Sheree Greer

I know, I know. People get all sensitive when we start talking about Mamas, and I’d love to say that I’m not being rude, but I kinda am. That’s right, I’m channeling my inner-Pharcyde on this one (“Yo Mama got a peg leg with a kick stand!”) because I don’t know how else to reference the busyness that consumes my life right now. See, I got a lot of projects going on. I’m not complaining; I love it. As a matter of fact, if someone comes to me with an amazing project that I need to be a part of — script, anthology, article, presentation, whateva — I’m all over it. Maybe it’s the Virgo in me. Maybe I’m afraid of being bored. Maybe I’m an over-achiever. I don’t know what drives me. I don’t know that I even care. The point is, I write better when I’m writing lots of different things, doing lots of different things. I think I thrive on the pressure. The deadlines, the expectations, the challenge. I dig it. However, I do find myself becoming this preoccupied, cling-to-my-calendar-what’s-next?-I’ll-pencil-you-in person that becomes irritated when people ask me, quite innocently sometimes, “Are you busy? I need you to [insert task not currently on my to-do list].” Is yo’ mama busy? Epiphany. In my reference to a mother’s busyness, I find myself marveling at the supreme multi-tasking skills of mothers. It’s the working mother, the married mother, the single mother, the student-mother, the sister-mother, daughter-mother, friend-mother, the writer-mother, the performing mother, the teacher-mother, I could go on. Damn. So many roles. In the news, recently, there was all this talk about whether or not being a mother was a job. Mostly, the housewife doesn’t have a real stake in the economy, nor does she need to watch with sweaty palms whether or not the private sector is creating jobs. So in some regard, housewives aren’t watching the economic headlines with bated breath. But as usual, the GOP took it out of context. Yet the overall response was right on: being a mother is one of the hardest jobs in the world. And it only becomes more difficult, more complex, more demanding when you’ve got a bunch of other roles to fill. Nurturing and raising a developing human while managing a home, sustaining a career, fulfilling a dream takes a whole lot of something — focus, passion, magic — and mothers have it in spades. I need that. I need that sense of management, that knack for juggling, that special capacity for doing a whole bunch of shit at once, being a whole bunch of people at once. I need that Mama-busy. So many things are pulling at me, needing me and my attention. I can’t ignore them. That’s neglect, and I can’t have anyone calling the people on me. The time is made — the time to write, the time to research, the time to edit and revise, the time to submit and query, the time to publish and create. Demanding? Yes. Sometimes thankless? Yes.  Hmmmm… where else have we seen that combination? When writing this entry, I set out to talk about my writing on my novel — this new novel, this prequel to the novel I got going out with queries by the end of the month — but I cannot help but talk about the reality of being a writer. We need to pay the bills and keep our jobs, we need to be daughters and sons, boyfriends, girlfriends, wives, husbands, sisters and brothers. We need to take care of the children (sons, daughters, nieces, and nephews), AND we need to, we must, feed the babies (novel, short story collection, script, anthologies, articles). Yep. Me and the babies are doing well, but I’m busy as a motha, writing like hell. Shit, it’s June. Happy Father’s Day. Whomp, whomp.