A Room Of My Own Or Maybe A Broom Closet

The movie opens with Nicole Kidman looking well, a bit ugly and she is writing at her desk. The maid brings her water, she pushes her food away. She writes better hungry. She has a room, a desk. She is Virginia Wolfe and the image of everything I’ve ever thought I’d be when I became a writer. Except of course, hopefully without the ugly.
Now here is my writing life. To save paper Bella has begun drawing her animals on all my old manuscripts, it is not uncommon to find a purple puppy on top of a cow covering an unfinished poem. I have resorted to locking myself in the bathroom with the laptop.
I write a line to a poem and I have to get somebody juice, milk, the phone rings and where the hell is Virginia’s maid?
The fact is, writing while being a mother is like trying to have tea in a mine field. Sexton said when her children were small she would wake up in the middle of night and write crap but essential crap because it got her where she needed to be.
I get the crap part. And the frustration of reading young writer blogs who teach classes and then come home to hours of time to work. I am not jealous. Okay well maybe a little but I just wish there was a first book contest for women writing in mind fields. It does seem a bit more fair.
Well that is the bad part but the good part is my children love me. My ten year old always asks me great questions like “how old do you have to be to use shit in a poem.”
I said of course it depends whether you are writing good poems or not—very few poets use shit well. I read her great poets at bedtime. She already done her first reading 0f her own work in front of people. It is amazing to pass on the love of words. With hopefully not the poets mental illness rate.
And my children continually humble me. There is not much an editor can say about my work after I spend hours picking up the living room with my poems filled with barnyard animals. I know from where I come from. My girls always remind me.My children own me. For now. And may be this is my essential crap period but I would not trade it for anything. They are amazing, horrible beasts but yes the maid could bring me some more alone time….