Guest post from Brooke Johnson, author of The Brass Giant
As a stay-at-home mom, my writing time is in short supply, relegated to the ever shrinking minutes of naptime when my daughter is asleep, but most days I have a somewhat steady routine.
First things first: some freshly brewed tea (sorry coffee lovers). I fill up the kettle, throw it on the stove, and then get my daughter up out of bed and give her breakfast. By that time, the kettle is whistling, and I brew myself a few cups of tea, which will usually last me until the early afternoon.
I spend the morning in my office-turned-playroom, browsing social media, reading news articles, chatting up friends. I eat breakfast and play games with my daughter, or if she’s playing on her own, I pull a chair up to the dining table and handwrite a page of the new side project I’m working on.
By the time I finish my first mug of tea, it’s naptime. I put the little dude down for a nap, pour myself another cup of tea, and start working. Most days, I pick up where I left off the day before. I write at a pace of about 500 words per hour. Some days are faster. Some days agonizingly slow. I write as much as I can in those precious few minutes while my daughter is sleeping, and I try not to think too much about how I could write this one sentence better, or maybe I should go back and fix this one less-than-stellar scene I wrote last week. I try to focus on writing forward, reaching my word count for the day, finishing this draft.
Then it’s lunch time. The little dude wakes up, I fix her lunch and then my lunch, and we eat. I change my music to something upbeat and we dance. We play. We pretend. And then I put on a show for her to watch, return to my computer in the adjacent room, and try to write—all the while trying not to feel like a terrible parent for stealing an hour to myself while she watches television.
Then it’s naptime again. I brew myself another pot of tea and try to write as much as I can while my daughter sleeps. Hopefully, by the end of the afternoon, I will have managed to write 2000 words for the day. I don’t always. Sometimes, I fall short, but I try not to let it get to me. I tell myself that I have more words than I had the day before, and that’s all that matters. Once my daughter wakes up from her afternoon nap, I log my words for the day in a spreadsheet, step away from the computer, and call it a day.
Balancing both writing and parenting is not an easy task, and I end each day both physically and mentally exhausted. Deadlines keep me disciplined. Weekends keep me sane. And every day in between, I sit down and write until eventually, I end up with a finished novel and turn my attention to the next idea.
Title: The Brass Giant
Author: Brooke Johnson
Publisher: Harper Voyage Impulse
Genre: Steampunk
Format: Kindle
Sometimes, even the most unlikely person can change the world
Seventeen-year-old Petra Wade, self-taught clockwork engineer, wants nothing more than to become a certified member of the Guild, an impossible dream for a lowly shop girl. Still, she refuses to give up, tinkering with any machine she can get her hands on, in between working and babysitting her foster siblings.
When Emmerich Goss–handsome, privileged, and newly recruited into the Guild–needs help designing a new clockwork system for a top-secret automaton, it seems Petra has finally found the opportunity she’s been waiting for. But if her involvement on the project is discovered, Emmerich will be marked for treason, and a far more dire fate would await Petra.
Working together in secret, they build the clockwork giant, but as the deadline for its completion nears, Petra discovers a sinister conspiracy from within the Guild council … and their automaton is just the beginning.
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