Recently I was riding in my car (blissfully and unexpectedly alone—except for my dog) and I heard an old Rod Stewart song.  I’m not certain of the title but the lyrics go something like ‘I wish I knew what I know now when I was younger.’  Well, ain’t that the truth?

            I’ve been married for twenty years to the same great guy (who travels an awful lot on business) and have two teenaged children (I know, I know, and I appreciate your sympathies):  a boy who just turned fourteen and a daughter who will be sixteen in March.  I am also the author of seven published novels, with numbers eight and nine being published in 2008 and books ten and eleven due on my editor’s desk June 1^st and December 1^st, respectively.  This makes my life blessedly full, overly busy, too complicated, and way more demanding than I ever bargained for when I was a twenty-something and wanting it all.

            So why do I do this to myself?  This very question was asked by an old friend of mine recently and I had to think for a while before I could answer.  It’s not because it was so hard to find an answer, it was just because it was so obvious that I kept trying to find a more complicated one.  In a nutshell, I do what I do because being a writer isn’t what I do, it’s who I am.  Although staring at a blank computer screen with a deadline hammering away at my brain while simultaneously trying to work out carpool schedules, negotiate X-box play time and stock the kitchen pantry is something akin to sliding down a razor blade and landing in alcohol, I am compelled to write because it’s how I’m wired.  Creating characters and their stories, and then sharing them with readers, is what puts the wind in my sails.

            Which brings me back to that Rod Stewart song:  if I had known back before I started writing books how hard it would be, how exhausting, how many sacrifices in my personal life I’d have to make, would I still be doing this?  Yep, I would.  I mean, what sort of example would I be to my children if I didn’t follow my dream just because I had to work too hard?  It reminds me of that Wayne Gretzky quote, “You miss 100% of the shots you never take.”  Yes, life could be easier; but it certainly wouldn’t be better. 

            I guess I didn’t do a good enough job of explaining this to my inquisitive friend because her next question was something along the lines of how my children handled sharing me with my writing.  Granted my kids aren’t overly familiar with home-cooked meals and have had to make do with me attending only 90% of all their athletic events, but they’ve seen firsthand what it’s like to pursue a dream; to set goals; to press on in the face of little failures; and to get back in the saddle after major spills.  I think that’s a fair trade-off for a childhood of frozen whole wheat waffles for breakfast.

            So, here I am.  It’s a Thursday morning in January, my husband’s in Europe for a week and I’m getting ready to start a new book (the one that’s due on June 1^st).  But first I have to dive back into planning my daughter’s Sweet 16 party.  I’m ordering custom M&M’s for the goody bags (go to mymms.com—it’s really cool what you can do with M&M’s!) to prove that I can be creative outside of my writing. 

            My life right now is a mixed bag of expectations, responsibilities, coming up short, and sometimes even successfully accomplishing my myriad tasks.  Yes, I’m exhausted.  But I think that just means that I need to go take a nap.