Publishing after Kids

It’s been my goal for some time to be a published author and on August 28th of 2023, I finally achieved it!

There’s a lot of discourse on when in a person’s life is the best time to write a book and get published.

For me, the best time was after having children. That may seem odd, but allow me to explain.

I’ve worked on a great many WIPs over the years, even projects that had completed first drafts. However, it wasn’t until The Arbiter’s Knight that I found the ability and motivation to prepare it for publication.

Truly, the timing of it was strange. I had been married less than a year when I began working on it in March of 2021. My husband was in school and I was working. We were preparing to move to a new state for work as teachers. I was also going through some emotional recovery from a miscarriage the previous winter. I finished the first draft during that move over the summer and immediately began its sequel. I also ended up getting pregnant again over that same summer.

I had thought at one point that all I needed to finish writing a book was enough free time, but if anything, I was the busiest I had been and my body was the most taxed (largely from pregnancy). And yet, this was when I finished a book.

I spent the next several months editing The Arbiter’s Knight and writing its sequel. I was teaching the whole time up until my son was born, almost exactly a year after I had started the book.

And now we come to the real point of my post.

Up until having a child, I had thought that publishing a book would be one of my most significant accomplishments, if not the most important.

But after the birth of my son, I realized that assessment wasn’t quite right.

Previously, I had held myself to a rather ridiculous standard of perfectionism when it came to the quality of my books. I expected it to be pristine and above criticism, despite knowing on some level that that was absurd.

However, after my son was born, I came to see nothing I could do would surpass how I felt about this perfect little boy. I couldn’t make something more special than my children.

In a way, it freed me. I didn’t have to make a perfect book, just a good one. It gave me the confidence I needed to be able to finish the book and prepare it for publication.

I snuck in so many hours of editing as he napped or played at my feet. The majority work I did to complete the book after the drafting stage ended happened after I got pregnant with my second child: a darling little girl.

After I published The Arbiter’s Knight in August, I turned my attention to finishing the first draft of its sequel. At first I was starting to feeling significant pressure to give into that absurd perfectionism again. But then my daughter was born in October.

The birth of my daughter a little over a month ago reminded me the most perfect things I could create were my children. I didn’t have to agonize over making a perfect book, just put in the necessary work to make a good one. My children give me the confidence (and realistic expectations) I need in order to create worlds on paper. I don’t need to make the perfect the enemy of the good when it comes to my writing, since I’ve already got two little living pieces of perfection living in my own home.

So now I’m back to working on the sequel with my feet on the ground once again. Having children has grounded me in ways I couldn’t have anticipated. It has also reminded me of my priorities. The most important thing to me is my family. My books are part of me too and my writing will always be important to me, but difficulties or imperfections in it aren’t the end of the world.

I know I didn’t write a perfect book when I published The Arbiter’s Knight, but that’s okay. I’m sure I’ll still struggle when people point out any remaining typos or give fair criticisms of my work. However, looking into the faces of my babies reminds me I’ve already accomplished something infinitely more beautiful and important. To me, my accomplishments as a writer are just icing on the cake, a bonus to the legacy I’ve already begun with my babies.