Maybe you can't know how until the time comes. You just have to trust it will happen, or that if it doesn't you will survive and just be a somewhat different you than you thought you would be. But if the writing calls you that strongly, you'll find a way to answer. I think for me there was also the factor that I'd been writing for 20 years, had never seemed to have the talent or the drive to make a huge success of it, but had done enough of it to fulfill something important in me. I felt really Ok about putting it aside, notwhithstanding the occasional jones for it that comes and goes.

I loved, still love writing. It has defined me my whole life, was always the only thing I was ever good at. But it was kind of awful to hit 40 and realize I really wasn't THAT good at it--passable, acceptable, marginally employable, but not great. Much to my surprise, I feel like I am kind of great at being a mom. That is, I'm not a great mom--I suck at it a lot of the time, but I love it like I've never loved anything in my life and I never feel the kind of defeat I often felt when getting rejected with my writing. That is, it's crushing, for example, to lose my temper with my precious kid. But we are live, growing, evolving creatures and we can recover, learn, grow from every moment that passes between us.

Writing is a solitary occupation, one the requires a certain amount of self involvement. I was definitely good at being self involved. I think most people don't have that hurdle to overcome in motherhood and so maybe don't find that same kind of astonishing revelation in it. For me it was like coming alive for the first time ever to be really connected to another human being. If you are not otherwise a particularly self involved person, this probably won't make sense to you, but being forced out of that way of being by having a kid changed my need to write, to be alone, to remake the world in my own imaginings. I think that's because maybe I was never called to write in the same deep, deep way as others often are. I used to believe I was, but now I'm not su sure. My sister has two children and is a writer. She is amazingly talented and just won last year's Writer's Digest grand prize out of 16 thousand other writers. She's that good. So she writes. Her husband, her parents, her inlaws, her daycare center play a big role in her ability to do that but she was called to it and has to do it. Reading her stuff, I couldn't make any other choice if I were her.

We all find our way eventually, hope you'll stick around and say how it goes!