I have always resisted the label “stay-at-home mum”. I don’t like the way we are so quick to put mothers into camps: working mothers, full-time mothers (is there really a mother who is part-time?), etc. The other day a woman was asking me if I would ever consider working outside of the home. This was after I told her I am a full-time writer.

“Writing is work,” I told her. Well, yes, she agreed. But certainly you can’t make a living from it.

And not that it’s any of her business how my husband and I work our finances, but there in lies the truth: everything can have a dollar-value attached to it. Do I make a living from my writing? Some months, yes. But I view the writing as a long-term career, one that I need to build my successes on from year to year in the hopes that as I publish more, I will make more money. It’s like any other job – you start at an entry-level position and work your way up. I am not under the misconception that I will one day become a millionaire doing what I am doing. But I do believe there will come a time where my fiction writing income is steady and more substantial.

This is why I resist those labels. Because while I am at home, I am working. My kids know I am working. They know I have an office and that when we have a babysitter here, Mummy is writing. I call it work. So they know about Daddy’s work and they know about Mummy’s work, and I don’t think they value one over the other just because Daddy’s work happens to be in an office.

In fact, most of the “stay-at-home” mothers I know are doing some kind of work besides parenting – whether it is contract, part-time, or going back to school. Since becoming a mother I have found myself struggling with my work/parent identity on almost a daily basis. And never once have I found the labels make anything more clear.

I teach a creative writing class from my home for high school students. Actually, it’s just winding down, but I enjoyed it very much and am considering offering it again. My philosophy with this class is to give my students the creative space they may not have in school or home to explore their voice as writers. In every class I introduce a couple of exercises that are designed to teach writers to seek out inspiration from the everyday. I thought I might try sharing one with you:

Photographs are wonderful tools for stories, because they have captured a moment in time and were taken for a reason. Find some photos or postcards. This exercise works best if you have no personal attachment to the photos themselves. Study the picture and write the story that you see. Alternatively, imagine you are the photographer. What prompted you to take this picture? What is the story behind the photograph? As the photographer, what is your story?

My novel, HOLDING MY BREATH, started from exactly this exercise. I was taking an all-day workshop on historical fiction at a book festival in Birmingham, England. The workshop leader handed out a pile of old photographs and told us to write what we see. I spied one of a girl standing by the pool side watching a group of young women lounging in the water. That exercise turned into a short story called “Holding My Breath Under Water”, which got published in the anthology Going The Distance, by Tindal Street Press. It later turned into one of the chapters of my book. So you never know where this kind of exercise might take you!

I don’t need a medal, only a little bit of applause, as I am actually BLOGGING two days in a row. (Chaya, if you’re reading this, you have inspired me).

This week is the first normal week after Passover and Passover preparations. All told, the holiday took two weeks out of my working life. Between the cooking and the cleaning and the hosting (and of course, the eating), not to mention Boaz being off school, I had little time in the last 14 days to write. It’s not just about time, but about mental space. I probably could have squeezed in an hour here and an hour there, but Passover is like a full-time, contract position. Very all-encompassing, very intense, and then its over.

So I look up, two weeks have gone, and writing-wise I have very little to show for it.

Funny, by the end of the two weeks, I was irritable, moody and feeling very self-deprecating. This has happened before when I’ve been away from writing for too long. When I am not writing, I don’t feel whole.

On the other hand, the fear of writing makes it that much harder to get back into it. I fear never writing anything worth reading. I fear facing a book that might never see the light of day. I fear the “sophomore slump” – that my next novel will get published but no one will pay attention. It’s a lot of fear for a single person to face sitting at her computer alone.

And yet, these last two days have been good writing days. I’m coming to the end of the first draft of this book (I think). There will be a lot of work to do once the draft is complete (a LOT of work), but at this point I feel like I just need to complete the shape. Maybe with an outline of a novel I can flesh it out over drafts two and three (and beyond). Maybe (probably) the best thing for me to do is to just push past the fear and get on with it.

