Writer, with Kids: Sara Lippmann

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Sara Lippmann is the author of the story collection Doll Palace (out in September from Dock Street Press). Her stories have been published in The Good Men Project, Wigleaf, Slice magazine, Tupelo Quarterly and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a 2012 fellowship in Fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts and co-hosts the Sunday Salon, a longstanding NYC reading series.

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I write, I don’t write, I think about writing. Fits and spurts and never enough, a pathetic and diffuse stream, which I’ve written about here and talked about elsewhere because apparently, blathering on about how little I get done has become a favorite self-pitying pastime – and only supports my inefficiency.

I am slow. I was slow before kids; I am slow still. I don’t know if that will ever change.
True, parenting has driven my output, the shape of things. First (and for a looong time) I wrote nothing. I was so consumed by it all – the terrifying, overwhelming love, the needs and wants, a gnawing depression I refused to admit – that I couldn’t get it together to utter much less scratch out a complete sentence. When I finally returned to the page, stories skewed from short to shorter, whatever I could compress, whittle down to the barest of bones. A friend once compared this compulsion of mine to his need of locating an exit the moment he enters a room. Maybe it is anxiety, maybe I am always eager for an out. Maybe those early years of motherhood exacerbated this natural instinct. Maybe it was all I could manage when unwashed, drunk on sleeplessness, without a stitch of childcare, and tethered by the teat. (Maybe you know what I mean?) One thing’s certain: I found it gratifying, a simple peace, to be able to put together a tidy pocket of a story when everything else around me was a mess. 100 words, 500, 1000 words I could wrangle. I could contain. I could get in, say it, and get out. Meanwhile, I learned more about language and concision, structure and narrative during those years than I ever did in a workshop.

Now that my children are older and sleep and go to school shapes are shifting again. As the hours stretch so do the storylines although I am haunted constantly by the voices in my head (wow, I sound crazy), the often deafening blare of “you’re no good.” Like right now. Who cares about your process? Why would anyone read this? Even on the off-day when things are clicking it is inevitable I am just finding my rhythm when it is time to run and scoop up my kids.

But time is a gift that I don’t take for granted. If anything, becoming a parent has helped demystify the whole writing process. Nothing is precious. I don’t care what’s in my mug or playing on the radio. I write when/where I can. Grocery lists look like this: “scallions, cheese, the aggressive intimacy of eating off another’s plate.”

Because this is what we do, right? And by we, I mean, all of us – parents, nonparents. All of us are juggling jobs, lives, all of us have commitments and bullshit and unforeseen tragedies and events and loved ones that take up home in our hearts. This is what it means to grow and breathe and be a part of the world. As writers, we do our best to carve out some quiet but also must embrace the terrific beauty of all that competing noise.

Balance, schmalance.

This is being a writer, with kids.

So – my daughter.

I look at her. Unlike her mother, M is a force. M does not dick around.

At six, her prolificacy rivals Joyce Carol Oates’. The kid churns out three books a day: The Dirty Gown, Eli and the Purpul (sic) Grapes, Nikki’s First Time, Don’t Let the Dog Go In the Car! (Book 1), The Tiny Tertel (sic).

She writes in the morning, on the bus, in “choice time” at school, on the toilet, she is still scribbling against her pillow as I turn off the light, the outside of her fist stubbornly ink-smudged. Her books, stapled and illustrated, are everywhere. We gave her a basket, wide and deep, but it’s overflowing, her books spilling out and onto every surface in her room, down the hall, throughout our home. There are so many. It is impossible to keep up.

She rewrites fairy tales she’s read, movies she’s seen (as if she’s already caught onto the notion that there are only seven classic plots.) She imitates her favorite authors’ styles (Shel Silverstein, Lore Segal) like an MFA student in a Flannery O’Connor phase. She’s big on series. Pajama Blueberry Saves the Day! Pajama Blueberry and the Key of Evil, Pajama Blueberry and the Badist (sic) Ghost, etc. Series sell, she tells me. Snaps fingers: Ka-ching!

The kid is no dummy. She’s collaborative. She’ll outsource the artwork or text to a friend, while steering it under her vision.

(OK, so she might be a teensy controlling.)

(OK, so you may be dismissing this now as some bloated mommy brag.)

But – this girl. This girl is my inspiration.

M faces the page with singular focus. She can’t get the words out fast enough, doesn’t worry about spelling much less punctuation (who has the time to pause?) but keeps going, barreling through to the end, then moves onto the next.

The Girl Who Rode a Unicorn. Goldie’s Golden Box. String and the Hot, Hot Soup.

There are no voices in M’s head telling her that she is unworthy. No inner critic robbing her of the permission and chutzpah necessary to write exactly what she wants to write. She never catches herself and says, Oh, it’s been done before. And done better. Or: What could I possibly add to the conversation?

She just writes, with delight and with fury, without any hang-ups, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. When she’s done she reads her stories aloud and awards herself Newbery medals, drawn in gold on her covers.

In this way, every day, she teaches me. She teaches me through the unbridled joy on her face, the confidence in her carry, the mischievous light in her eyes, the total absence of self-doubt. (How is she even my daughter?) I pray this conviction never wanes, that she manages to karate chop her way through the quicksand of second-guessing that sucks in so many around adolescence, that has me still by the throat. My heart fills my chest. To watch her is to remember: Have fun. Writing is play. Take pleasure in it. Play more, worry less. Believe in yourself.

Occasionally, someone will ask her: Do you want to be a writer?

Which is like the funniest, weirdest question.

Because, duh.

She will lean in conspiratorially as if she holds the secret to success. No, she’ll whisper. Of all things in life my daughter wants to be… a dentist.

Happily ever after.

THE END.

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Writer, with Kids: Wendy C. Ortiz

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Wendy C. Ortiz, author of Excavation: A Memoir (Future Tense Books, July 2014) and Hollywood Notebook (Writ Large Press, late 2014)

Age of kid: 3.5

What was your writing schedule (ideal and actual) like before kids, and how has that changed?

My writing schedule, up until the time my kid was about 3 months old, was some haphazard mishmash that bears no resemblance to an actual schedule. This “schedule” also changed according to life circumstances, so, like when I saved enough money to quit my cushy job at a university so I could write for 2-3 months, I instead let life swallow up my writing time. The ideal schedule has always been something like, I will wake up, and I will hike, and then I will shower and write for four hours straight, with a break for lunch, and two more hours before a cocktail.” NOPE. More like, “I feel like writing so I will write.” If I felt like writing and there was no time, then it was a string of expletives and maybe some acting out on loved ones to give me space to write again.

