The day I went into labor the owners of the paper I was the editor of called to tell me we were bankrupt. “Maybe you didn’t hear me, I explained to one of the owners, “but I am in labor. “I know, she answered, “it’s really exciting, but could you email all of the writers and tell them we aren’t going to print the December issue? I was a bit preoccupied, and busy, on that day, so I didn’t fully comprehend the enormity of the situation. But about a week later I sat in a rocking chair nursing my son and thought, “In one day I became a mother and unemployed. What the hell do I do now?

Although I thought a lot about finding another job as an editor, actually applying for a job was another matter. Fatigue, a depressed economy, and lack of motivation were only a few of the barriers in my way. I considered it a productive day if I managed to take a shower and brush my teeth before three p.m., so I wasn’t sure how valuable of an employee I was going to be. Not to mention, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be an employee. My previous job as an editor allowed me to work from home so I had, perhaps falsely, assumed I could continue working and be the primary care giver of my son. My visions of motherhood had always included working and being a mother, but day-care was never part of that vision. I was starting to realize that I might not be able to have my cake and eat it too.

After several months of half-heartedly scanning the want ads, I gave up and resigned myself to being unemployed. And a stay-at-home mother. I was restless and bored, yet still wasn’t ready for someone else to watch my son. I gave up on finding the perfect, part-time, at-home editing job and began to focus on my own writing instead. “This is the perfect time to edit the book I have been working on, I naively thought, just like thousands of other mothers who think they will remodel their kitchen, get back to painting, write the great American novel, or maybe even just organize their closet while they are home with a newborn. Again, aspirations are easy. It is the follow through that is difficult.

Time passed and I did not make very many revisions to my manuscript. Instead, I spent the first few months of my son’s life sitting on our green couch looking out at the rain while he nursed. My days consisted of sitting down, propping pillows under my arm, reaching for my coffee… Oh damn, I forgot my coffee in the kitchen. Once the coffee cup was securely placed in close proximity, I would begin the routine again. Sit down, prop up pillows, lift shirt, place son to breast, stare out window, drink coffee. That was my day. Sit, nurse, stare. Sit, nurse, stare. I tried sitting in different seats around the house, but always returned to the green couch. It provided the best view of the outside world that I no longer felt a part of.

I often daydreamed about that outside world and my lost connection to it. I thought about my ex-coworkers, my friends without children who I rarely saw, and the times I was able to stay up past nine o’clock at night and socialize with friends outside of my own home. I missed feeling busy and productive rather than my current feeling of busy, but bored and very, very tired.

I was finding it increasingly hard to relate to my old lifestyle, yet I wasn’t acclimated to my new lifestyle either. I was embarrassed that I was going to bed at eight o’clock every night, but not so embarrassed that I didn’t fall asleep minutes after my head hit the pillow. Not having my day revolve around work bothered me. I continually had the nagging feeling of, “There must be something else I have to do today besides sit, nurse, stare. And not being able to write when I felt like it bothered me most of all.

I had been writing, or not writing, all of my life, but I had never been a disciplined writer. I had always claimed, “When inspiration hits, I write like a fiend, but you can’t force inspiration. I’d chase a muse and write for days on end, but when it came time to revise, edit, or complete a piece, I would often move on to something else. “Revisions aren’t my thing, I’d claim, and thus collected notebooks and hard drives full of mostly uncompleted work.

One night, when my son was about three-months-old, I woke up at three in the morning with the desire to write. My body twitched with excitement and I knew sleep was futile. I crept out of bed and wrote and wrote and wrote. I was still writing when the sun came up and with it, my son’s cries. My fingers had become numb due to clenching a pen for hours and I was exhausted, yet exhilarated for the first time in months.

