Jennifer Shaw

Hi! Thanks for being here. I mentioned I’d keep you updated on the use of our visual schedule with our autistic daughter, Daphne. I’m happy to report that, one week into her summer vacation, it’s helping. Showing her the expectations each day has made her more receptive to what’s coming, and as a result she hasn’t resisted too terribly when it’s been time to do activities or put away her YouTube iPad. It’s also kept us moving productively through the hours: last week we did two sets of academic/OT/speech activities per day (an AM session and a PM session), we limited our screen time, and we got out of the house every afternoon–Monday to the grocery store, Tuesday to the rail trail for a 2 mile walk, Wednesday to Crystal Lake, Thursday to the car for a joyride, and Friday to the playground AND Lake Willoughby. This might not sound like a big deal, but let me tell you, it’s good progress after all the miserable down time we suffered last summer. Daph did cry at some point each day, hard a couple times, but so far none of our days have been the all-out tantrum fests we had last summer, so I’m taking that to mean we’re off to an auspicious start. Thank you, visual schedule.

Her dad and I were even good about keeping her active on Saturday. We drove to Williston and took her to Get Air!, a trampoline park. She enjoyed it as always, though on this trip she seemed more sensitive than usual to the cacophony of dance music/kids’ screams. After two hours jumping, we drove a little farther into the city proper (the only place that possibly qualifies as such here in Vermont), where Jer ordered beach fries for a famished Daph at Burlington Bay Market on Lake Champlain.

While they were snacking, I shopped for dresses next door at April Cornell.

I typically go for the simpler, sportier type of dress like the ones I adore from Prana (with their amazing built-in bras), but given that the long, flowy, flowery pioneer styles are fashionable right now, I figured I’d try to look somewhat trendy for the symphony and ballet performances coming up, so I was eager to check out the billowy, floral garments at this flagship boutique. I found two lovely discounted dresses in their basement section, one a sleeveless shift and the other a three quarter-sleeved short dress, and only paid $70 total–a brilliant win since I didn’t have to feel guilty about buying myself new clothes.

This past week was good for another reason, too. I figured out how to carve out some quality time for writing.

I was concerned about this. I’d been on a roll for the entirety of Daph’s school year. While she was gone each weekday, I’d write for an hour or longer, and most days I’d work myself into an awesome flow state, which allowed me to produce a fair amount of work in those nine months. During that time, I wrote a 30,000 word novella, two poems, a short essay, and twenty short stories, which sounds like a ton but most of those short pieces were flash fiction drafts about 1,500 words or fewer, all composed during a February flash fiction challenge. I also wrote 50,000 words of a novel during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in November.

The best part of all that was the daily writing habit I developed. It’s now so ingrained that it feels wrong if I go longer than two days without writing something, and I feared I’d lose this habit, this need to write, over the course of the eight week summer. It’s tough to work when Daphne’s home, after all. She needs me for all kinds of things, from help with meals to dressing and hygiene. Plus, she loves her mom, and I love her. Our quality time together is lovely, and she can get her feelings hurt or do something unsafe if she thinks I’m ignoring her for too long. My husband has to work; he can’t watch her for me as well (though he jumps in to help when he can).

You might think, ok, write when she’s asleep. But she’s been waking up early, sometimes at 5 am, so getting up to write before her hasn’t felt like a great option. I’ve written a little at night after she’s gone to bed, but I’m not a night owl, and both times I nodded off over my laptop.

On Wednesday, however, it occurred to me–duh!–that I could employ the daily time blocked out for YouTube on Daph’s visual schedule as writing time for me. If I’ve effectively limited her YouTube, then it absorbs all her attention when she does get it, and I realized I could use that 30-60 minutes as a writing sprint and know she was safe and sufficiently entertained.

A writing sprint is just like it sounds: you set a timer for a short period, anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour, and then you write nonstop until your timer goes off. At that point, you can give yourself permission to be done.

This way, at least I could get a little more added to my novel, even if I didn’t have the luxury of slipping into flow and banging out several thousand words, which is how I prefer to write. I considered, too, that even if I produced nothing but garbage in that short time, I could always edit it later. Some is better than none, after all.

It worked.

It was hard at first because once my timer went off, I just wanted to keep going–I was about to hit flow and wanted to continue the scene, or I desperately wanted to revise what I’d just typed. But, I didn’t. I saved my draft, closed the laptop, and got back to my child, just in time to prevent tears as the dopamine waned (sadly, it entertains her for shorter periods these days). By Friday, once I’d sprinted three days in a row, it was easier to let the work go and just move on. I had the satisfaction, too, of knowing I’d written something and that it was staying active in my head, allowing me to think up new developments which I typed hastily into the Notes app on my phone. I also felt good knowing I was still giving my daughter the care and attention she needed without bothering my poor husband too much.

Work-life balance. It’s definitely a thing.

The numerical result? Last week, I wrote a total of 2,726 words, a vast majority composed during these sprints! I can tell you this number because I’m tracking my progress via daily word counts on a Google sheet, which I started when I began my novel for NaNoWriMo and, finding it to be such a great accountability tool, I continued using it long after NaNoWriMo ended. My zero draft now sits at 97,292 words (which is ridiculous because I’m not even close to the end. The draft is a hot mess, but that’s another story for a later post), and I’m thrilled to know I can keep chipping away at it over the course of these hot, school-less months without losing sleep, my poor mind, or the feeling that I’m a decent mother.

To wrap this all up, If you Google benefits of writing sprints, here’s the first answer you get. Sprinting “pushes you to write more words fast, by forcing you to start writing and ignore your inner editor” (from “Writing Sprints: A Simple Exercise That Benefits Every Writer” by Joe Bunting at thewritepractice.com). It also helps you gain regular practice while combatting procrastination and perfectionism. The result? Progress.

And while you’re progressing, you’re finishing projects and likely getting better. After all, as Neil Gaiman says, you’ll learn more by finishing a failure than you ever will by finishing a success… and you’ll definitely learn more by finishing a failure than you ever will by starting something brilliant that you never complete. These seem like wise words, and I’m trying to write by them.

But what they mean is, you HAVE to write. Which often means you HAVE to make the time to do so over the course of a busy day in a full life. And writing should support life, not the other way around (another Stephen King paraphrase).

For me, these sprints plus the visual schedule are proving to be great time management and accountability tools. If you are a special needs parent or caregiver and you’re struggling to carve out time to work on something for yourself, I recommend both if you haven’t tried them. The visual schedule also benefits your child, of course, and the sprint can become a quick burst of energy for anything— studying, reading, crafting, building a business, etc. Again, some is better than none.

I really think they’re going to be a game-changer for us this summer.

As always, let me know your thoughts, and thanks for taking the time to read this.

Happy working!

XOXO,
Jenn