I wrote this personal mission statement some five years ago when I was teaching high school in Houston, and it still hangs over my desk, keeping me on track and reminding me of my scholars. Here's the explanation on the back side:

My mission statement is designed to help me combat the aspects of my character that would prevent me from living my life fully. I need to remind myself to be peaceful. Just because frustrating circumstances arise suddenly doesn't mean that I have to become anxious. I can love, teach, and support my students without letting their problems send my brain and heart tumbling into chaos. "Be patient" finds its place in my statement because, once I've set a goal, I usually want to achieve it as quickly as possible. But sometimes the changes required are slow in coming. I must let the process take its course. This does not mean that I become passive, saying, "They'll learn it eventually," or, "I'll write a book when the time is right." No, I must also remember to be persistent. If one method fails, I will try another one. If one approach to helping a student doesn't make a difference, I will try again. Never will I give up on others. Never will I give up on dreams. Never will I give up on myself. Instead, I will say to myself:

BE PEACEFUL.

BE PATIENT.

BE PERSISTENT.

P.S. Reread as needed for inspiration. This is the only life you get; live it with joy and purpose.

Once upon a time, I was a teenager who had a garage darkroom. I read Margaret Atwood by that red light. The pages of my copy of The Handmaid's Tale are curled up at the edges from being turned by damp fingers, and there's still the smell of photography chemicals.

When I took photography classes in college, I loved composing images, but what I really loved was working in the darkroom. In those days before digital, you had to keep a little notebook so that you could remember the exposure times you used to get a print just right. It was complicated and messy, and I bet the results were rarely as perfect as with today's awesomest digital camera.

I know that digital photography is so much more practical: you don't need the darkroom and all the chemicals. You don't need expensive photo paper or film. You can track the processes you used to improve an image easily. You can share photos in an instant.

And many digital photographs are beautiful. They can be art in other folks' hands. (Although this, too, is up for debate, as this blog post, which ought to be titled, "Is Art Photography Dead?," suggests.) But when I take pictures of my son with our digital camera, I cannot let myself think of them as anything other than snapshots. I have turned off the "art photography" part of my brain.

I had to because otherwise my heart would break every time I took a photo.

I miss the sound of film advancing in my camera. I miss winding film on those horrid little metal reels inside a black nylon bag. I miss the darkroom smell of chemicals and sawdust. I miss the cheap 1990 boombox that played static-y public radio in the days before iPods. I miss watching an image emerge in the developer. I miss pulling prints out of the water bath and hanging them up to dry.

I miss these things like places from a country I've chosen to leave and to which I know I'll never return.

When all else fails to keep you in your chair to do the writing, head down to the Humane Society and get yourself a cuddly lap pet. I love it when our cat, Sugar Mama, curls up and falls asleep in my lap because it takes away the temptation to get up and mess around when I should be working. Of course, this was a much better strategy BEFORE I had a baby, but it might still work for those of you who are not yet knee-deep in the joys of parenting.

Even now, though, if I stay up late writing after my boys have gone to bed, Sugar stays up with me. She keeps her little kitty vigil. Writing is a little less lonely because of her, and I like to think that even if she doesn't know what I'm doing exactly, she knows it's important enough to skimp on sleep.

When I'm stuck in my writing, nothing helps more than taking a break to snuggle, and Sugar is always available. (No new mom in her right mind would wake up her baby just to snuggle... those minutes when they're sleeping are precious!) 

So, Sugar, this post's for you. I know life has been a bit different since Liam showed up, but I also hope you know how much you mean to us. Would you like a cameo appearance in the next novel?

Our little boy Liam + his toy giraffe = TRUE LOVE.

Seriously. You should see Liam glom onto "la jirafa" in his crib at bedtime: her horns her ears go straight into his mouth; he digs his fingers into the fringe along her long neck; he turns onto his stomach, pinning her under him in a l.o.v.e. embrace.

What I want to know is this: when Liam is bigger--even more, when he is grown--what will giraffes mean to him? I 

mean, the fact that his "lovey," his special snuggle toy, is a giraffe, will that change anything for him? Will he linger in front of the giraffe enclosure at the zoo in first grade, drawn to the long lashes, the dotted coat? Mesmerized, but not knowing quite why? Or will he skip past, oblivious? Indifferent to the creatures' affinity for the source of one of his earliest, simplest pleasures?

Either way, I know I will never see a giraffe in quite the same way. Maybe that's what being a mom means. Whatever our children love, we love, even if only for the fact that it has received our children's love.

By the way: For a book's worth of musing on the first year of a child's life, written as a diary of her son's first year, check out Anne Lamott's book Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year.  I loved this book. I read it when Liam was about four months old, and there were many moments I could relate to. Best thing about the book: Lamott says the things that I'm ashamed to. This book made me laugh and cry.

The zero draft is how I trick myself into writing when it seems too scary to start THE novel. It's all the exploratory writing that I do just to feel my way into the project. While I don't make elaborate outlines or "plan" my novels, I usually fill a couple of notebooks with ideas, scraps, character backgrounds, and the like. I don't set any expectation that these things will--in the same form--show up in the novel, hence the title "zero draft."

Full disclosure: this isn't really my idea. I first came across it in my double life in the academic world via the book Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day by Joan Bolker. (I'm not going to lie: I first requested this title because my library catalog had truncated the title to Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes. Did it sound too good to be true? Yes. Did I want to know the secret anyway just in case? Yes.) There's a capsule version of the zero draft idea online here.

Of course, there are a lot of differences between academic and creative writing. But since what I struggle with the most is producing and curbing my team of negative inner editors, it's a battle I fight--and am determined to win--on both fronts.

Feeling overwhelmed? Treat yourself to a zero draft. Even if you're halfway into a project, you can switch into zero draft mode to try to figure out where you need to go next. Zero never looked so good.