I’m one of the mothers who’s experienced the excellent, enforced writing schedule that an easy, mellow baby with good napping tendencies can bring. It’s really weird to say, “I never wrote as much as I do now, with a kid,” but it’s the truth. The two naps a day stretch of time gave me space. When it turned into one nap a day, I adapted. No nap days are not the ideal. In the next month things will shift yet again because she’ll go from twelve hours per week of preschool to 24-30 hours a week of summer camp and eventually the same into the school year.

How do you remain present for your family even when you’re sunk deep into a current project?

I don’t always remain present. I’ve missed two camping trips, taken a few one to two night trips away from home just so I could keep going deep into a current project. When I’m really deep and they’re around (and it’s a weekend day), I sometimes just remove myself (to a library or coffee shop) and use the act of driving home to clear my head and get back into the present (yes, I recognize how L.A. this sounds. But it works.)

How has parenthood changed the work itself, if at all?

I’m not sure yet if its parenthood that’s changed the work, or if it’s aging that’s changed the work, but I feel much more than I ever have like I have no fucks to give and believe that the writing benefits from that.

What is the most challenging aspect of being a working artist and a parent?

Juggling finances and time.

Do you have any advice to other writers with kids or who plan to have them?

Take seriously all offers of childcare from your friends and family. It’s what keeps me alive, anyway.

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Writer, with Kids: Mira Ptacin

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Mira and Theo zzzzzing
Mira Ptacin is a New York Times bestselling ghostwriter. Founder and director of Freerange Nonfiction. Her work has appeared in Guernica, Slice Magazine, New York Magazine, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The National Book Foundation, The Morning News, The Rumpus, Creative Nonfiction The Moment: Wild, Poignant, Life-Changing Stories from 125 Writers and Artists Famous & Obscure (Harper Perennial 2012); Get Out of My Crotch: Twenty-One Writers Respond to America’s War on Women’s Rights and Reproductive Health (Cherry Bomb Books 2013), and the anthology Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving NYC (Seal Press 2013). She is the 2014 recipient of the Maine Literary Award (essay).

Age of kids: Theo, 11 months

What was your writing schedule like before kids, and how has that changed?

Before I had Theo and if I were knee deep in a project, I could easily spend 5 to 6 hours a day writing. After I had Theo, I had to reassess a lot and before I moved forward with my writing, I had to answer the question of “why do I write?” before I decided to proceed. The way I used to write was with an urgency. Like it was a race or a competition. I had no idea what the finish line was or who I was competing with, but I was somewhat manic about it. I think this was a reaction to or the influence that social media and living in NYC had on me. (I was just too sensitive.) So I felt like I had to prove myself, and fast, so I wrote like my life or value or legacy depended on it. Like, if I had to stop writing to go to the bathroom, I’d get annoyed. I never took the take time to eat a good meal. I felt like the clock was always ticking. (I wasn’t even pregnant at the time, either.) Then we moved to Maine. I thought moving to Maine would magically and instantly change my attitude, but it didn’t change me instantly. Why? Because I still looked at Facebook and Twitter a lot, even when I was out hiking the woods with the intention of meditating or just looking at the trees. Then I got pregnant, and I had to reassess a lot of things. One of them being my relationship with writing, which led me to really explore the question of who and what matters to me versus what I can do to be valued by others, and how those things influence my actions.

Once I had Theo, I put a lot of pressure on myself to “do it all”—to continue to compose new things shortly after growing and birthing a human into the world. (Also, for the record, he was ten pounds when born.) I also put pressure on myself (why? Why? I’m smarter than this) to lose my baby weight rather than take the time to recover physically, (fuck you, Us Weekly). That sense of urgency was back, to be and do everything. To people please, to keep up on my reading, to sleep train Theo, to continue running Freerange and start up a new Freerange chapter in Maine, to sell my book, to write a new one, yada yada yada, blah blah blah. The pressure I had put on myself to show the world that I was a wonder woman (by American pop standards) was, in retrospect, quite insane and ridiculous, not to mention distracting me from the most fragile and urgent and important and mindblowing thing in the world: my son. What was I even thinking?

On top of this, my husband and I bought a house one month after Theo was born. And since we live far from family and on a small island that doesn’t have any U-haul stations, we had to move our belongings ourselves via wagons and carts and radio flyers. And then we also decided to renovate it ourselves, and started the demolition right when we moved in. So in-between breastfeeding, I’d be sanding and painting wood. On top of all this, about a month after that I went back to work on the mainland. I love my job, but my job is incredibly demanding of my time and energy and presence. By the time Theo was about four months old I think I’d skinned off about ten years of my own life, and I was a wreck. I’d teach a four-hour workshop and barely have the time or privacy to go pump without a student knocking on my office door asking if I could edit something of theirs, or giving me an excuse on why their work was late. I developed insomnia and anxiety and felt like a failure for not being able to “do everything.” About five months into this goat show, I nearly lost my shit. I hadn’t slept in two days. My book had just gotten turned down by all the publishers we’d submitted to, and in the middle of a workshop, I blew up at my students for whining about their workload. I was so angry: angry at the world because I couldn’t control it, angry at myself for not being confident or brave enough to set boundaries, or ask for help, or to keep it simple. I was intimidated by my son and felt guilty about stretching myself so thin rather than giving all of myself to him, or at least just protecting myself, which meant I was protecting him. It was all just this horrible fever dream. After several “come to Jesus” moments with my husband, I finally (finally) locked in the mindset that this shit had to change. That the only thing that really mattered were the living beings inside our home. That the only thing that immediately needed me (and I needed, too) was Theo. That being a mom was enough. More than enough. Everyone and everything else could wait. Around December, when Theo was about six months old, was when I finally turned the ship around. That’s when I realized that I didn’t want to “have it all” as much as I just wanted some harmony in my life.

But making this lifestyle change takes time, I’m still working on it because simplicity, nowadays especially, requires work. To have a clear mind takes a conscious effort, daily. Put down my phone. Fuck Facebook and twitter. I am working on being present.

So to answer your question: my writing schedule has changed in the fact that I have put a majority of my writing efforts on the backburner. However. I believe self-composition is heavy part of the writing, because it’s where the ideas and insights and motives and the creativity comes from. And I want that engine to be healthy.

How has parenthood changed the work itself, if at all?

Vijay Seshadri (winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in poetry, yeah boy!) told me that my beat is “the uterus and the American Dream.” I agree. So my beat (so vast!) has not changed. The specific story I’ve been writing, as well as the kind of energy and emotion that fuels my writing, has definitely changed. Pre-Theo, I’d been writing (and submitting) a memoir about loss and grief. I’d lost a baby when I was five months pregnant, and the narrative was a very raw one, and it dove deep into unpacking my experience and sorrow. I’m ready to move on from that focus, to write about something other than that experience. I’d like to infuse my writing with more joy and celebration of life. Perhaps more essays, perhaps profiles of seemingly ordinary people. I’m not sure. But I haven’t been ready to write anything because I’ve been working on my brain and my spirit so I can write with a more advanced yet humble perspective—purer in how I view the world, and purer in my reasons for writing in the first place.

