Tag: writing

when you can’t say it all

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It has been said to me frequently by other writers that in order to withstand the rigors of writing for publication, we have to fall in love with the writing itself. We need to love the process. It is the process that will always be with us; the editing and book launching and getting authors to write blurbs – these will be short seasons that pass. They aren’t what we’re here for. We’re writers. We’re here to write. 

And as much as I try to love the process, there’s a pressure that often gets in my way. The pressure of making my best work. 

Don’t misunderstand me – it’s good to make excellent work, to give writing the best that I have in me. It’s good to edit and polish, criticize and critique, hone and practice. That is vital. That is important. Without an eye to challenging our own work, without looking for the ways we can grow, we won’t. But my ultimate goal is to write for hope, for joy. Books and stories have given me fresh eyes to see the beauty in my own life and I want my writing to do that for others, and I want the piece I’m writing right now to be that piece and I forget that I have decades to fulfill this goal of mine. 

I may want to be remembered as a writer who inspired hope into those who felt drowned in the mundanity of their lives, but I have a lifetime of writing ahead of me. Possibly, even hopefully, the one manuscript I have right now will not be the only one I produce. After all, I have no plans to stop writing if/when this book finds its publisher. And so, this book, this writing, this project can take on its own perfect, most excellent shape without being the exact embodiment of everything I want to say in my writing. I am allowed to say more, later. Maturity will have a different voice, a deeper voice. There are experiences and moments and decades and conversations and heart-changes that will never fit into the one manuscript I have written right now. 

I can polish and edit until this book is perfect, but I need to avoid the trap of needing to fit all of my words into this one project. I have more memories than there are pages in a memoir. I have more essays than there will be posts on my blog. I have more thoughts than there will be entries in my journal. 

I think we who are artists underestimate maturity. We think that when we finish our PhD, we need to have achieved the pinnacle of clear, scholarly thought. We imagine that when we are published, we will have established who we are as authors. We sit down to the long game of seeing a project to completion and we think that project needs to be the completion of us – we forget that there are often so many, many more years ahead. We forget that people change and grow and our voices, our art, will change and grow with us. That we will change and grow with our art.

So don’t forget to close the chapter, sometime. It’s ok that some pieces are left out. Hone and edit and critique your work but remember that if it doesn’t not say everything that’s written on your heart, that’s fine. Your heart can say so much more than a book, an essay, a painting, a pottery vase could ever convey. So keep creating. We know in our minds that one project is not the end, but remember too that it is not the grand summary. It can express one thing you had to say. The next project will take it further, will add a new tambre to your voice. This is ok. This is maturity. This is knowing which work must represent which ideas, which growth. When you’ve published one book or sold one painting, you haven’t finished talking and we haven’t finished listening. 

Hold fast, keep walking. Close a chapter and smile about it. There is more ahead than you can imagine.

this can happen

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Saturday mornings are made for coffee and if you are wise in the ways of really making it a weekend, you take your coffee out walking with an old friend in a beautiful neighborhood. Or at least, this is what I did last Saturday. I met Sarah at a coffee place on the familiar corner of a wide, slow street. It’s called Good Neighbors, and is there anything more to say than that? 

We took our coffee to go, walking through the cool morning and talking as fast and enthusiastic as you can only do when you’re all caught up on news and move on to conversation. We talked about everything. The summer camp at which we became friends and still work for, which sort of latte each of us ordered, the freshness of the lilac hedges we walked past. Tattoos came up somehow, and in no logical sequence, tattoos led to my writing. Reluctant as I am to talk about my writing, everything seemed to tumble out in confidence of a supportive listener. The big dreams, the ones about this memoir and that book of essays, the questions about building an audience – maybe I’d held on to those secret thoughts for so long they spoke up of their own accord. I talked, laughed ruefully, wondered and dreamed a bit, and finally shrugged. 

“Who knows though. I’m not really sure what I’m doing.”

“Gianna,” Sarah turned without stopping and looked at me, face all lit up like spring, “this can happen.”

