Can a Successful Writer Do Foster Care?

I received another rejection last week where the editor said my novel just didn’t “gel.” Apparently, all I need to do is add a little pectin. 🙂 Anyway, I don’t quite met the qualifications of being successful writer yet, but I’m looking to the future.

ACFW is a huge resource for any writing-related question, so I passed this by the group.

“I’m very excited about going back to the baby stage. I wrote all through my own children’s baby stages and treasured those few hours when the youngest started Kindergarten. I know that God will provide time for me to write and I will have to be disciplined enough to grab it when I can.

“If any of you have stories of how God blessed you when you took in children–like Karen Kingsbury selling millions of books while adopting three kiddos from Haiti–I’d love to hear them. Then, on those days when I wonder why I feel led by God to write AND foster, you can renew my hope and strength!”

In the next email, I clarified the discussion: “Specifically, I ‘m looking for tales of how you were able to find writing time, sell your first novel, break onto the best-seller list, etc … while taking care of little ones that got dropped into your family. Since we’ll be fostering at least for a while before adopting, these will be temporary family members which will really change the dynamic of our household. I’ll be going from having 8:30 AM to 2:45 PM as hours designated for writing to whatever I can grab during nap times. And that’s if both younguns–we’ll be taking sibling groups–nap at the same time!

“Most of all, I guess, I wanting to hear that it is possible to keep moving forward, that the momentum building behind my writing career doesn’t have to stop.”

The following ladies responded. If any of you readers are considering fostering/adopting, but worry about how it will fit into your life, these stories are for you. Even if you’re not a writer, consider this: if you follow God’s calling and take in little ones who need a safe place for a time, how can God not bless that?

Barb Huff says: I wrote four books while serving as a foster parent. You do it like any other kind of parenting, but probably in smaller chunks because foster parenting is NOT parenting. There are so many more dynamics that come into play that require more of your time and effort than parenting “typical’ children.”

Nancy Brandt says: I got my first contract in Dec 2002 (we got Noah in Jun 2002) and my second sometime in 2003. He became legally ours in Sept 2003 and my first book came out in Jan 2004. I literally told my husband the Sunday after we got Noah that I didn’t know what else to pray for!

Since May 2004, I haven’t published anything, and only recently (say the past two years) have I been writing “seriously.” He’ll be 6 on Saturday and he knows Mommy is a writer. That doesn’t mean I can spend all my time (when he’s home) writing, but he now goes to school from 8:15 to 3:30, so I do have lots of writing time now, but this is the first year that’s happened.

Darcie Gudger says: Infants are SOOOOOO easy to write around compared to toddlers! Now that the Booger is two and walking, being tethered to the living room wall wasn’t working for me. I’d plop him on the floor with plenty of cars, and moments later I hear splashing in the kitchen – there’s a lake on the floor! He splashed the gallon of water from the pets’ water tower all over the parquet. Or, trains would swim in the toilet, my shoes disappeared, …

Several weeks ago, I got a laptop. Got laptop, can follow the Booger. He can play outside, I can sit where I can see him and write. It’s harder to work outside b/c of the brightness – the screen is hard to see. Overall, I think it’s a matter of getting into a routine and the kid will eventually know to let mommy do her thing.

Debbie Thomas says: I didn’t ‘adopt’ children, but you might consider operating a home day care are a sort of adoption. I usually had six preschoolers (including 2 of my own)from 7:00 to 6:00 p.m. Monday through Friday, for 5years. In that time, I needed sanity and started writing a novel during nap times. It gave me about 1.5 hours a day to write. That’s about how much time I have now, working full-time outside the home.

Carolyne Aarsen says: I started my first book when I was fostering our first child – he had multiple handicaps and required a lot of work, many trips to the hospital and a couple of frantic ambulance trips. Truthfully? The writing was my escape. My sanity saver. It was the one place where I could cling to an illusion of control. I started my first book while we had him, by way of a correspondence course because I couldn’t see myself learning to write any other way. I put it on hold after he died (we had him four years) but then started up again shortly after we took in our second and third children. In total we took in about twelve foster children over a period of ten years, and I wrote the entire time and was published during that time as well.

As a Christian and a writer, fostering also helped me see life and the difficulties many people have from another perspective. One of the bio mothers of one of our foster children became close to me. In fact, I often joked that at that time I had two foster children – her child and her. But through her I experienced first-hand the pain and brokenness that some people have to deal with. And how lost some of these parents are.

But yes, I kept writing. And I used and am still using, a lot of my experiences in my book. I think it has helped me become a better writer, and, hopefully, more sensitive to what some people have to deal with.

The other reality is that I came to a point that my writing took so much out of me, I couldn’t give as much of myself to the kids in our care. I had to make a choice and because I was fairly successful with the writing, we decided to stop fostering and closed our home. It wasn’t an easy decision. From time to time I think about taking in children again, but then a deadline looms and the thought is put away.

Christina here, again. Each of these examples gave me a different kind of encouragement. Barb took away my expectation to parent foster kids the same way as I did my own. Nancy reminds that there will be times of plenty and then quieter times. God will schedule my days to allow for both fostering and writing. Darcie, the need to be flexible. Debbie and Carolyne, that writing may be an escape again instead of the main focus. Oddly, I think this might up my productivity. And, again from Carolyne, that there is a season to foster and a season to not.

Thank you, all, for sharing!