How do you remain present for your family even when you’re sunk deep into a current project? But there’s also plenty of other work that needs to get done in the life of a working writer, and I’m forever tweaking not just the work/life balance, but the creative/business balance of my writer’s life. On the four days a week when I have childcare, I try to do at least a couple of hours of creative work. I’m the solo childcare provider two of the seven days of the week my son’s in daycare for three of them my husband is with him for one of them and the remaining day is our family day, which usually means we all flop onto the couch, exhausted. Productivity, for me, can apparently be directly linked with the gun-to-my-head countdown clock of childcare, which I absolutely did not expect in the pre-motherhood days. Before he was born, there was a lot of “hmmm, what am I going to do today?” hair-twirling, which really doesn’t have any place in the life of a mother (or at least not me). In the five years my son’s been alive, I’ve written two novels, seen one of them published, and adapted my first novel into a feature length screenplay, and also into a short film, which I co-produced. I’ve been much more productive since having a child than I ever was before. What was your writing schedule (ideal and actual) like before kids, and how has that changed? Miranda Beverly-Whittemore, author of Bittersweet, Set Me Free, The Effects of Light

Miranda beverly whittemore