I may have already said this before in an entry, but I am a pretty private person. So blogging does not come naturally to me. This is my preamble to apologizing for not blogging over the last two months. But here’s the truth: do I want the world to really know what is going on inside my head? I understand the value of a blog as a marketing tool and venue for writers to connect with other writers and readers. But I write fiction because it’s, well, fiction. And I keep a journal of thoughts and musings that is private. In this age of information sharing, I have to ask: how private can I expect my thoughts to be if I want to have a substantial web presence?

In the meantime, and while I ponder that one, I’m going back to menus. We just finished celebrating Passover (yes, it’s over!). My husband and I hosted the first seder, which was small, but I discovered it doesn’t matter how many people you are having. Passover is a lot of work. There are many courses (I served five), and frankly, once you’re making chicken it doesn’t matter if you cook one or four.

Dishes that worked out well include:

Tri-coloured fish loaf
Roasted chicken with cinnamon, dried fruit and apple slices
Fudgy brownies and amazing Pesach chocolate chip cookies

Dishes that I probably won’t try again for seder:
Ratatouille (doesn’t work well to reheat)
Carrot Dill soup (the onions really need to cook gently and I found my Passover burners to be temperamental, so they burned)
Matza vegetable kugel (I’ve made nicer).

If you cooked this Passover, what worked well for you?

I am very specific about how I write. I need a strong cup of tea, preferrably TyPhoo (the British Red Rose), with just enough milk to change the colour and a scant teaspoon of sugar. I have certain mugs from which I drink. They are all stoneware. I light a candle (sometimes scented), and I find some soft music, no lyrics, to play in the background. Then I journal. It’s very important for me to journal before I get down to work. The act of journalling helps me to separate from my “outside” world to my “inside” world. When I am writing well, I am writing in the “inside” world, very unaware of what is going on around me, only aware of my characters, their actions, etc.

I am easily distracted. Probably the most distracting thing for me since writing this latest book has been wireless internet. When I was writing my last book, we were living in England and we only had dial-up or maybe Broadband internet. Either way, you had to plug into a router to get online and download emails. I was very strict about not checking my email until I had finished my writing session. Now, when the writing is going well, this rule is easy to stick to. When it’s not, I have more difficulties.

I believe in routine, the safety of it, and the comfort. All the little things I do before I write help me to build the right environment for me to explore creatively. I’m getting ready to do that right now. About to fill my mug, light my candle, and turn the internet off.

My husband, Jason, is out of town until Tues. It is unusual for us to spend Shabbat apart. I’m not entirely sure yet what my Friday night menu will look like, but it will go something like this:

Chicken soup with noodles
Roasted chicken and vegetables
Spinach kugel
Salad
Apple Cobbler

The cobbler is already made – made last night while visiting with an old friend, recently married. I think I am more social than I realized. Every night while Jason is away, I am visiting with someone. As this week ends, I’m grateful for the good company.

In an attempt to blog more regularly, I’m going to start posting my Friday Night menus. This idea is inspired by Bonnie Stern’s latest cookbook Friday Night Dinners (which is not only a wonderful cookbook, but a beautiful read). I will try to post my menus on Fridays (or earlier). But something tells me, like this week, it may end up being Saturday night.

Shabbat Dinner, 17 Jan 09
Chicken Soup
Challah
Chicken Hurry (recipe from my mum)
Turkey schnitzel
Tangy stir fried vegetables over thin Asian noodles
Roasted Broccoli
Blueberry Cobbler
Apple turnovers

I don’t usually make two desserts, but one of our guests was allergic to eggs, and there were eggs in the cobbler.

I suppose the advantage to posting this on a Saturday night is that I can tell you that the Roasted Broccoli and the Blueberry Cobbler were particularly delicious.

I recently read a fantastic book of essays, The Modern Jewish Girl’s Guide to Guilt. Each essay was a story, and most stories a conflict I could relate to on some level. Being Jewish and choosing religion, being Jewish and not choosing religion. Wanting Christmas, hating Christmas. Loving your community, and abandoning your community.