One cool thing I’ve realized is that I can now write pretty fast. I used to be a very slow and careful writer; I was extraordinarily cautious in choosing every word I’d string together with the next carefully chosen word. I would spend hours constructing a paragraph until I thought it was perfect and celestial and pure poetry. It was kind of torturous. However. The last essay I wrote was composed right before I had Theo, and, perhaps because I was so swollen and tired and pregnant, I wrote it very quickly—albeit honestly and from my heart—in a matter of two days. I was uber-pregnant and just wanted to do nothing but eat ice cream and stare at a wall. Anyways, the essay went on to be published in a great magazine (Slice Literary Magazine) and then just last week it won the Maine Literary Award. It made me realize that I can write quickly because I spent so much time learning and practicing the craft carefully. I like to think of it like a pianist practicing every-and-all kinds of scales again and again and again, slowly and patiently until they become muscle memory, and then at a certain point she’s ready to improvise. Make some sophisticated, soulful funky music. Thelonious Monk-style. Or maybe more like Bill Evans. So what does this have to do with parenting and writing? Because you get so little time to yourself when you’re a parent (unless you have help with your kid), so being able to write in spurts, or write a lot in a short amount of time, is a good thing. And now that I know I can write pretty quickly (compared to how long it used to take me), and that my heart and motives are both much more mature than they used to be, I’m ready to move on to the next big project.

One very vital part of my most recent “stage” in my writing process is the act of hiking and being outside. It’s very important for me to spend time in the woods behind our house or down by the ocean shore (with Theo strapped to my chest) so I can kind of purify my mind with what is real and natural. Rilke put it so perfectly:

If you trust in Nature, in the same Things that hardly anyone sees and that can so suddenly become huge…if you can have this love for what is humble and try very simply…to win the confidence of what seems poor, then everything will become easier for you, more coherent and somehow more reconciling, not in your conscious mind perhaps, which stays behind, astonished, but in your innermost awareness, awakeness, and knowledge.

I think being outdoors and sitting simply in nature is just. so. good. It helps me not only to be a better momma, but also a better writer, and human.

How do you remain present for your family even when you’re sunk deep into a current project?

My husband helps me tremendously (sometimes sweetly, sometimes annoyed) by simply reminding me. We eat dinner together every night. We take lots of walks. Other times, I just look at Theo (he’s pure joy!). It helps to have a set writing schedule. To meditate. Carry a notebook. Forgive myself. Forgive myself for not being able to stop thinking when I’m supposed to be meditating. Put my phone down. Pet the dogs. Ask my husband about his day. Remind myself that Theo is my legacy.

Do you have any advice to other writers with kids or who plan to have them?

Embrace love. Dirt builds immunity. Have no regrets. Take your time. Trust yourself. Be genuine. Sit quietly in nature often. Don’t spend more time on social media than you do with your kids—they’re hilarious and creative and brilliant and great muses. Linger in moments rather than trying to do it all. Just be present and grateful. Sleep when the baby sleeps. Also, there’s a lot to learn about the world outside at 3 a.m. when your baby doesn’t want to sleep. Protect yourself and do what works for you, what feels right, even if what feels right is hard. Start looking for a reliable and trustworthy babysitter now. Nap now. Take care of yourself always. And when the baby comes, don’t spend so much time so soon worrying about how much you are writing or being frustrated that you can’t. If you are a real writer, everything you do is part of the craft, even if it’s as simple as sitting outside doing nothing but staring at a river.

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Writer, with Kids: Jessica Dewberry

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Jessica Dewberry. Family
Jessica Dewberry’s work appears in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Mutha Magazine, and other places. She is currently writing a memoir and a compilation of essays and photographs.

Age of kids: Frank, 16; Cabe, 11; Iona, 10

What was your writing schedule (ideal and actual) like before kids, and how has that changed?

I was still a teenager before I had kids, so the idea of seriously writing or having a writing schedule wasn’t even a part of my psychology. By the time I had my first child, I was a junior in high school, and I do remember writing very bad poetry then, between feedings, learning to change diapers, or when my son was napping after those all-too-frequent, twice-a-day baths no one ever told me weren’t necessary. Those poems were often drawn over with stars and moons, face profiles of fictional people, and crying eyes reminiscent of the Latino Mi Vida Loca culture because I was into that then. I didn’t begin to write more frequently until after the birth of my other two kids. It was still poetry, ekphrastic poetry and nearly a decade before I ever heard the word ekphrastic. I was 22.

A couple years later I started reading heavy again, and I did more of this – thank the universe – than writing. I needed to learn how to write and get away from the far-out abstract sentences that sounded good but said very little, and reading fed me even more than writing those bad poems did. This time period coincided with returning to school at a community college, and I’d take my kids to my mother’s house, so she could help with them while I did “school work,” which was really me just reading obsessively in one of her back rooms.

When I transferred to a university, I was working three part-time jobs while going to school full-time, and the kids seemed to live at daycare, so writing outside of the requirements was off the table. Since my program had an emphasis on creative writing, I took all the writing courses I could and designed a couple for independent study. I became really good at seeing how others put their stories together and talking about it, but I still struggled when writing my own. I remember a lot of crumbling concrete metaphors and people being lost. There was always a young female protagonist trying to navigate terrain that was seemingly unfamiliar to her; although, she grew up in the setting. I was simply continuing to use writing as a cathartic practice while figuring out how to expand upon what I truncated and often missed altogether in those poems.

I finally began to better understand my writing process and how to write a story myself towards my senior year of college. By then, I had stopped working two of the three jobs, and only attended school part-time, so I could write and parent with more flexibility, which was much needed because my oldest was 13 and determined to break a law. I was also wrestling words and ideas with more strength, so I wrote whenever possible. I’d take the kids to school and have a couple hours before I needed to be anywhere, and I’d write. I’d write while they played outside the front door with other kids in our complex, and through all the, “Look at me mom,” requests while they swam in the pool or while waiting on them at gymnastics and karate, but that was also sporadic and outside anything that would be considered a routine. Some days I didn’t write at all and still don’t, while other days, I write like my life depends upon it because in some ways I feel it does.

How do you remain present for your family even when you’re sunk deep into a current project?

