I can scroll through years of photos, and the same ones keep showing up.

Badly-lit, boring pictures of laptops.

Sometimes it’s a laptop sitting on my knees, with taekwondo classes or dance practices happening in the background. Other times, it’s a laptop sitting on a table in the library’s kids’ section or the Quiet Room on the second floor where it’s so silent that I hate to even breathe.

It’s pictures of laptops set up in different areas of my house, laptops in the lobby of the rec centre, laptops in the hospital where I’m stuck for two hours getting an iron infusion.

I take these photos as reminders, as proof, that I’m always trying to get a little closer to finishing and publishing a book. The goal I’ve had since I was eight years old.

The writing itself is nothing new. I have been writing professionally since I graduated from journalism school in 2005. For 15 years, I joke that I have put words in or on just about everything: newspapers, magazines, websites, advertisements, blogs, videos, plays, even product packaging. Writing is my career, and I love it.

A book, though is different. Unlike most other forms of writing where you get paid pretty quickly for what you submit to an editor or a client, a book is something that only pays you if and when people buy it.

While some people are in the position to sit down and chip away on a book without bringing in any income in the meantime, we are not those people.

I’ve been a self-employed writer since having our son almost 10 years ago. In the beginning, I was only able to work when he was asleep. He was a year and a half old when our daughter arrived, and we had some very difficult years where I tried to earn as much money as possible while raising two babies. 

Each year, the kids got a little older, a little more independent — and it was a little easier to squeeze in more working hours. I celebrated when our son started Primary and our daughter started preschool, and then I flat-out partied two years later when they were both in elementary school. 

While having the kids in school has given me more time to devote to my writing career — and grow it significantly — I’ve also tried to find pockets of time to work on books of my own. (There have been a few books over the years, and none have made it to the finish line yet.)

It’s hard to be consistent. I go through stages where I’ll diligently put down at least 1,000 words a day, and stages where I go three weeks without even opening the Word documents. 

Being self-employed sometimes means it’s hard to say no to paid work so that I can work on something that might never pay me. (You can’t pay bills with the promise that you might, someday, be a successful author.) 

Being a professional writer sometimes means I’m too exhausted from spending eight or nine hours at the computer for work to want to sit back down there in my “free” time. 

Being a mom sometimes (often) means that my schedule changes because of the kids, and I might be too tired to drag myself out of bed at 4:45 a.m. to write. 

Our son and daughter know my goal is to be a published author and they’re excited for me. They ask me for my current word count and celebrate with me when I hit a new milestone. They know that sometimes I wake up early or stay up late to write, and that I’m working hard for something that isn’t coming easily. 

I may be moving at a snail’s pace, but it’s working. Slowly. I’ve added “Work on novel” blocks of time in my calendar, and I try to stick to them. I have a special pink planner where I log each new word count. When I see an opportunity to sneak in even 45 minutes — like while one of the kids is in a practice or lesson and I’m waiting around for them — I open the laptop, take a picture of it (for posterity) and start writing.

Sometimes it feels like I’m crawling towards a finish line that I might never reach. But other times, I know someday I’ll look back at those laptop photos and smile at the baby steps I was willing to take in order to become an author.