This can happen. 

I hung on those words for a minute, and she poured out enough ideas and strategies to build my dreams sky-high, iron-framed and concrete-founded. 

This can happen. 

It’s been five days of turning over every single suggestion she named and writing down question after question, marketing, hashtags, giveaways, monthly emails – and despite how logical and actionable every single thing has turned out to be, I still can’t believe the three words she said first. This can happen. 

It’s carried me all week now – all tired long week of parenting in a safer-at-home order, bruising my shins on the steps, wading through days of uninspired writing, closing my journal or my laptop or my mouth with a snap because I feel like sometimes I’ve run out of any words to say at all. But I remember that tiny sentence that opened a whole world of hope, and I think it to myself again: This can happen. 

Sometimes that’s all the seed of hope we need to keep a dream alive – one person who knows how to put shoes on a dream and make it start walking. Somebody stares at the sky with you, and sees your same dream, the one you thought was just a fleeting shape in the clouds, and calls it real. One person who can look you in the eye and say, “Yes. Here’s how.” 

I hadn’t planned on taking our conversation from the tattoos I want to the books I plan to write, but there we were, and there was magic in the unplanned sharing of dreams, because now those dreams have a confidence in them that isn’t just mine. They’re backed by somebody I trust – and sure, I’ll still have those days when I can’t see what value there is in any of my work, or I wonder why anybody would want to sign up for a future monthly email from me. But I have Sarah’s enthusiasm to fall back on too, now. I have somebody who cares about these things becoming real, somebody who won’t be shaken or disappointed when I write a bad sentence or a bad paragraph, or when nobody takes notice of an Instagram caption I crafted with heart and vulnerability. 

So darling, whatever that dream is, I want you to hear it from me: this can happen. You may not have all the details figured out and maybe I can’t tell you exactly how to train for the marathon or survive basic training or learn to lead-climb tricky rock walls, but don’t let that hold you back: this can happen. You can do this. You’re not alone. Find somebody to talk to, somebody who knows which step to take. But don’t forget that I’m here cheering for you. Your dream matters. Your goal can become a reality. Your ideas are important. 

Darling, this can happen. Remember it. Say it to yourself often. And if you know somebody who needs to hear it too – send them these words. Heck, say it to them yourself. This can happen. I’m not alone; you’re not alone; nobody is alone. Big things can happen when we begin to tip the balance from wondering to acting, to encouraging and hoping and planning. Let’s take time this week to be Sarahs – to pass out hope like coffee on a Saturday morning and remind each other the ways that big things can really, truly grow into being, one tangible, tiny step at a time.

mommy at work

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“Daddy at work?” he asks, standing on pudgy toddler legs with one ankle crossed. Yes, Daddy is at work. “Mommy work?” He looks down at me seriously from the top of the stairs. When did he become taller than the banister? I look back at him with a smile that says more than he might ever know. 

“Yes, Mommy is working too.” Perhaps it is fitting that he asks me when I’m between fixing the bed and washing the dishes—a moment in time when I snuggle our newest as I move her from tummy-time under her mobile to a bassinet in the bedroom. If I were in a formal workplace, I might even take an overdue, two-minute coffee break. We’re already a few hours into the workday that will tick into overtime by mid-afternoon. The office opened at 6 am when he called from his bedroom to ours, asking for a snack. We’re already halfway through a morning of staff meetings—the diaper meeting, the getting-dressed meeting, the disciplinary action meeting where one colleague ends up sitting in time-out in the corner of the stairs after a mild lecture. On the docket for the afternoon there’s a lunch pep-talk about the importance of eating at least three bites of cucumber, and a company fitness break at the park with mass participation required on the big slide: if I’m lucky, there will even be a focus hour when everybody is quietly working—or napping—at their desks.

