The Making of “The Beautiful Mess”
With “The Beautiful Mess” finally out on Amazon, I’d like to shed light on the journey behind the scenes – a tale not of the book’s content but of the winding creative path that led me here.
One of the most common questions I get is “How did you do it? How did you write a book about the difficulty of juggling career and family while living that life?”
The key answer to that question is perseverance, organization, and time.
The Birth of “The Beautiful Mess”
This book has been in my head since I became a mom, though I didn’t realize it at the time. When I transitioned from being part of a couple to a family, numerous aspects of my life transformed, both physically and mentally.
As I struggled balancing work life and family life, I decided to start writing about the chaos and called “50 Confessions of a Working Mom” to share my experiences with other working moms.
These were bullet points and largely things that frustrated me like expectations for birthday parties, staying up late making presentations past deadlines and completely sacrificing any sort of self-care.
As the years passed, these ideas and thoughts kept entering my mind so I kept jotting down the bullet points and any tidbits I thought other working moms could relate to. At first, the thoughts came flooding but then I think I got a bit of amnesia. I forgot how hard it was in the earlier days.
With baby number three, an eight-year-old, and a 10-year-old life got very chaotic very quickly. More than I could imagine. And all those “confessions” came back in full force. So much so that I felt I needed to share what I had learned and connect with other women in similar situations. This is how the “The Beautiful Mess” came to life, as a central content piece.
The Creative Process
At this point, I had to reach out for some help. I contacted Wise Ink Media, a publishing company based in Minneapolis, Minnesota that works with indie authors to help publish their books.
During our initial meeting, Dara Beevas, co-founder, and co-CEO suggested that I should just start writing. She helped me set up a blog and that became my outlet. I started blogging and I did this for a few years. I’m sure you’re wondering how I found the time to blog while working and momming. It was the inspiration to share my story. I would just start writing whether it was in a notebook, a scrap of paper, my phone, or voice recording, all sorts of things.
All those notes eventually turned into blog posts. And I did this in little slivers of time. So yes, I did find the time, but they were the little grains of sand that fit in between the rocks and the pebbles in my life.
Turning My Dream into Reality
Turning blog posts into a book required significantly more time and effort than expected. I still only had those slivers of time, so I got some help. Mostly to take the mountain of things I have written and organize them into some sort of potential flow of chapters. And I will be honest with you, this was completely overwhelming. It took way more time to get the book completely done. So, what I did was break down each task. When I did that, I had little bite-size chunks of things to do that I could fit in my little slivers of time.
For example, if I needed a firsthand account for one of my chapters, a tap point, or a quote, I would break that down into a little tasks each week. It became a little more difficult with bigger gaps like whole chapters that were needed. But again, I broke it down into tasks like what was the outline which can I pull from, what data do I need, etc. Eventually, it got closer and closer to something that looked more like a book and less like a blog post.
Honestly, there was a point where I gave up. But the more I wanted to give up the more I heard from other women and other men who were struggling with similar challenges. Because of that, I felt it was important to share this message and start a chat about embracing our flaws and living authentically. We don’t need to be perfect; we can accept our imperfections and still thrive. These were the conversations and the stories that kept me going and gave me the strength to complete the project.
Conclusion
While people seem to be in awe that I was able to get “The Beautiful Mess” published, I am very proud of it and so glad the clutter is out of my head and out in the world.
With some planning and utilizing my spare moments, I created a book that working parents could relate to and incorporate into their lives. It aimed to help them balance growing their career and family simultaneously. The content focuses on practical advice for working parents juggling professional and personal responsibilities.
If you’d like to know more about the writing and creative process of “The Beautiful Mess”, leave your questions in the comments. I’m still at the beginning of this journey and grateful that you’re with me!
If you haven’t picked up a copy of the book, you can find it on Amazon. Thank you for your support!