I don’t think I really do. Whatever I’m writing or editing usually takes precedence. In general, I’ve had to work at being present. I used to become really frustrated when the kids demanded my attention because I just needed and wanted my time. Of course, when they were younger it happened more often, but as they get older, I become better at dividing myself – being in motion and doing things while writing sentences in my head and scheming ideas. I can physically put down the computer or my scrawled-up notepad, whip a meal together, beat a kid at Monopoly (I really don’t know why they still ask me to play.), discuss Yugioh cards and the non-negotiable steps of actually taking a shower, run errands, then do a little song and dance back through the door and back into a project with new material and better ideas on how to convey something. At times when I’m helplessly “sunk in,” they heed the warnings signs and induce parts of our daily routine for me. They’ll take it upon themselves to assemble a sandwich for dinner or remember to follow some rule I’ve enforced but usually have forgotten – their way of helping out.

How has parenthood changed the work itself, if at all?

Because writing and motherhood are so inseparable for me I’m not sure I can fathom one without the other. I’ve been maturing right alongside my kids and all my bad writing and the books I’ve read. Together, it has added depth to my work and helped me learn to better take care of myself and the kids. Motherhood, and not just for those who had kids young, demands a commitment to become self-aware and more inclined to work at “fixing” patterns and behaviors, so we can be healthier adults and mothers, whether or not we’re conscious of it or choose to adhere to it. I work at this all the time, and my writing is never only about trying for a beautifully crafted essay or story, it’s also about whatever soul-work I’m doing and therefore about finding a way through the process. I have epiphanies all the time while writing on how to resolve an issue with myself or with the kids, so we can live together a little more harmoniously. Sometimes it’s easy like asking more questions and listening, other times it’s more difficult like when I realized sending my oldest son to live with my brother full-time was best for the whole family. For me, motherhood is a paradox that seems to constantly shift to expose more meaning or single out more roots to excavate. I swear there is always someone whispering, “Ante up, Jessica,” while I’m thinking, “Man, I really dealt these cards,” but I write through it anyway, and, we and I are always better because of it.

What is the most challenging aspect of being a working artist and a parent?

Making enough money to sustain us. I look at other writers and wonder how they manage to produce work and have everything they need, and I’m talking the basics, not excess. I tend to see more of an either or situation: either they don’t have kids, or they have kids but have a partner or even an ex that helps sustain them somehow. I’ve never experienced being a working artist without kids or having a partner I can rely on for support, and as a result, we’ve gone without many things and moved around often, especially within the last couple years. I’m almost positive I’m not the only one doing this the way I am, but I’d sure like to know where the others are, so we can compare notes.

It also seems like time is always running out, and I’m constantly reminded by every back-to-back summer birthday my kids have. For this reason, I’ve had to adjust how I gauge progress because I was coming up short and was ridiculously hard on myself. I swore to the heavens that I’d have my first book completed by now. When I decided this, I think I was convinced there was a demarcating line between aspiring and accomplished, and publishing a book meant a person had navigated the threshold. Now I’m not sure where I stand on the subject or if it’s even necessary to figure it out, but I do know I feel capable of conveying whatever I need to, and with that, I’m good.

Do you have any advice to other writers with kids or who plan to have them?

Be extremely selective with who you take advice from. I spent a lot of time deciphering advice about parenting that didn’t work for me or my kids. I’ve been encouraged to keep secrets that could, upon revealing, positively affect my kids’ life decisions. I’ve been told to work within governmental systems because my options were limited for financially supporting my kids outside of being a welfare recipient. It all held a tinge of truth – I’ve kept secrets, been on welfare, but none of the advice was helpful or positive, and it took a lot time to unspool the threads of consequence after I accepted it.

Aside from that, the intentions of my family members are generally good, but no one is a writer or an artist or even a reader, and I really want that not to matter, but it’s been my experience that they just don’t get it. If I had listened to my father 12 years ago, 5 years, even 6 months ago, I’d be working right now as a nurse, and although that might curb his worry (maybe even mine) that someday my kids and I will end up completely homeless, it would be the absolute death of me. So, I encourage writers with kids or those planning to have kids to seek like-minded folk, and create a supportive circle however possible. That’s what I do now, and that’s what works.

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Writer, with Kids: Paula Bomer

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Paula Bomer, author of Inside Madeleine (2014), Nine Months (2012), and Baby (2010)

Age of kids: 15 and 18

What was your writing schedule (ideal and actual) like before kids, and how has that changed?

I always wanted to write every day because that’s this thing that’s drilled into your head as a young writer. And I mostly did, but sometimes writing meant opening the computer screen and putting my head on the desk or falling asleep on the floor next to my desk. After the kids it wasn’t that different but I felt more fraught about it. Looking back at that time when I had small children, I realize I was so productive because any time I could write was so precious to me I didn’t waste a minute. I sorely miss that as now that my kids aren’t really around and I have all the time in the world, it feels harder than ever to write, to motivate. That said, besides right after finishing a big project, I still try to keep a steady schedule. Oh, I can’t write for more than two hours without needing a break. I can go back later, but two hours and I’m spent.

How do you remain present for your family even when you’re sunk deep into a current project

I don’t know if I always was and at the time I was really hard on myself and now I look back and think how ridiculous it is to think one can always be present for say, a three-year-old. I kept a pretty good eye on my sons- they’re alive!- and I had so much fun playing board games and reading to them. I miss holding them in my laps every day. But once they could entertain themselves with legos and other toys, of course I put up my feet and picked up a magazine. Also, although I’ve written two novels, I mostly wrote short stories which are more forgiving in some ways- you finish them more quickly for one. A novel is insanely emotionally draining for me, so those were tough times. Also once my kids could read at long stretches at a time- it’s heartbreaking the first time they ask you to stop reading to them because they want to read alone- we often sat around like a bunch of bookish nerds and read. It was sort of blissful. And reading and writing are very connected to me- I need to read a lot to feel engaged in the written word, to inspire me.

How has parenthood changed the work itself, if at all?

It changed everything- my subject matter, my marriage, my heart, my interests. It didn’t change my desire to provoke and challenge readers with my work. And I’ve gotten some flack for that. But, I am who I am.

What is the most challenging aspect of being a working artist and a parent?

It varies for people. For many people, it is time. For others, it’s the idea of being true to their vision, about worrying “what the kids will think.” For many people with a great big support system, it’s not an issue. It’s sad that we don’t all have that support, but we don’t.

Do you have any advice to other writers with kids or who plan to have them?

Have kids! Do the work! Don’t be hard on yourself as a parent or an artist. Surround yourself with kindness and cut out the poisonous people – I mean that from the bottom of my heart. People can be so awful to young mothers and so judgmental. Ignore the mean people.

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Writer, with Kids: Nelly Reifler

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Nelly Reifler, author of See Through (stories, 2003) and Elect H. Mouse State Judge (novel, 2013)

Age of kid: Beckett, 2.

What was your writing schedule (ideal and actual) like before kids, and how has that changed?