That writing session marked a transition in my writing life. For once, I wanted to keep going. I wasn’t losing interest in the material and felt a strong desire to revise it, revise it again, and then release the piece to the outside world. I wanted to give my writing a life beyond my computer and worn notebooks. I had numerous ideas for articles and a renewed interest in the manuscript I had written while I was pregnant. I yearned to have days free to revise, write, revise, and write. Yet, how I spent my time was no longer up to me. Bringing me to my second realization—if I wanted to write I had to do so while my son was sleeping. And preferably, not at three in the morning. I was sleep-deprived as it was and any more three a.m. writing sprees were only going to further damage my already fragile state of being.

This left naps. Instead of trying to sleep or accomplish anything during my son’s naps, I wrote. For the first time in my life I made writing a part of my daily routine. Nurse, make coffee, eat, take shower… Oh wait, his eyelids are getting droopy, forget the shower, turn on the computer, lay son down, write. All of my musing, daydreaming, inspiring, or problem solving happened while he was awake. I wouldn’t waste valuable naptime wondering how I was going to articulate my main point. Nor would I attend to any household chore, or bodily need during naptime. I went as far as starting my computer, turning off the phone, and pouring myself a glass of water before my son fell asleep. The minute he closed his eyes, I began typing. And I kept typing until I heard him crying for me.

Writing was no longer a frivolous act, or even a romanticized one. It was work and I “worked every day. I had become diligent, methodical, and industrious. I had become the Ant. I can’t say every thing I wrote during this time was brilliant. I can’t even say it all made sense, I wasn’t making sense living on three hours of sleep, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that I was writing, and I was writing a lot. I was “working while still being the primary caregiver of my son and that was the goal.

Writing offered a new routine to my day besides sit, nurse, stare. It also gave me something else to think about besides nursery rhymes, ill-fitting onesies, and spit-up. As I changed his diaper, I thought about a short story I wanted to write. I planned revisions to my manuscript while we took our marathon-long walks around the neighborhood. And while he nursed, I scribbled down notes to help myself remember my story ideas. Along with my coffee cup, I now tried to remember to bring a pen and paper with me before I sat down to nurse my son. I often forgot the paper, or was out on a walk when an idea hit me, so many of my ideas ended up being scrawled on paper towels, diapers, or my hand. But at least I was writing them down instead of erroneously thinking I would remember them when I was finally able to get to the computer.

As my son got older, I spent less time on the green couch. Although we now engaged in outside activities and went on adventures, there was still a general routine to the day that was not that different from the green couch days. Instead of sit, nurse, stare, I now fed him, cleaned him, changed him, carried him. Over and over again, no matter where we were. He hated to be put down, so some days felt like carry him, carry him, carry him, attempt to do something with two hands, son wails, pick him up and carry him.

Every day when his eyelids got heavy, I looked forward to an hour of freedom. Freedom from having to consider his needs first. Freedom of having my hands and arms available once again. Freedom from worrying or thinking about him. Freedom to do what I wanted, when I wanted. And what I wanted was to write.

After a year or so of chipping away at my pregnancy manuscript, I felt it was ready to submit to literary agents. I began writing my book proposal and query letter. I attempted to encapsulate three hundred pages into one paragraph to provide an overview of the book, tried to impress agents by self-aggrandizing and possibly exaggerating my skills, researched other books similar to mine, and summarized each chapter. Each day, I worked on another section of the book proposal. Chop wood, carry water. Chop wood, carry water.

It took several months, but I sent my first book proposal out on New Year’s Eve, which seemed an appropriate metaphor. For the first time in nearly two years I began having contact with other “professionals. Granted, most of this contact was mostly via email and mostly along the lines of, “Your manuscript is not right for our agency, but we wish you luck in finding an agent. I can’t say these were quality conversations, but they still helped alleviate some of the anxiety and futility I had been feeling about being a stay-at-home mother. At least someone was reading my work. At least someone was asking me about myself as a professional and not a professional baby carrier.

As my son grew, so did my writing time. Instead of taking a couple of short naps, he now took one long nap in the middle of the day. I was writing more and submitting more work out into the world, but I wasn’t necessarily receiving very much feedback about my work. Agents often took months to get back to me, if they even responded at all. And often that response was only a form letter. It was the same way with editors of publications. Four months after I submitted a story to a literary journal I received a letter stating, “We received your story and we will try to review it in the next several months.