Motherhood—it is very much work. Almost every mother has been asked, or even wondered herself, what it is she does all day, but no one who is a mother has questioned whether what she does is hard work. Motherhood is changing millions of diapers and washing too much laundry when you didn’t change the diaper fast enough, or even when you did. It’s walking to the park over and over and over and never saying the word “park” (or snack, or Grandma, or library) unless you’re committed; because at the least hint of possibility, your little committee will fight to get a walk to the park added to your duties, regardless of what it’s like for the employee behind the stroller. 

A mother’s workplace is not exactly safe or sanitary. You will stub toes and bump heads and step on legos. Motherhood means no longer wondering why there is poop on your elbow or hotwheels cars hidden in your shoes or Cheerios of unknown age hidden between the cushions of all the office furniture. You plan the work parties and you host them and you clean up from them – or you don’t, and the floor accumulates it’s dried macaroni and stale Cheerios until you remember to pull out the vacuum—a sadly non-industrial sized affair that management refused to upgrade, probably partially clogged with the hair that you lost after you became a mother.

Motherhood comes with lifting requirements too, though they’re rarely listed on the job description. We mothers lift our babies in our bellies for nine months and then we lift them with our arms into their car seats and bassinets and high chairs and above our heads and we lift them with our hearts in those bone-deep aching prayers we murmur once they’re finally, finally asleep. The job of mothering is more physical than for movers or stockroom employees or construction workers. You can drop a box or a board but babies need more than This Side Up. Motherhood is carrying babies on your chest until your shoulders ache and then pushing them in the stroller until your legs ache and then coaxing them to eat what was, only yesterday, their favorite food until your head aches. And then you watch them sleep with an arm over their head just like Daddy and your heart aches a little too.

Motherhood is doing work while they’re awake and then spending most of that precious nap time wondering which important thing you should do while they sleep. There’s cleaning or dishes or reading or workout or getting a nap yourself, or planning the afternoon activities for when they wake up. 

Motherhood is wondering over and over in each season “Who am I?” And you know it’s important because you get to shape how these babes of yours answer that question for themselves one day, so it’s vital you know. But it’s vital for you too, because in between the mothering that touches and changes every part of you and your life, you still need to be a whole person on your own. That’s where the job description gets fuzzy—Motherhood isn’t as easily pinned down as a teacher or agent or cook or nurse or circus clown. It is all of those and anything your little This Side Up parcels need—Professional Snuggler and Lullaby Singer and Medical Researcher—and beyond all that, it is yourself. It is your old hobbies, it is the nicknames you had and the particular way you smile when the sun comes out from behind the clouds. It is in the way you still remember how to shoot hoops and you know what to do with a brush and canvas even if you are limited, right now, to sidewalk chalk. It is in the moment you take to curl your hair and that silly voice that only comes out when you ask Who’s a good doggy?! 

Motherhood is hard and glorious and a thousand years long when naps disappear one at a time like balloons popped before you were ready for the party to be over. There are actual decades between the day you go, nervous and excited, to the hospital and the day you stand at the end of the driveway and turn over the phrase “empty nester”. At each birthday, your heart has aged steadily past your own years, but somehow we never wish our hearts back to twenty-five or even thirty the same way we do our skin tone, our hair color, our eyesight. And yet we look back each twelve months and sigh, and laugh, and sigh again at how all those seasons have passed in mere seconds. Was it yesterday that we held an infant lighter than the dumbells we once used at the gym, and yet wondered how to bear the weight? 

But we do it—we lean in slow, cleaning and washing and lifting and aching and knowing that workmen’s compensation will never come in the form of cash but not caring anyway. Motherhood will not pay for the coffee it requires or the lego injuries or the moment we realize with a pang that we can’t undo what was said to them at school or during the sleepover or when they missed a goal. But we do it anyway, because the moment we see the first smile and hear the first laugh, feel the squeeze of tiny fingers around our own or hear the sleepy “Wuv you too, Mommy”, we are recompensed for all the work at once. The injuries may have added up and the work must go on, but in the middle we are stopped suddenly by a giggle sweeter than a bank balance, and we know, for that moment in time, that we picked the right job.

not your best work

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Today is the day the fears come. You’ve known they would – don’t we all? – but you kept doing the thing until they came because you weren’t so afraid in those moments. Maybe the thing was rock climbing or writing or dancing or working on making new friends. Doesn’t matter much; you get a good enough pep-talk and you can keep going off of that for a while because you feel so seen and so perfectly understood that you can move forward knowing somebody is at your back, cheering for you. 

