Did Hemingway have a small voice outside his office, asking if he could please, please make a grilled cheese sandwich NOW because the owner of the voice is STARVING? Did Shakespeare have to stop writing right in the middle of a scene to fast-forward through the previews so the Care Bears movie would start?

No, I think not.

I am a writer, but I'm also another, very important title: Mom. My world is full of ideas, stories and characters that are as alive to me as I am, myself. It is also full of diapers, the Disney channel, and sliced, peeled apples. I manage to work at my craft despite all those distractions, and that is my triumph. My challenge is doing writer tasks like reading, writing and marketing while changing diapers, turning channels, and slicing apples. (Rest assured, much hand washing occurs, too.)

When the kids have school, I try to be organized ahead of time, ready to snatch spare hours with projects that need my time and attention. I have projects divided into folders and labeled so I can find them easily. This lets me brainstorm while multitasking, so that when I can devote my attention to one project I have the material ready to go. I can jot a note in the kitchen while making breakfast, and tuck it into the appropriate folder by the computer. An hour later the bus is barely down the street before my fingers are flying away over the keyboard. Knowing I have only a little bit of time to devote to writing, I have become more efficient and dedicated to making that time count.

When the kids are home - vacations and summer break - I steal minutes here and there to do smaller, less intense tasks. We go to the library a lot and haul towering piles of books home to leaf through. Discovering new authors, illustrators and subjects thrill us both, and I can relive so many of my favorites all over again with them. (Oh, and bonus, that counts as market research, too!) Since there is no homework to supervise, my daughter and I like to start a nice, juicy series together, letting the words weave their magic over the long, lazy days. We've traveled to Narnia and to Kansas prairies, to Hogwarts and to Edwardian England, all from the comfort of our couch. She hears a story, and I hear plot devices that make my own writing that much more alive, when I do get back to the keyboard.

I've learned to look at the week, month, or even year as a whole to get a good idea of my average outputs. Some weeks are going to be busy on the kid end, some are going to be productive on the writing end. What I aim for is a nice, even mix, but sometimes I settle for an average that doesn't make me wince.

Balancing the Mommy moments and the writer moments can be incredibly frustrating. Sometimes the balancing act is like riding a teeter totter: one end is up, legs flailing in stomach-dropping nothingness, and one end is crashing to the sawdust with a tail-numbing smack When a terrific idea has popped up, so has a suspicious fever. When my children nap (think turquoise moon, it's so rare), it usually means I have absolutely no energy to write. And any parent can tell you that the more important the phone call, the more demanding our little angels become. But, just like children at the playground, we squeal with the rush of the ups and the downs, because without one, the other could not exist.

Out of the frustration comes one of the unexpected gifts of parenthood: flexibility. Flexibility is the Universe saying, "Oh, really, you had plans, did you? Ha!"

I know without a doubt that my children enhance my writing. Their funny ways and observations make me look at the world anew; their inquisitiveness reminds me to grow, myself; their delight and fearlessness in learning new things is a joy to behold.

I even think that parenting has prepared me for the dreaded rejection letter experience.

Submitting for some editors is like making a preschooler a sandwich. They ask for peanut butter and jelly. On white bread. Cut in triangles, no crust. Strawberry jam. So you make the sandwich to specifications and serve it nicely arranged on a character plate. The child falls apart. Now what?! The triangles are wrong, you are told. They should be LONG ones, like Daddy makes. So you cut the triangles again, only this time there are too many on the plate. Okay, you eat a few. Now they don't want the sandwich at all, they want string cheese and crackers, the round ones, not "the ones with the bumps." Now what do you do with the sandwich? You can eat it, feed it to the dog, or stick it in the fridge and hope it passes muster at three o'clock when the child is again STARVING.

There is always the temptation to postpone my writing until the kids are older; until the demands on my time are less; until the little people can get their own milk and tie their own shoes. But being a writer goes deeper than that. It's not just what I do, it is who I am.

My children may hear, "In a minute, okay?" but they also hear me announce, "I sent a story in for a contest!" They are not just hearing about following dreams; they are witness to the effort. They see the persistence and the hope, the setbacks and the rewards. My children are seeping in the one message I most want them to carry deep within: they can do anything they set their minds to, given enough hard work.

So I slice some apples, turn the Care Bears on, and quickly write a line or two. Move over Ernest and William. After all, Erma Bombeck got her start this way, right? And I'll make that grilled cheese in a minute, okay? Mommy is writing!