But one thing irked me: almost all of the writers in this collection had at some point in time (if not currently) lived in New York City. If it wasn’t New York, than it was LA. Sometimes both. Very few of the writers were from anywhere else — no Chicago, no Seattle, no Montreal and certainly no Winnipeg.

So for me, it begs the question: where are the voices of the non-New York Jews? For too long we have let our stories be told through the mythical Lower East Side, or more recently the Upper West Side. I love New York. It is my most favourite place to visit. But the experience of Jews there is not mine.

This has me thinking: how much of our experience as Jews is connected to place? What kind of Jew would I be if I had not grown up in Winnipeg? What kind of Jew will my children become because I am raising them in Thornhill? And most importantly, as a writer, why is my story any more or less valid because it does not include a siginificant stay in the Big Apple?

I want to know: Can you be a Jew with a good story and live, say, in Idaho?

Dear Mr. Harper,

I am about to sit down to work (something, I understand, done by ordinary people), but before I do, I wanted to write you a quick note to say thanks. Before now, I did not realize that I was special.

I am a writer. It is my job. Just like some people are teachers, auto workers, cashiers, or doctors. I write for a living. Now don’t get me wrong, I feel blessed to be able to do what I love. But I never considered myself special until this morning, when I read that you believe ordinary people don’t care about arts cuts.

I guess that make me out of the ordinary.

I was also pleasantly surprised to learn that you think I am rich. Remind me to mention that to Revenue Canada when I do my taxes in April. They may be quite surprised given my income last year.

Mr. Harper, if ordinary people, by your standards, are those who go to work, pay taxes and care about how our government spends those taxes, then please count me in. But let me add this: I am one ordinary person who has had the privilege to live and work outside of this country. I have seen first hand how widely our artists and writers are received elsewhere in this world and what a wonderful job they do as ambassadors from our country. I am an ordinary person who had her first novel published a year and a half ago, and is now thrilled that it is being read and enjoyed by many other ordinary people. I am an ordinary person trying to make a living doing something I love.

So many thanks for the compliment. I’ll put that feather in my cap. And while I’m at it, when I hit the ballot box in a few weeks’ time, I’ll be sure to give my vote to a party that not only thinks I’m special, but treats me that way.

Sincerely yours,

Sidura Ludwig

Writer

Thornhill, ON

My 3-year-old has a lot of anxieties. Can you call then anxieties when he’s only 3? He’s afraid of the clapping on talk shows (so he really doesn’t like Ellen). He’s afraid of the hooray and yay after Happy Birthday. He’s not crazy about car washes. He doesn’t like Raffi. The list goes on.

All this makes it hard for me to know when to push and when to just hold back. So today he had Sportball after school. Now, I admit, I knew from the start this would be a struggle. He’s not the most athletic kid. But I reasoned that especially in the winter, I want him to get some exercise. And it never hurts to try new things.

Sportball is a program offered at his nursery once a week after Lunch and Play. The first session was a disaster. Boaz wouldn’t even go in the gym. He convinced his teacher to take him for a walk instead. For days afterwards he said to me, “And there’s no more Sportball, Mummy?”

Today I offered to come along and help integrate him into the program. It’s actually a lot of fun. The kids get to run around, toss balls, sit on the coloured lines, get called “bananas” by the two instructors. For the first 10 minutes, Boaz stayed firmly attached to my lap. A couple of times he tried to convince me it was time to leave. I wondered if I should just get a refund.

But then the balls came out, and all of the sudden my little scaredy-cat came alive. He tossed the ball back and forth with me, he ran around the gym, he sat in the circle and stood up when he was told to.  By the end of the day his new mantra was, “Sportball is a really fun program.”

I feel like we scored one point today. He proved to himself he could do it, and he enjoyed it as well. Maybe the next time he goes we might even be able to get him through the door without him screaming first. That said, later today we asked him if he wanted to go for a car wash and his answer was, decidedly, NO.

I guess you can only push so much for one day.