Happy Anniversary, Writer Mama! (And A Message to The New York Times)

Today is my daughter’s eighth birthday and also the third anniversary of the publication of my first book, Writer Mama, How to Raise a Writing Career Alongside Your Kids from Writer’s Digest Books.

And in honor of this momentous occasion, I’m giving away five signed copies of Writer Mama on Saturday, March 20th, to five lucky subscribers or reviewers.

All you have to do to be eligible to win is write a book review on any book review site about Writer Mama OR subscribe to my e-zine, The Prosperous Writer OR subscribe to this blog via Feedburner. Any one of these things will make you eligible, though you are welcome to do them all.

Be sure to comment here, in this post, that you accomplished one of these tasks, and then on Saturday, I will choose five winners and announce them on Monday, March 22nd, right here.

If you’ve read Writer Mama, you know that I feel a strong connection between my writing career and being a mom. I also feel that I set a strong, healthy example for my daughter of what a woman following her calling looks like. Most importantly, I cultivate my career in a balanced way, deeply authentic way, not at all like the way moms are portrayed in this article that recently appeared in The New York Times.

I’m not a brand. I don’t view myself as a brand. And I don’t build my brand instead of caring for my daughter’s needs. My name is Christina Katz. I’m a woman, a wife and a mother. I’m a freelance writer, teacher, speaker and author.

Above all, I view myself as a professional. I’ve built my writing career slowly and steadily. My creativity is my work, my job, and it belongs to me, not some corporate sponsor or group of corporate sponsors. Not even to my publisher, whom I view as a partner, not a make-me-famous machine.

I get to have this amazing career because I serve others and support their desires to publish quality writing. The other important job I do is to train others to slowly and steadily cultivate their own writing careers, so that they can also produce quality writing with integrity and authenticity.

I’m proud of the work I do. It’s extremely gratifying and that reward comes regardless of the way women and mothers are portrayed by the media.

So put that in your pipe and smoke it, NYT. And try to be more careful next time you generalize about mothers who write and blog. If you are not going to conduct a thorough investigation, then perhaps you should not generalize at all. Certainly you should not imply that mothers who write neglect their children. Unless, perhaps, you’d like to come over here and interview my daughter.

I think you will find that she is quite the opposite of neglected and that creative, communicative mothers actually make quite decent parents.

Even though you won’t read about it in The New York Times, it IS possible to have a writing career and balance it with motherhood. It’s not easy. But what is? And naturally it takes time and sustained effort.

And I can’t think of anything lasting and worthwhile that doesn’t also take time and effort.

Can you?