The parallels of mothering and writing grew. As a mother I wasn’t given a raise, review, or bonus, the same applied to being a writer. It was rare that my writing or mothering ever received a compliment, nonetheless being paid for my work. The work was isolating and there were no rules to follow. I made it up as I went along, told myself I was doing valuable work, and kept on going. Partly because I wanted to, but mostly because I had to. This was the life I had chosen and something inside of me was determined to keep going.

All I could do was carry on and hope for the best, even though most days, I didn’t even know what “the best meant. Was I hoping to find an agent? That my son would take a three-hour nap? Was I hoping to find an editor? Or that my son would start pre-school? Was the dream to have my book published or shall I take it even further and hope that it becomes a best seller? Will I be able to devote myself fully to my writing when my son enters kindergarten or not until he moves out of the house? I didn’t know what “the best was, nor did I know what the future would hold, or even what I wanted it to hold. All I knew was that today I would write and today I would care for my son because that is what needed to be done today. Chop wood, carry water. Chop wood, carry water.

Spring rolled around and I still had not found an agent, but I was sustained, emotionally at least, by a couple of my articles being accepted to journals and the thought that my son would start pre-school in the fall. For the first time in three years I would have three whole mornings to myself to write. My indulgent fantasy crumbled as I realized I was pregnant again.

I had thought it would take a year to conceive my second child, just as it had taken a year to conceive my son, but I was wrong. I thought I would have a year of freedom to write in the mornings and still have lots of quality time to spend with my son, but I was wrong. I thought I had it all worked out, but I was wrong. Once again, my plan was not a reality. I wrote as much as my nauseous, pregnant self could and I braced myself for life back on the green couch.

The day my daughter was born, an agent contacted me to say she was interested in my manuscript. Just as one window had closed on the day my son was born a different window opened on the day my daughter was born. After a month of emails and phone conversations, the agent and I formally agreed to work with one another. I spent the fall and winter revising my manuscript as well as ample time sitting on the green sofa. My daughter ate half as much as my son had and slept twice as long, so comparatively I felt as if I had lots of time to write. Instead of nurse, sit stare, I was able to sit, nurse, stare, write.

Come spring, my agent said the magic words of, “I love the latest revisions. I think it’s ready to send out to editors. Months and months passed without us hearing anything. Every time I got nervous and found myself checking my emails five times a day, I remembered the Ant. I told myself, stay focused, keep writing, and do what you can today. Advice from my agent helped as well, “Your job is to write, my job is to get you published.

Like motherhood, writing is completely out of my control. It may take years for me to become published, if at all, but all I can do is to keep writing. My kids may grow up to resent me, hate me, or spend their adult lives on a therapist’s couch, but all I can do is hope that they will grow up to be happy, well-adjusted (at least a little bit) individuals who occasionally visit and speak to their mother. I don’t know what is going to happen until it happens.

Writing and mothering are monotonous work and I often have to fight back the fear that all of my efforts might be in vain. I can’t think about the possible futility of my work for long, otherwise I will want to give up. And I don’t know what else to do.

I continue to fight the feeling that I’m not doing anything, that I am not productive. But if I really think about it, I realize I am incredibly productive, just in a different way. I wipe faces, cut food into incredibly small pieces, and kiss skinned knees to make them all better. And when the receivers of these clean bodies and tiny bites of food sleep, I write. Since my kids have been born, I have written and completed a many more pieces than all of the years prior I spent following whims. And I did so after answering a thousand “how come questions, reading bed time stories so frequently, I’ve memorized them, and soothing teething babies back to sleep, two, three, sometimes even four or five times a night. When I view it that way, I start to admire the Ant I have become. She may be boring, tired, and cranky, but she also kicks ass!

Corbin Lewars lives in Seattle, WA where she continues to write and mother. She is the author of the forthcoming book Home, the founder of the zine Reality Mom and her articles can be found in various local publications.