And then one day you feel alone again. (Maybe that is where most fear is based: we think failure means rejection and rejection, loneliness and so we vow never to fail, even if we must never try.) You felt alone again today. You imagined how it might be if you didn’t perform as well on your next attempt and you wrapped it in failure and you wrapped the failure in rejection and you looked at this like you were holding it in the palm of your hand, and then you threw it as far away from yourself as you could. Nobody, nobody wants to be lonely. 

This, then, is the day that matters most. You will not do your best today. I understand that. I accept that, dear heart. I still care about you. So many people who will probably never know your best work and your worst work and even your mediocre work still care about you; will always care about you. Your skill is not going to be the measure of your loneliness. This day matters because it’s the day you fought back against the fear. It’s the day you rejected the fear of loneliness out of hand. Today is the day you stood up with your knees knocking and you didn’t sit back down again until you’d done that thing, because you’re brave and because you’re learning that this thing right here doesn’t define who you are or even how most people see you. 

There is something to be said for rest days or cheat days or days off but we’re not going to say it here, because we’re not talking about rest and sabbaths and the need to breathe. We’re talking about the need to stop hyperventilating, the need to wipe the tears, the need to blow our noses and take a deep breath and put in one more day, however short, at the habit that’s being built. I said you won’t do your best work today but maybe that was wrong. Maybe you will. Maybe we should realize that some of our absolute best work isn’t the prettiest or the fastest or the longest or the best-played – it was the hardest, to which we still sat down and gave our best. 

I want you to think so much about the work you’re going to do today that you forget to leave space for the fear. If you can’t sit down and do it right now, do the next best thing: start planning it. Plan to sit down after you’ve cleared the dinner dishes; plan to lace up your running shoes when you slip off your heels. Create the vision in your mind and make it as appealing as possible. The cool air brushing past you as you run. The familiar, comforting tap of the keys when you’re practicing piano. The slow way the yoga mat stretches gradually under your fingers, until your palms are damp and sweaty and sliding. Picture this work and picture your place in it. Picture your running route. Imagine the words you’re going to write. Eventually you’ll leave no room for procrastination. You’ll be fighting less fear because you’ll be armed with joy. 

And sure; maybe that sounds a bit grandiose. It doesn’t work on every hard day. Some days stay hard right up through the moment you close the laptop and wonder vaguely how you learned to write such crap. I have done this. I still do this. It will always suck and it will never be easy. Skipping it will always seem like the best option on those days but it isn’t. I need you to believe me: when you think nobody is cheering you on, that is when I’m here cheering you on. I’m writing this for you to remember when you feel like you can’t possibly have anything good to produce or practice today. This day, darling? This impossible day right here? This is your best day. Don’t lose it.

don’t forget what you love

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Darling – will you hear me for a second? Don’t forget to love the things you love. I relearned this for my own self recently, and I think the story is important. Get cozy.

I used to take my phone with me everywhere not so much for phone things but for the camera. In fact if there was a pretty aesthetic somewhere, I’d go and get my phone so I could try to find a way to photograph it. Raining? Let me find the prettiest view of raindrops through the right window. Sunshine? Maybe I could blow some bubbles and catch rainbow reflections. A pile of pillows in a coffee shop window? Excuse me while I’m the weirdo trying to subtly get the lighting just right and keep that lady working on her computer out of the photo. 