I’ve always been an erratic worker. I became a much happier person and writer years ago when I accepted that I was not good at writing every day. In fact, if I try to write every day when I’m not totally obsessed, most of what I force out is such utter crap it’s a waste of time. When I am obsessed, I write a lot, in every free moment, anywhere. These conditions haven’t really changed now that I’m a mother. I still feel frustrated and kind of crazy if I haven’t written in a while, and if I am deeply involved with a piece of writing, I feel as excited and distracted by it as I used to feel.

I’ve been teaching writing at Sarah Lawrence for a dozen years, and because of the college’s educational system—you have biweekly conferences with all of your students and you have to read work that they’re doing outside of the class—it’s a demanding job. In a way, it’s been much harder for me to reconcile teaching and writing than in has been to fit parenting into the picture. On the other hand, my students have enriched my writing and my life in immeasurable ways, and I love them.
How do you remain present for your family even when you’re sunk deep into a current project?
I have to admit: I don’t think I am completely present for my family when I’m deeply involved with a project. Luckily, my husband, Jonathan Dixon, is also a writer so he understands and makes it possible for me to retreat into my imagination for a while. We’ve both done that for each other. It’s fortunate that Jonathan is both more flexible and more methodical than I am; he seems to be able to do a lot of writing even while he’s picking up the slack. On occasion I’ve walked into a room where Jonathan is writing standing up while listening to Norwegian black metal, and Beckett is happily playing with blocks at his feet.

During these times when I’m obsessed, I still play with Beckett, of course, and read to him and make him lunch and go for walks with him. But Jonathan somehow gives me space and permission to write a lot when I need to. We always eat dinner together as a family, and we always hang out on the grownups’ bed in the morning.

My father is a writer and my mother is a dancer. When I was little (though not as little as Beckett is now) and Dad was writing, I would also write or read or play make-believe games. Those afternoons I spent alone while my father wrote were some of the most dreamy and magical times of my childhood. I would also accompany my mother to dance classes and rehearsals. I would sit at the doorway to the studio, or sometimes on a little shelf where the dancers would tap me on the head when they were doing combinations across the floor. I recently asked my father how they got me to be patient, to understand that they needed time for their work. He didn’t have an answer at first. Then he called me a couple of days later and said that he realized it was because they took my projects very seriously. He said that even if I was just drawing outfits for princesses or writing stories about chipmunks (I still write stories about chipmunks) he and my mother gave me time and space to do it, and they treated the finished product with respect, the way they would with a grownup artist. So I understood early on that they needed the same thing from me. I do have memories of certain times—with both of my parents—when I felt as if their work was more important to them than I was. Was that a bad thing? How can Jonathan and I do our own writing and not have Beckett feel kind of pushed aside? These are questions I grapple with.

How has parenthood changed the work itself, if at all?

It has changed in a few ways. Even with the support and flexibility that comes with having a partner who’s also a writer, I do have to fit my writing into the patterns of our family life. Weirdly, this structure has resulted in my writing more in the last two years than I had in the five or so years before I became a mother. And maybe because I don’t have the vast expanses of time that I used to take for granted, I’ve become looser with my voice and my language. I don’t suffer over sentences the way I used to. It seems that perhaps there’s a tradeoff in the writing: I don’t think my sentences are as beautiful as they maybe used to be, but I do think that they’re conveying emotions a bit more directly. I hope my writing isn’t getting sloppy!

I’m also finding myself writing a bit less metaphorically. For many years, I had trouble writing about human beings in regular human-being situations. Now I’m finding myself getting drawn away from chipmunks and back to human subjects, and even beginning to write about my own life for the first time ever. I can’t attribute this shift directly to having a child; it’s possible that whatever changes made me finally ready-ish to become a mother were moving me toward writing about humans including myself.

What is the most challenging aspect of being a working artist and a parent?

Money. Lack thereof.

Do you have any advice to other writers with kids or who plan to have them?

Oh, so much advice comes to mind! But I feel hesitant here because I think that both parenting advice and writing advice can be dangerous. I can say that there are a few things that worked for me: first, I had the opportunity to take assignments from a couple of fantastic editors in the first year of Beckett’s life, so I had deadlines for things I was really excited about and that I couldn’t blow off. And that was good for me. I also had a book come out when Beckett was a little over a year old, so I was immersed in that process from when I was pregnant until long after the publication date. And while it was all a bit intense, I think it was also positive. For me. One thing I learned early on was not to base my expectations of what I could or should do on anyone else’s experience. I have a couple of powerhouse friends who went back to teaching when they had practically newborn infants. It turned out that I was not that kind of powerhouse, and I ended up taking a belated maternity semester off when Beckett was six months old. But I have other friends who only wanted to nest and snuggle and immerse themselves in motherhood, which was also not what I needed.

I think it’s always unhelpful to beat yourself up for not writing, whether you’re a parent or not. I’ve never known anyone to write a single word because they felt like shit about not writing. You might not feel like making art for five years after you have a kid, and that’s okay. Everything that happens in your life is ultimately part of your writing, and I believe that you’re always writing—you’re in it—whether you’re at your keyboard or not.

So I guess the only real advice I would give is to be patient and kind to yourself, your partner (if you have one), and your child. If you want advice or support, ask other parents—they will be happy to give it—but remember how subjective experience is. Oh, and also: you’ll be incredibly forgetful after you have a baby, so carry a notebook with you and write down ideas when you have them, because they’ll just flutter away and disappear a second later.

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Posted in Nelly Reifler, parenting, with Kids, Writer, Writer with kids, writing

Writer, with Kids: Aimee Phan

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Aimee Phan, author of We Should Never Meet and The Reeducation of Cherry Truong

Many of our friends and family believe that children of writers are blessed. They will grow up surrounded by books. They will love to read. They will value and appreciate literature. All of this is true. What I didn’t count on was how deep those influences would reach, and how soon.

Maybe it’s because I’ve fully transitioned into middle-age parenthood where economic reality has long since dampened my young, idealistic fantasies of living off my writing. Instead of spending hours meditating on my characters and plot, I must first trudge through the responsibilities and financial obligations of raising a family in the expensive, but culturally rich San Francisco bay area. Instead of cozily sitting next to each other at coffeeshops, my husband and I trade off two-hour writing blocks so that the other can watch the kids. Instead of accepting every reading or residency invitation with enthusiasm, we must first check our childcare schedule and joint bank accounts to see if we can afford it.

So as our five-year-old daughter Amelie graduates from picture books to chapter books, and creates her own stories and poems in her notebook, I watch with both elation (obviously) and dread.

She is doomed to be a writer.

