My next blog post for Harlequin on multi-tasking.

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I can’t juggle. I’ve tried to learn, with apples, oranges and even with potatoes but my butter-fingers just didn’t have the knack. Still, the word ‘juggle’ features prominently when I try to explain how I manage my cluttered and chaotic life. I suspect it’s the same for most writers, because nowadays writers have day jobs that they’re working at as well. Journalism, banking, consulting, software engineering, even medicine. In my case, while my primary career is in banking, I also write two to three books a year. And I have two young children. Chaos is my middle name - I’m always trying to catch up with a never-ending to-do list. A typical weekday evening goes like this:
• Get home and ring the doorbell, thinking “If xyz doesn’t get back to me by tomorrow on the e-mail I sent him, I’ll need to ask for a meeting to sort the whole thing out”
• Hear screams from inside the flat “I’ll open the door…no, no, me, me, me!” Door opens, and my six-year-old daughter gives me a big hug and a grin, while my son gives me a casual wave
• The children’s nanny (who was racing my daughter to the door) fixes me with a gimlet eye and asks if I’ve booked a new gas cylinder yet. Guiltily, I dig my phone out and SMS the gas company
• Someone calls from work with a query, I shush the kids and try and sort things out. Fetch my Blackberry and send out a few mails
• Finish dinner and pick up laptop to work on my new book that has scary deadline looming up
• Son wanders in and casually informs me that he needs seventeen colour print-outs for a school project on Ancient Rome. The printer is in our home office and Papa is working there - my son is not allowed to disturb him unless the house is on fire
• I exercise my wifely privilege of disturbing my husband whenever I damn well please, and march into the home office to retrieve the printouts
• Check the school WhatsApp group for homework reminders
• Resume writing – am at a particularly tense point where the hero is recoiling from the strength of his own feelings….An imperious little voice calls out from the bathroom “Mamma!”, and I leave my hero to sort his problems out while I rush to the rescue
The weirdest part is that I enjoy this. I’d hate being at home all day, and I’d hate not being a writer. My kids and husband are incredibly supportive, and I’ve also got a little set of strategies going so that I can manage everything without getting stressed.
One of the first things I figured was that life is easier if you’re not a perfectionist. I’m not recommending a slip-shod approach by the way – all I’m saying is that some things matter, and you should concentrate on getting those right, and not bother so much about the rest. For example – a child’s birthday party is important, but obsessing endlessly about the theme and the decorations isn’t. Being committed to your job and doing it well is important. Hanging around ‘networking’ at an office party when your kids need you at home – as far as I’m concerned, it’s not that important.
Another realisation was that I didn’t have to do everything myself to get it right. Both at work as well as at home there were other people around who could help and were more than willing to do so. It was more a question of letting go a little and trusting others.
Still, even after all the prioritising and delegating, there were a bunch of things that I had to cut out of my life when I took up writing seriously. Watching TV was one, and to be frank I’ve not missed it at all. I keep up with current affairs through the Internet and newspapers, and I go to the movies and watch DVDs once in a while – in any case, in the days when I did watch TV, I always had a book by my side ‘in case I got bored’. What I do miss is having had to cut down on my reading. This isn’t just because of a lack of time, it’s because I found that I was unconsciously allowing the style of whichever author I was reading to influence my own. Which is all very well if I’m reading romances, not so good if I’m reading a Russian classic, and some of its self-absorbed gloominess creeps into my manuscript! So when I’m working on a book, I usually stick to non-fiction or to re-reading old favourites.
The balance of course, keeps shifting. And I need to keep adjusting to swings in my workload and to my children’s changing needs. It’s still worth it though. And once in a while, I throw the prioritising out of the window, and spend hours doing something just because it’s fun and I enjoy it!