Wayward Clocks, Learning To Tell (A Life)Time, Rise From The River, In Grace’s Time, If You Tame Me, and All Told, story collections, Enlarged Hearts and Oddities & Endings; The Collected Stories of Kathie Giorgio, essay collection, Today’s Moment Of Happiness Despite The News, and the poetry books, True Light Falls In Many Forms, When You Finally Said No, and No Matter Which Way You Look, There Is More To See
234 Brook St., Unit 2 Waukesha WI 53188
Phone: 262-446-0284
Author site: www.kathiegiorgio.org
Studio site: www.allwritersworkshop.com
Please “like” Author Kathie Giorgio on Facebook!
Twitter: @KathieGiorgio
Meet The Author:
KATHIE GIORGIO is the critically acclaimed author of six novels, The Home For Wayward Clocks (The Main Street Rag Publishing Company 2011), Learning To Tell (A Life)Time (The Main Street Rag Publishing Company 2013), Rise From The River (The Main Street Rag Publishing Company 2015), In Grace’s Time (Black Rose Writing 2017), If You Tame Me (Black Rose Writing 2019), and All Told (Austin Macauley USA 2022), two story collections, Enlarged Hearts (The Main Street Rag Publishing Company 2012) and Oddities & Endings; The Collected Stories Of Kathie Giorgio (The Main Street Rag Publishing Company 2016), a collection of essays, Today’s Moment Of Happiness Despite The News; A Year Of Spontaneous Essays (Black Rose Writing 2018), two poetry chapbooks, True Light Falls In Many Forms (Finishing Line Press 2016) and When You Finally Said No (Finishing Line Press 2019) and a full-length poetry book, No Matter Which Way You Look, There Is More To See (Finishing Line Press 2020). In September 2022, a poetry chapbook, Olivia In Five, Seven, Five; Autism In Haiku, was just released by Finishing Line Press. In March 2023, Giorgio’s seventh novel, Hope Always Rises, will be released by Moonshine Cove Press.
Giorgio’s short stories and poems have appeared in countless literary magazines and anthologies. Her short story, Snapdragon, was performed on stage for the Stories On Stage series at Su Teatro theatre in Boulder, Colorado. Her poem, Harvest Moon, appeared in the Poetry Leaves exhibit in 2020 in Waterford, Michigan.
She’s been nominated in both fiction and poetry for the Pushcart Prize, the Write Well Award, the Million Writer Award, and for both fiction and poetry for the Best of the Net Anthology. Her novel The Home For Wayward Clocks won the 2011 Outstanding Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Library Association.
Her novel In Grace’s Time was runner-up in fiction in the 2017 Maxy Award and the second place winner of the 2017 Silver Pen Award For Literary Excellence. Her novel If You Tame Me won second place in the Women’s Fiction category of the Pencraft Awards For Literary Excellence and runner up in the Eric Hoffer Award for fiction. Her poem “Light” won runner-up in the 2021 Rosebud Magazine Poetry Prize. Her poem “Again” won first prize in the Wisconsin Writers Association’s Jade Ring contest in 2020.
In a recent column, Jim Higgins, the books editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, listed Giorgio as one of the top 21 Wisconsin writers of the 21st century.
Giorgio is the director/founder of AllWriters’ Workplace & Workshop, an international creative writing studio. She lives in Waukesha, Wisconsin, with her husband, mystery writer Michael Giorgio, her daughter Olivia who is finishing her first novel, two cats named Muse and Edgar Allen Paw, and an eccentric dog named Ursula after Ursula Le Guin. She has three adult children, Christopher, Andy, and Katie, a lovely daughter-in-law, Amber, a great son-in-law, Nick, and the best granddaughter in the world, Maya Mae.
Thank you,
Glenda, Charlie and David Cates