It is probably built into her genetic code. She is the daughter of a poet and a fiction writer, both of whom were terribly disinterested in their math and science classes. My husband and I both share childhood memories of frequent library visits and sunny afternoons in our bedrooms reading as many books as possible. And Amelie is easily following this path with an overflowing bookshelf and books strewn all over the house (just like her dad, she reads four or five books at once, always dogearing her pages.) She consumes multiple notebooks to scribble down her story ideas and observations. She leaves us notes under the bathroom door while one of us showers. She plays puppet show theater with her brother, and demands another installment of her father’s improvisational, never-ending, nonsensical, but endlessly entertaining story Rapunzel Goes to Cleveland. When her father took her to an Oakland A’s baseball game last week, he wisely brought along a sketchpad so Amelie could keep score and narrate the action.

I should be insanely proud of her and I am. But I worry. We live in a world that is not kind to artists and writers. We struggle with this reality every day, as costs of childcare, summer camps, activities, and rising rents permeate our conversations and thoughts—when we should be using the quiet time to write. Do we want our children to struggle this much? Do we want them to rely on their more sensible family members for their used-car castoffs and generous Christmas gifts of airline gift cards to help facilitate family vacations?

As their parents, we want to give them the world and everything in it. In order to do that, we provide them the tools (education, advice, love) that will hopefully prepare them to acquire and share these gifts. As writers, we have the privilege of pursuing an art that we cherish and respect. Yet, the sacrifices can feel very stressful when faced with other obligations—most importantly, providing for our children.

As a teacher of artists and writers, I should be more understanding. I should nurture her creativity and passion. She can have the gift of writing. But couldn’t she—and shouldn’t she–have so much more? At her age, the possibilities should be endless: every door wide open to become a scientist, an athlete, a dancer, an artist, or a doctor. Should her passion only be literature, when there are so many other (lucrative) disciplines to consider?

Yet we are watching, witnessing, delighting in how Amelie’s imagination blooms. A few months ago, she received a certificate for the most number of minutes earned in her class for their school fundraiser read-a-thon. I remember how my heart nearly burst after I heard her name called at the school assembly, and how she confusedly, but excitedly scrambled up the stairs to accept her certificate from Bob The Diver (“Dive into Books!” he reminds the students.) She was happy, proud and breathless, and deservedly so. If I could replicate this feeling to reoccur in her life forever, I would.

Ultimately, her destiny is out of my hands, as it was for our parents who had to listen and smile patiently when we excitedly announced our plans to become creative writers. We will support and encourage and hope for the best because we want our children to be happy. And from our experience, we know that a life of writing, while difficult and challenging, can also be amazing, fulfilling, inspiring. It is, after all, the life we still want.

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Writer, with Kids: Tom Williams

Posted on by Cari — 1 Comment ↓

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Tom Williams, author of The Mimic’s Own Voice, Don’t Start Me Talkin’, Four Fathers (co-author), Among the Wild Mulattos and Other Tales (forthcoming 2015)

Age of kids: Finn, 4; Daphne Kit, in utero

What was your writing schedule (ideal and actual) like before kids, and how has that changed?

I had a lot of luxury as a single man and even a husband without kids. I worked mostly in the morning, seven days a week, first thing after coffee, and wrote often by hand with a fountain pen (which has its own routine and rituals to get started), after having read the work I’d completed the day before. I could get the job done in other places but preferred my home office, staring at a wall with a few postcards or knickacks. I wrote some times with music, more times without. But my main aim was to try to incrementally near first draft completion, revising little (but always taking notes), while shooting for three to five pages a day (stolen from Thomas Mann) and stopping in the middle of a sentence (swiped from Hemingway and Dubus).

Joyce Carol Oates once said that when writers ask each other about routines, what they’re really asking is “are they as crazy as me?” And in retrospect, the schedule seems a little fussy, more ritual than routine, a scheme devised by someone worried that if he took off a day or used a pencil instead of a pen the project would vanish or refuse to budge. (When I was in graduate school in Houston, I did once buy a novena candle to help my writing, and I began each session by lighting it. Burning, it smelled like Afro Sheen.) But my schedule got a lot of work completed, prepared for revision—a process with its own patterns and superstitions (as in never throw any page or Post-It away and carry the manuscript around with you all the time).

I’d be remiss in not saying my job as department chair has intruded as much on my writing life as having kids. Nowadays I write directly on the computer and have seen an unwillingness to follow too far a digression or half-baked plot turn. I don’t know if that makes the writing more efficient or less ambitious but for whatever reason it seemed far more meet to stack up ten handwritten pages of what a former instructor called “Fooling Around in Prose” than to do the same in MS Word. I try to write with greater velocity. Shoot for a thousand words in an hour rather than a leisurely morning. And no music. Turn off the email and cellphone. Keep pushing, as REO Speedwagon sang.

But I think the big development is that I’ve gotten better as a writer. I can do more now in fifteen minutes than I used to in an hour. I know better my limitations and work earlier in the process to deal with them. I’m not discovering my own voice any more. I’m refining it. That doesn’t sound too overly confident, does it? I almost fear I’d better shut up, lest I jinx myself.

How do you remain present for your family even when you’re sunk deep into a current project?

Ask my wife Carmen and son Finn this question in a few months, as I’ve managed to avoid working on a long-term (yikes, novel) project until recently. Or read my hardly autobiographical story in Four Fathers, “What It Means to Be.”

Obviously, I’ve learned that I can take four days off from a project and not lose the thread or the motivation to keep it going. But if I do take off four minutes from parenting and husbanding, that absence can lead to five minutes or ten days. I’m the kind of person who struggles to stay in the moment anyway—I’m always worried about global warming or whether I sent the check for day care or trying to recall who was the MVP in the ’77 NBA All Star Game (it was Doctor J)—so it’s important for me keep focused on the now. I swear, you blink around Finn, and he’ll have picked up three new words and a new habit by the time you open your eyes. Kurosawa says that “to be an artist means to never avert one’s eyes.” This is good advice for a parent and husband too.

How has parenthood changed the work itself, if at all?

I never wrote about being a parent, for one. And that’s not being flippant. Oftentimes, I got rid of the parents in the books I wrote before becoming a father, as parents could be so cumbersome to a book’s development. The Mimic’s Own Voice features a central character who is an orphan and without siblings. Silent Sam Stamps, the narrator of Don’t Start Me Talkin’ is a single man without children and with only one parent.

But now everything fiction that’s either got a few lines humming in my head or on my computer is either straightforwardly about parenting or has prominent parents. And I think this is not just my fiction echoing my life; it’s being more open to what other parents are going through. You know, it’s funny. I never really thought much about how children so often appear like a fifty/fifty blend of their parents. Never. And now it seems so obvious. And I wonder, “What else have I been blind to?” And believe me—it’s a lot. (Like this strain of vision/blindness imagery running through these replies.) But I’m convinced that becoming a parent has made me a better writer, if only for the fact that I have somebody else in my son (and soon-to-arrive daughter) for whom to leave behind something permanent and good and worthy of their reading.

What is the most challenging aspect of being a working artist and a parent?

