These Writing Snippets Aren't Cutting It

Hi.

I know, I know (I’m glad we got that out of the way).

So, I recently had the pleasure of spending a week in Maine.  Why Maine?  Well, last fall I applied to a writing residency I really, really wanted to get (lady writers, you’ll want to check out the Hedgebrook Writer’s Residency here).  While I waited to hear my fate I decided I needed a consolation prize in case I didn’t get it.  You see, friends,  I have barely written anything for myself in, oh, years.  I was starting to get nervous that I wasn’t a writer anymore.  Hell, I don’t call myself a Writer.  I say things like, “I do freelance writing and editing work.”  This is true.

It didn’t take long to scheme up an alternate plan:  I would invite myself to my friend Irene’s house for a week.  I hadn’t seen Irene since graduate school (2008), I’d never been to Maine, and I desperately needed some quiet time and space to write.  She was, thankfully, all in.

It felt good not to pin all my writing hopes on the residency.  Good thing. 

So off I went, to Maine. 

This all sounds easier than it was in reality.  I’ve never been away from the kids for more than three days, and even that began to feel long.  I knew this would be different, though, and it was.  I arrived in Maine on a Wednesday, and while I missed Vinny and the kids each day, it wasn’t until Sunday that the pull really began to take hold. 

But that’s not what I wanted to write about.

What I really wanted to tell you is that I’m still a writer.  I know, I wasn’t sure about it either. 

I want to gush. 

I want to tell you how magical it was: the time and space needed to allow your mind to unfold creatively, to rediscover a long-buried love, to talk shop with someone who knows your writing intimately, to scheme future publishing projects, to reacquaint yourself with long-abandoned projects only to see new potential, to get outdoors and breathe in that ocean-scented air, to take hikes, to linger.

To linger… 

Yes, that’s it right there.

This is perhaps the part of having children that is most confounding to me:  the pull between being present to properly care for little people, and having the time and space to linger in your own thoughts without being tugged in fifty other directions.

Lingering, for me, is crucial to creativity.  If I can’t live in the writing, roll around in it, talk about it, examine it from ninety different angles, well, it’s tough to get to the heart of it. 

A huge part of the problem is that because I write so sporadically, when I do finally find a little window of time to sit down and do the work, my brain freezes.  What do I do with this snippet of time?  Do I start something new?  Do I haul out that fucking screenplay again?  Do I do some research for a book I haven’t started so I don’t really have to write?  Do I organize my writing folders?  Do I make a list?  Do I…?  It’s overwhelming. 

This nasty spiral often continues for the entirety of the Writing Snippet.  And then it’s over, and I’ve usually accomplished nothing, and feel further dejected.   

To have a week to bask in it all was the biggest gift I’ve given myself in a long time.  It felt at once selfish and utterly necessary. 

Re-entry back into regular life has been harsh.  In the week I’ve been back, this is the first real time I’ve had to think—and quickly type—any writing-related reflections.  It’s discouraging.  I told Vinny my time in Maine felt like a tease.  I discovered that yes, it’s still there, only to have it pulled away again.  So I’m left to chase it. 

The difference is, I’m motivated to chase after it now. 

What does my ideal writing practice look like?  It looks like time carved out each day to write.  I kissed this ideal good-bye a long time ago.  At this point in my life it isn’t realistic.  And I’ve come to accept that. 

Here’s the thing:  I don’t wish time away.  Sure, I sometimes think about when the kids will both be in school, and hey, won’t it be nice to have part of a day at home to work on my writing?  Hell yes.  But then this daydream is quickly followed by the sobering fact that Eli will turn five this coming Halloween, and I begin to wonder how this is possible, the way time begins to move at lightning speed the moment those babes arrive.  Soon enough I will be alone far too often without them, and that will be difficult in different ways.

I left Maine with a list of short and long-term writing goals (thank you, Irene).  Three of my short-term goals will remain on a permanent list:

1.  FINISH a piece of writing.

(seriously, this is more difficult than it sounds)

2.  Submit it. 

3.  STOP distracting myself with BS tasks to avoid writing. 

My current plan is to carve out a 2-3 hour block of time once per week to work on my own writing.  I can make that time for myself.  I deserve that time.  I need that time.

We all do, mothers or not.  So do it.  Linger.