{"id":6720,"date":"2013-06-21T16:18:57","date_gmt":"2013-06-21T16:18:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cariluna.com\/?p=6720"},"modified":"2013-06-21T17:35:58","modified_gmt":"2013-06-21T17:35:58","slug":"writer-with-kids-steve-edwards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cariluna.com\/wp\/writer-with-kids-steve-edwards\/","title":{"rendered":"Writer, with Kids: Steve Edwards"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"25350_701876337203_4640128_n\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Steve Edwards<\/strong>, author of: Breaking into the Backcountry<\/em><\/a>, a memoir about his seven months of solitude in southern Oregon’s Rogue River canyon<\/p>\n

Age of Kid: He’ll be four this summer<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What was your writing schedule (ideal and actual) like before kids, and how has that changed?<\/em><\/p>\n

Before we had our son almost four years ago, I was a grad student and then a lecturer\u2014and because I didn\u2019t have the distractions of a real job or money, I usually wrote from eight in the morning until noon, seven days a week. When we got pregnant, I knew things would have to change. My wife (and those thick Dr. Sears baby books) all reassured me, however, that babies slept eighteen hours a day. I figured if I couldn\u2019t find time to write in an eighteen hour window, I shouldn\u2019t call myself a writer.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, our story got more complicated. I\u2019ll spare you the gritty details but our son had medical issues (which went undiagnosed), and he spent most of his earliest days in red-faced agony. We thought at first it was colic. Then he blasted through three, six, nine and twelve months, and was still a screechy mess. Not only did he never sleep eighteen hours in a day, he didn\u2019t even sleep the night until his third birthday. In the meantime, the economy tanked, and my wife and I both were under- and then unemployed. We had a sick kid and were weeks away\u2014still surprises me to say this\u2014from homelessness. My daily writing sank to the bottom of a long list of priorities.<\/p>\n

The good news is that our little guy finally got some competent medical intervention, and my wife and I both somehow found full-time work to pay the bills. Our family has begun to heal, and I\u2019m writing again a couple mornings a week. Life is insanely more difficult than I thought it would be when we started out\u2014partly because now we\u2019re approaching public school bureaucracy and our son requires OT, PT, and speech and language therapy (and all of it is a giant time- and soul-suck). But I\u2019m filled with gratitude these days because it\u2019s so much better than it was. I\u2019ll take my two mornings a week!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How do you remain present for your family even when you\u2019re sunk deeply into a current project\u2014say in the sticky middle of a novel\u2019s first draft?<\/em><\/p>\n

I schedule half an hour, before and after each writing session, for weeping. I say this jokingly but it\u2019s not a bad idea!<\/p>\n

Honestly, though, I don\u2019t know. I have a hard time remaining present. Period. Part of the challenge for me is keeping my ego in check. The sun doesn\u2019t rise and set by the writing I do, you know? Yes, it\u2019s important that I write\u2014for my sanity, and to a certain extent for career advancement and our family\u2019s well-being. But I have to really remind myself: it\u2019s just one part of a much larger picture.<\/p>\n

I try to practice the art of compartmentalization. To only write when writing. I like to think that if there\u2019s a leap of faith involved in sitting down to work on a book, there\u2019s also a leap of faith in stepping away from it when the day\u2019s writing is done. Maybe in the leaving and coming back something vital happens.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m reminded of a story I heard on This American Life a few years back. There was this food factory that made hotdogs, and in the process of moving from their old facility to a brand new one, something happened to the taste of the dogs. The ingredients were exactly the same but the hotdogs just tasted different. Took them months to finally figure out what happened. In the new facility, the process of hotdog making had been streamlined\u2014all inefficiencies had been done away with. Turns out that at the old facility, when the hotdogs came off the conveyor belt, or whatever it was, one guy\u2019s job was to cart them across the building to where they needed to be next. Well, this guy was a talker and he\u2019d take his sweet time carting the hotdogs around the building. In the meantime, the meat and the casings and whatnot had time to temper\u2014it slightly changed their chemistry and gave the hotdogs the snap they were supposedly famous for.<\/p>\n

Spending time with my family\u2014enjoying them, listening and supporting them, putting them first? That\u2019s how I push my cart of hotdogs.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How has parenthood changed the work itself, if at all?<\/em><\/p>\n

Considering what we\u2019ve been through with the intensity of taking care of a sick child and having money woes, I think the narratives I write now have become far less linear. I used to tell a story beginning to end\u2014let everything develop scenically. Now I\u2019m much more interested in the strange push-pull between how time and memory work, and how to represent that on the page.<\/p>\n

When our kid was so sick, one moment my mind would be in the distant future, imagining myself writing again or alone and exploring some far-flung place. Then I\u2019d be holding him at one, two, three in the morning, trying to comfort him as he cried and get him back to sleep. Then back in bed, in the quiet afterward and jacked-up on adrenaline, I\u2019d remember something my mother once said to me or something I did when I was little. I\u2019d see the whole thing crystal clear.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019m working on stories\u2014flash fictions, mostly\u2014that flicker between past, present and future. That take ordinary moments, like a dad getting up in the night to comfort his kid, and de-familiarize them. Make them strange.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What is the most challenging aspect of being a working artist and a parent?<\/em><\/p>\n

Not having time enough for either your art or your kid, and feeling as though the two are at odds\u2014and the anxiety and massive guilt provoked by choosing, moment to moment, how to strike a balance you can live with.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Do you have any advice for other writers with kids or who plan to have them?<\/em><\/p>\n

I think of that Stanley Kunitz poem \u201cThe Layers\u201d when he says, \u201cI have walked through many lives,\/ some of them my own\u2026\u201d Because there\u2019s such a strangeness to becoming a parent\u2014it\u2019s a new you, and it\u2019s also a return to your own childhood and earliest days. And the world really does look different as a parent. And though I myself suck at it, all this change, risk, failure, joy is to be embraced. I think it has to be if you\u2019re going to tell stories that matter\u2014because how else could you know? But in terms of real advice, I\u2019ll let the end of Kunitz\u2019s poem speak for me: Live in the layers.<\/p>\n

In my darkest night,
\nwhen the moon was covered
\nand I roamed through wreckage,
\na nimbus-clouded voice
\ndirected me: “Live in the layers,
\nnot on the litter.” Though I lack the art
\nto decipher it,
\nno doubt the next chapter
\nin my book of transformations
\nis already written.
\nI am not done with my changes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steve Edwards, author of: Breaking into the Backcountry, a memoir about his seven months of solitude in southern Oregon’s Rogue River canyon Age of Kid: He’ll be four this summer   What was your writing schedule (ideal and actual) like …<\/p>\n

Writer, with Kids: Steve Edwards<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,14,15],"tags":[118,62,121,122],"class_list":["post-6720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-parenting","category-writer-with-kids","category-writing","tag-parenting","tag-steve-edwards","tag-writer-with-kids","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cariluna.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cariluna.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cariluna.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cariluna.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cariluna.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6720"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cariluna.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6750,"href":"https:\/\/cariluna.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6720\/revisions\/6750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cariluna.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cariluna.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cariluna.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}