Balancing motivation and time management. So often, when Finn was having trouble getting to sleep (“I’m finished with bedtime,” he still says at four), Carmen and I would spend two hours reading and telling stories and keeping him under the covers. Well, maybe two hours earlier there had been a plan to write (or read! Another big sacrifice: I don’t read enough) after he was asleep but I’d no longer have the energy or will or I’d actually want to spend a few precious minutes with my wife!

But it’s gotten easier. I’ll be frank and say too that having published a couple of books makes the possibility that I’ll never publish another word not too dispiriting. And maybe I’ve figured out a way to make this work. (Writing a bunch of stuff in my thirties that wasn’t published turned out to be a big help.) Only now we’ve got number two coming in September and sometimes we wonder if we recall anything from Finn’s first years.

Do you have any advice to other writers with kids or who plan to have them?

This is from my friend Josh Russell, another Dad Writer: Never underestimate the value of “head work.” The arrival of the infant in the home will keep you away from the writing desk. Maybe you’ll even have to use the desk as an impromptu changing table. And I’m not saying that thinking is the same as writing, but I don’t see how a writer who really is in this for the long haul ever really stops absorbing and evaluating and analyzing the world around her. So even when I’m wiping up messes or pushing a stroller or tying shoes, I’m aware of new characters or scenarios or a few lines that seem to have someplace to go. And because I’m patient and believe those phantoms never exit until they’ve found words to carry them I can keep up this head work and find, eventually, the time to get black on white. Perhaps this is why I find I can get work done quicker. Or at least that’s the lie that I tell myself to keep on believing. One thing having a son has done for me is make me want to keep on believing, and for that I am forever in his debt.

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Writer, with Kids: Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

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Miranda Beverly-Whittemore, author of Bittersweet, Set Me Free, The Effects of Light

Age of kids: 5-year-old son

What was your writing schedule (ideal and actual) like before kids, and how has that changed?

I’ve been much more productive since having a child than I ever was before. In the five years my son’s been alive, I’ve written two novels, seen one of them published, and adapted my first novel into a feature length screenplay, and also into a short film, which I co-produced. Before he was born, there was a lot of “hmmm, what am I going to do today?” hair-twirling, which really doesn’t have any place in the life of a mother (or at least not me).

Productivity, for me, can apparently be directly linked with the gun-to-my-head countdown clock of childcare, which I absolutely did not expect in the pre-motherhood days. I’m the solo childcare provider two of the seven days of the week; my son’s in daycare for three of them; my husband is with him for one of them; and the remaining day is our family day, which usually means we all flop onto the couch, exhausted. On the four days a week when I have childcare, I try to do at least a couple of hours of creative work. But there’s also plenty of other work that needs to get done in the life of a working writer, and I’m forever tweaking not just the work/life balance, but the creative/business balance of my writer’s life.

How do you remain present for your family even when you’re sunk deep into a current project?

Part of why childcare is so fantastic is there’s an unapologetic part of the day in which I’m just not available to be a “mom” or a “wife.” I fight very hard to keep my working time sacred, because if I don’t, I find I’m in a foul mood and not very good at being a “mom” or “wife.”

Lately, when my son’s at home, I’ve been trying to keep my smartphone on a shelf by my front door so that I’m not infinitely available to the outside world; that’s one of the challenges of being a writer these days–infinite availability. But of course I also want him to know that my work is important, and he gets it; he has honestly been my biggest cheerleader on the road to Bittersweet’s publication. He whoops every time I get good news, he dresses up for my readings, he made me a special “publication box” with all sorts of love notes and talismans on publication day. Will that enthusiasm translate to understanding my need for five more minutes of creative time when I’m working on my next book? I’m not sure yet, but I sure hope so!

How has parenthood changed the work itself, if at all?

On a practical level, I’m much more interested in making money than I was before I had a kid to provide for. New York is expensive. I want to contribute to the rent. I want to be able to send my son to ballet class. I want to feed him good food. So I’m more thoughtful about what I spend my time writing, because my time is limited. I ask myself questions like, “Will this be a book a publisher will enthusiastically promote?” Especially in literary New York, there’s this idea that you’d never ask yourself a question like that, but the truth is, I believe you must if you truly want to do this full time. It’s awesome if you can figure out another gig–teaching, or something else that fulfills you–so that you can have the purity of experience of not caring if a publisher wants to buy your books (which so often has to do with whether they have an enthusiasm to promote your books), but I’ve found that I would always rather be writing, even if I’m having to let in a little bit of that strategic thinking.

On a more woo-woo level, the love I feel for my child is a huge influence on how I think about interactions between my characters, especially around the idea of love. There’s also a high level of humor that goes hand-in-hand with parenting; I like to believe it’s given my work a little levity.

What is the most challenging aspect of being a working artist and a parent?

Time. It all boils down to time. Finding enough of it, eking enough of it out, reserving some of it for myself. I joined this mom’s fitness group back in September, which is something I never thought I’d do in a million years, and it has been so mentally healthy in terms of teaching me to put myself first sometimes. Two nights a week, I meet a bunch of ladies in Prospect Park and we make ourselves strong together. That self-care, and the confidence that has come with it vis a vis my body and my capability, has had a huge influence on reminding me to slow down. To not think of time as the enemy but as something I can participate in and choose to observe and enjoy.

Do you have any advice to other writers with kids or who plan to have them?

Care for yourself. Skip the dishes and write for twenty minutes, or, at the very least, write first and do the dishes second. Mothers especially, I’m afraid, are taught from the beginning to put our needs second. But a mentally healthy person is a much better parent, not to mention a better writer. For me, that mental health is maintained by doing my creative work, going to exercise class, reading with my kid, eating ice cream, etc. My house is often messy but I think, in the end, we’re all much happier for it.

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Writer, with Kids: Julia Fierro

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Julia Fierro, author of Cutting Teeth: A Novel

Age of kids: 4 and 6

What was your writing schedule like before kids, and how has that changed?

I had a lot of free time before my first child was born, and I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t take advantage of it. In some ways, it felt like too much time. Almost as if my knowing there was always more time made it easier for me to procrastinate. I spent a big chunk of my late twenties/early thirties not writing with any discipline or schedule and punishing myself for not finishing a novel. It was kind of awful because I was so hard on myself. I called myself a “failure” constantly. Granted, I was busy teaching many writing workshops through The Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop, which I founded in 2002, but all those classes took place in my home around my dining room table, and so I didn’t have much reason to leave my home, which made writing, already a solitary art, feel even more isolating. Sounds pretty depressing, right? It was, unfortunately.

