Throughout the four years I’ve been a parent (to two children now), I’ve asked myself many times: When I look back later, what will I wish I had done differently? What will I regret? Until last week, I couldn’t think of anything. Because I ask myself this question frequently, I tend to feel that I am on the right parenting track—spending a lot of time with my kids while at same time maintaining a healthy balance of time to work on my career, getting their pictures taken at regular intervals, reading to them every night, taking lots of photos and videos of them, writing down cute things they say, etc.

Then, last week, it struck me that my two-year-old daughter’s two years of life are a blur. I can hardly remember her at 6 mos, at 12 mos, at 18 mos. I can picture her bald head, but I have trouble picturing her in the stroller as a baby, or my carrying her around in the Bjorn, or her first words. We’ve been so busy—rushing from play dates to swim class to preschool—that the details have already faded. During my son’s first year of preschool last year, I taped every art project he did on his bedroom wall. This year, my daughter’s first year, her artwork comes home and sits in a pile on the dining room table until I move it to a pile on my desk in the basement. I haven’t kept up her baby book (yet, but I plan to update it next month), and I’ve missed all three preschool parent events for her class.

Looking back at this blur that is my daughter’s life, I ask myself what my favorite memories are. The answer: The mornings and afternoons I sat on the floor with the kids and played: built train tracks, played musical instruments, did puzzles, played Bingo, put shapes into the shape sorter, etc. And the mornings and afternoons we’ve spent at the park—playing in the sand, playing soccer on the grass, and riding scooters/bikes. I’m proud that my kids understand French and Spanish. I love that they are good swimmers. I’m happy that they are social and well adjusted. But my favorite memories aren’t the ones of us driving in the car from this class to that event. They aren’t the ones of me cleaning the house while the kids play alone. They are the ones of me sitting on the floor doing a dinosaur floor puzzle, building Lego castles, and trying to make a train track around the living room that uses every tunnel, bridge, and piece of track we own. And I plan to do more of that starting now.

What about you? Looking back at your children’s younger years, is there anything you would do differently? What?

With New Year’s Resolutions dancing like sugarlessplums in our heads, where do we begin? How do we prioritize? Which of the following goals should we focus on first?:

-Finish book
-Get agent
-Sell book
-Start blog
-Blog 3x a week
-Get more blog followers
-Get more Twitter followers
-Tweet more
-Design/Redesign website
-Exercise more
-Read more
-Make more money
-Spend less money
-Spend more time with kids
-Remind spouses/partners of our first names

My advice is to:

1. Be realistic. Don’t try to do it all. You can’t. If you have two little kids like I do, you CANNOT blog as often as other people do. Or exercise as often. Or volunteer as often at the local homeless shelter. You just can’t. Not if you want to get any writing done. And take a shower now and then. Blog once a week. Anne R. Allendoes it, and it isn’t hurting her blog following. Exercise a couple times a week. Quit the volunteer job (for now).

2. Prioritize. Take out a piece of paper and divide it into three columns. Label those columns: Must Do, Would Like To Do, and Probably Won’t Do. Then divide everything on your To Do list into one of those three columns. For example:

Must Do
Write one hour every day
Make enough money to pay the bills

Would Like To Do
Blog 1x per week
Exercise 2x per week

Will Probably Not Do Any Time Soon
Learn to Sew
Re-landscape the yard
Study Italian

Now schedule the items in the first column into your day. Commit yourself fully to them. If you have extra time, schedule the second column in, too. If not, do those things when you have some free time. But don’t stress about them. They’re not your priority. As for the third column, put them out of your mind. They’ve been crossed off your To Do list, at least for the near future.

3. Carve out your writing time. Find a time and a place to write that works for you, and stick with it. That may mean writing in 15-minute increments on breaks while at work. It may mean writing from 5 to 7 a.m. before the kids wake up or 8-10 p.m., after they go to sleep. It may mean hiring a babysitter one or two days a week in order to write in an office, a library, or a cafe. It may mean ditching the kids with dad for a few days now and then and heading off to a writers’ retreat or conference (that’s what I do!) Try different things and see what works for you. Then stick with it.

4. Balance, balance, balance. Write as often as you can. Make that your priority over blogging, watching TV, and surfing the Net. But take time to nurture your creative soul, too, or your writing will become dry. That may mean going for a run, reading some poetry, taking a hike in the woods, visiting an art museum, lying in a hot bath surrounded by candles, or spending a couple hours drinking tea with a friend. Give yourself a break now and then. All work and no play makes Blogger Betty a dull and unhappy writer.

5. Remember to have fun! You’re doing this—writing, blogging, parenting—because you chose to, because you WANT to. If it’s becoming a grind, if you’re overtired and burnt out and you hate your book and your blog and everyone who demands anything of you, then take a break. Tell your blog readers you’re going on sabbatical and step away from it all for a few weeks. Don’t worry, the rat race will still be here when you get back. And you’ll return with a renewed vigor that will infect your readers. Happy bloggers are successful bloggers.

What about you? Do you have kids? How do you balance parenting with writing and blogging? When/how often/for how long do you write each week? Do you blog each week? How do you “do it all”?

And now, links!

First up, meet Nelson, Coupland, and Alice, IDEO’s visions of the future of the book. Then read this wonderful blog post that responds by asking, “What is a book?”

Next we have a fabulous book trailer for Steve Johnson’s Where Good Idea’s Come From (although now that I’ve seen the trailer, I don’t feel the need to buy the book, so I’m not sure the trailer was effective.)

This is a video link day because now I have an interview with the amazing Yiyun Li after she was named a MacArthur fellow Monday. The MacArthur Fellowships, also known as the “genius awards,” include a $500,000 award to use any way the recipient pleases. It’s every writer’s dream to be both critically acclaimed AND make money, and Yiyun has accomplished both at a very young age. Yiyun, by the way, was my thesis advisor when I did my MFA at Mills College. She’s incredibly humble and sweet and an absolutely fabulous writer if you haven’t read her work yet. Her latest book of short stories Gold Boy, Emerald Girl is out now.

If you’re in the Bay Area, Litquake starts today! Litquake is San Francisco’s weeklong literary festival, which means published local authors will be reading their works all throughout the week, culminating in the fabulous Lit Crawl Saturday, Oct. 9 during which almost 400 authors will read in 60 different venues between 6 and 9:30 p.m. Litquake is AWESOME, and you MUST attend! I’ll be reading with other Grottoites from 7:15-8:15 at the Elbow Room the night of the Crawl, 847 Valencia St. Come!

Speaking of Grottoites, congratulations to Stephen Elliott, whose memoir The Adderall Diaries, has been optioned by James Franco, who plans to write, direct, and star in the film!

Last but not least, this is unrelated to writing but so damn funny if you’re a parent (especially in the Bay Area) that I had to post it. And it will give you a glimpse of what my life is like on my non-writing days:

I was sick this past week, but will be posting more videos from the Grotto Open House soon. Have a great weekend, and if you have any favorite links this week, please post then in comments. I’d love to check them out!

My only time to blog is the two days we have a babysitter, during which time I also have to go to doctor appointments, tour preschools, get haircuts, pay bills, do laundry, edit books, write, etc. etc. And in order not to go totally insane with sleep deprivation, I’ve been going to bed by 9 the past few nights (except last night was Mad Men, so I had to stick some toothpicks in my eyelids and stay up until 11. No, we don’t have TIVO), which nixes the idea of writing in the evening.

I miss my blog friends. I miss blogging, and I miss reading blogs and posting links. I have a backlog of posts half-written in my head, but until my munchkin starts sleeping better, I’ll have to settle for squeezing one or two out per week.