I Started Writing a Book Days After Giving Birth to My Daughter. Here’s How I Finished It.
By Glory White
I have been toying with the idea of writing a book about world religions since high school, but I could never figure out the right way to pull it off. The problem? With thousands of religions practiced around the world, it seemed like trying to capture the rich tapestry of religious beliefs would yield an unreadable tome. But then I had my beautiful daughter, and just a few days after bringing new life into this world, it hit me: I could write a book exploring the spectrum of answers religions provide for life’s biggest questions.
As I cuddled my baby and kissed her chubby cheeks, I realized that writing a book while juggling a newborn, an extremely active toddler, and a job would be challenging, to say the least. I was terrified that I would give up, so I came up with four rules to keep me focused and motivated:
1. I would only tell my husband about the book. I’d read that sharing your goals with others actually makes you less likely to achieve them, and I wasn’t taking any chances.
2. I would give up Netflix until my book was finished. Yes, really! No pain, no gain.
3. I would set (modest) goals for each day and stick to them, no matter what.
4. I would never go back and read a paragraph after writing it. As a perfectionist, I am capable of spending hours rewriting a single sentence, so I decided to force myself to make progress. There would be plenty of time to proofread and edit the book when I finished writing the whole thing.
Armed with my set-in-stone rules, I got to work – and immediately started bending them. I told my parents about the book a few weeks in. I gave up my own Netflix habit, but still watched an episode with my husband every night before bed, because how else were we supposed to spend time together? I occasionally took a day off from writing because I was too exhausted to function or behind on chores.I slipped up and reread a few of my favorite passages,but I mostly stuck to the rules, and soon found myself looking forward to the hour and a half I spent writing every day after putting my kids to bed. Coming up with ideas throughout the day and finally writing them down was exciting, and I relished the satisfaction of reaching my daily goal just in time for dinner. Needless to say, my incredibly supportive husband handled dinner while I banged away on my wireless keyboard.
When it was time for me to go back to work, there was no job. My beloved workplace had become yet another casualty of the pandemic, and I was forced to start looking for a new job, stat. This, of course, slowed down my writing. Instead of meeting my daily writing goals, I spent countless hours searching for jobs on LinkedIn, prepping for interviews that seemed to blend together, and completing ridiculously long assignments. Every time I was ghosted by a potential employer, I felt guilty for having wasted my precious writing time on yet another pointless assignment. But what choice did I have? I couldn’t afford the luxury of dedicating all my free time to my book. I eventually found a job and reclaimed my writing time. For a while, things seemed to be looking up but just a few weeks after I started my new job, its extreme toxicity came to light. Most evenings I was too emotionally drained to get any meaningful writing done. I had almost given up on writing my book when I was rear-ended on my way to work. My car was totaled and I suffered severe whiplash, but the accident turned out to be a true blessing in disguise. As I lay in bed for weeks, one of the few painless things I could do was job hunting on my laptop. This time, the first assignment I completed landed me a job offer, and when I recovered and switched jobs, I resumed writing with gusto.
I completed my book a month before my daughter’s first birthday. We ordered sushi to celebrate. I binge-watched Bridgerton, then dove right into proofreading, editing, typesetting, and designing.
As my daughter learned to walk, she discovered the joy of throwing books on the floor and trampling them. The book she inspired me to write now rests on a higher shelf.
Glory White lives with her husband and two mischievous children and writes about religion and science. Her book, 50 Answers: How World Religions Grapple with Life’s Biggest Questions, is available on Amazon.com.