Becoming a parent, which involves huge sacrifices of your time, focus, and energy, made me value the little time I had to write. When my second child was two years old, I gave myself the chance to return to writing full-time. I also gave myself permission, because allowing myself to leave my two young children to write for hours and hours, working on a book that I wasn’t sure would ever be published, felt very selfish at the time. I doubled my babysitter’s hours (I’d finally found a person I trusted), rejoined the communal Writer’s Space, and wrote Cutting Teeth in less than nine months. Having less time to write (while not easy, of course, I am perpetually exhausted and overcaffeinated) turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because the urgency added momentum to my motivation and forced me to become more disciplined in my process. For my first novel, written while I was at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, six years before I’d have my first child, I went into the book knowing very little of what I needed to write. In the two years before I began working in earnest on Cutting Teeth, because I was so busy teaching, raising both my children and running Sackett Street Writers, I did a lot of pre-writing. I kept a document open for each character and added snippets of dialogue, thoughts, details, habits, fears, dreams, desires, all as they came to me, whether I was nursing my daughter, taking a shower, or, as often happens, just as I was falling asleep. By the time I was ready to commit to Cutting Teeth, I knew each character intimately, as if they were old friend, and this knowledge is what helped me write that first draft so quickly.

How has parenthood changed the work itself, if at all?

It surprises me, maybe even shocks me, when I hear writers who are also parents, claiming that parenthood hasn’t altered their writing. I’ve heard several women writers—and I think this is a defense specific to women writers who, like me, want their work to be taken “seriously”—in interviews, or on panels about writing, say that becoming a mother hasn’t changed their work or their perspective as a writer, especially if they don’t write about parenting-related topics. I understand and sympathize with their defensiveness. I imagine they are worried, as I sometime am, that they’ll be seen as less “serious” or less “literary” if they are linked with all the soft sentimentality often associated with motherhood. Although, I must add, most of the moms I know—no matter the generation, location or class—are pretty badass. They’re the doers, makers, protectors, survivors. Nothing mushy about that. But the stereotype that motherhood invites is often not one a literary woman writer, especially one that wants to be taken as seriously as our male peers (a complex discussion in itself, for sure) is comfortable accepting.

But how can a writer who has become a parent, and specifically a mother, not admit to their perspective shifting? Even if they aren’t writing about parenting, they are writing about life, about humanity, about death, and many different definitions of “birth.” Our writing changes, or it should, organically as we move through life. If our style and perspective remained the same, how dull and stale our stories would be. I think it is impossible for a person’s perspective not to shift, and that shift be reflected and filtered through their characters’ perspectives, no matter the subject matter of their work.

For me, personally, motherhood has changed my writing in so many ways. The relationships I write about are complex in a new way, since my relationships with my husband, my parents, my friends, have also changed. My husband and I are both writers who work full-time and parent. That’s complicated stuff, and great material for an investigation into the nuances of relationships and all the sacrifices and negotiations that make up the balancing act of marriage. Cutting Teeth is very much a novel about parenting, specifically the new definition of motherhood in our post-feminist revolution (Lean In, Opt Out, Have it All) generation of women. These are decisions I struggle to make sense of in my own life as a woman and a mother. But I’m also not as much of a “natural mom” as I’d thought I’d be. I love working, and my husband and I share equal responsibility for household and childcare tasks. I wrote Cutting Teeth because the early years of parenthood were what I’d just emerged from and needed to make sense of at the time. Will I write about parenting again? I don’t know. My next book is about suburban teen girls. Has my own experience as a mother influenced my work, and will it continue to do so, no matter the subject? Absolutely.

How do you remain present for your family even when you’re sunk deep into a current project?

It is difficult. Very. But not impossible. Now that I’ve found a great balance, which is mostly due to the fact that both of my kids are in a great public school (hallelujah!), it is incredible what I can accomplish in one day. I have realistic expectations of myself, and how much of my energy I can share with my work and with my family. I often say that, sometimes, my work comes before my family, because I am trying to make a point. That it is okay for parents, particularly mothers, to devote themselves to their craft. But the truth is that when I am “putting my work before my family,” I’ve made sure that my babysitter is there, my husband on call. I am responsible for making sure the children are in good hands when not in my own.
My husband is an incredibly generous parenting partner, however. I would never have been able to accomplish so much with my work and writing, if he hadn’t been an equal partner in our family life. He is devoted to the children. I often call him their “second mom.” We share parenting and household tasks. I often feel guilty about this, as if this equality implies failure on my part, as if I’m not living up to the stereotype of the “good mom.” I know that may sound silly, but I do feel that guilt. I grew up in a home where my father was responsible for a lot of the domestic work, because he enjoyed it. He was this amazing accidental feminist. So that model, I know now, was responsible for the development of my partnership with my husband. That said, my uncles, my father’s brothers, think it is terrible that my husband does so much of the childcare work. They’ve even told me so! And that hurts, to feel so criticized and judged and misunderstood.

My advice to women writers who are mothers is this: Sometimes, you have take (it will often feel like stealing) the time you need to write. The guilt you may feel is worth the work.

What is the most challenging aspect of being a working artist and a parent?

Finances. Money. Babysitting dollars. Preschool tuition. It is shocking how few grants and awards there are for writers who are parents. I just applied for a grant and was rejected and now I’m thinking, how am I going to be able to afford enough childcare to commit to all the hours it takes to finish my next book. Sure, there are residencies, but what parent can take off three weeks to three months and leave their children. The babysitting costs would be outrageous if they did.

It is so difficult to afford to write, especially when you live, as I do, in an expensive city and far from family support. When I returned to writing after my children were 4 and 2, it was because I had worked for 6 years to develop my business, Sackett Street Writers, and it was financially successful enough that I could afford more babysitting hours. I love running Sackett Street Writers. It is an incredible community and I am so fortunate to be able to work at what I love—the teaching of writing—but it is Sackett Street that allows me to afford to pay for childcare so I can write. I work to write, and, often, the work doesn’t allow me enough time to write. So I stay up very very late writing. Good thing I’m a night owl.

Do you have any advice to other writers with kids or who plan to have them?

Life changes after you have children, but it doesn’t end. Trust your instinct. Be kind to yourself, and patient. I didn’t write for four years because I was busy raising two babies, teaching, and running Sackett Street. I wish I could go back and tell that young mother to be patient, and stop beating herself up for not doing it all at the same time—writing, working, parenting, socializing, exercising. She had to take that time off from writing to grow, to learn, and to experience those brief, relentless, and oh-so-sweet years of early parenting. They do go by quickly, just as all my aunts and great-aunts told me they would at my baby shower.

One of the best things about writing is that you will always return to the craft as a better writer. You become wiser with age and experience, regardless of whether you have time to read and/or write. You will return to your work and your perspective will include a spectrum of emotional hues that will make your work more beautiful, more meaningful, and more complex than ever.

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Posted in Julia Fierro, parenting, Writer with kids, writing

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