Two summers ago we moved up to a summer camp for my husband’s job and there was no cell signal. We had wi-fi in a few select locations, but I began to use the lack of reception and internet as a good reason to disconnect from my phone on a regular basis. I don’t think that was a bad idea, but I began to lose my habit of cell phone photography. I wasn’t a professional by any means – I just loved trying to capture moments of beauty. But slowly that capturing slipped away. A whole year went by that way. I even started taking walks at home without my phone. I don’t think that was a bad practice either, but maybe I was too thorough. I went through our second summer at camp and have scarcely any photographs to show for it. 

But now I’ve realized that since I’m not looking for beautiful pictures, I’m not even looking as much. I don’t notice the beautiful things that would have captivated me a year or two ago. And I miss that. 

I set out to spend less time with my phone and I accomplished that goal, but I should maybe have been more specific with myself. I should maybe spend less time scrolling through social media from the comfort of my cozy corner chair, and more time out photographing the pretty things I love to share on Instagram. So darling, don’t forget to love what you love. You can find yourself missing pieces of you that you never intended to let go of, and that would be a real heart-break. The world needs all the beauty you have to offer. 

It’s true that sometimes you need to step back from the things that you love for a little while. I stepped back from writing for a while and came back refreshed and ready to do more. It was wholesome, if tumultuous. I understand that we need breaks, time to rest, moments or months of quiet. But I came back and I think the coming back is important. 

I’m just now coming back to taking pictures on my cell phone and it’s giving me life in ways I had forgotten about. What beautiful things have you forgotten to love? What favorite habits or life-giving places have you been setting aside for too long? Don’t forget that it’s ok to love the simple things – taking walks or going for a run, walking through a greenhouse or planting a garden, sitting at a coffee shop or practicing a pour over. These little habits of ours are restful and nurturing and odds are when you neglect them they’re taking more from you than you know. 

Set aside some time to be frivolous. Take your phone with you on a long walk. Stop to photograph anything that catches your eye, big as a house or small as a leaf. Lace up your running shoes and do the extra mile, even if you feel like you should be home doing the dishes. Bake something and if you’re worried about that baking habit sticking to your hips, look up a new recipe and discover ways to make your favorite foods love you back. Just don’t forget to love the things that you love, babe.

on being bad

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You are probably pretty good at preaching this to your friends and really reluctant to hear it yourself, so let me be the one who tells you: being bad at this is part of the process. 

We all understand why. I remember learning to play the piano when I was eight years old. I played silly little tunes with two or three notes repeated over and over. They were labeled with which finger I should use and the name of the key on the piano, and then there was a little diagram of the actual piano keys printed in the book and in case that weren’t enough, the ivory keys on the actual piano were marked with scotch tape. When my piano teacher came over for our second lesson I knew the song by heart and I had figured out a way to find middle C on the piano so I could peel the scotch tape off and display my knowledge. I got the wrong keys. 

I was so impossibly new at piano that it took hours and hours of training before I could even play a mix of ten simple notes at one time. C-D-E-F-G with my left hand and C-D-E-F-G with my right hand, one octave higher. By then I could operate without the tape on Middle C and usually without the printed diagrams in my piano book. But the notes were still numbered for each finger. 

I think as we get older, we begin to assume that this isn’t the process anymore. We’ve been impossibly new at living for so long, gone through so many years of elementary and middle and high school and maybe even a few years of general education courses at college that there isn’t much at which we think we have to start from scratch. But maybe we’re mistaken about that. Maybe just like those early months of piano, the only building blocks I had from my education so far were the numbers and the letters used to orient me on the keyboard. The alphabet A-G and counting to four didn’t give me a lot of skill on the piano; they just gave me the tools to sit down and start at the very beginning. 

Darling, I get how embarrassing it is to work hard on a new project that’s been outlined and explained to death – and to realize the next week that you’ve actually missed your middle C altogether. You thought you had a better grasp of things than this. But let me remind you: you will only be this bad once. The very next week I knew exactly where middle C was and I’ve never forgotten since. I took baby steps. Sometimes I practiced longer than I needed to. I made progress. 

It was the same way when I learned to water ski: first I wasn’t even sure how to put the skis on. Then I huddled in the water with my skis tied together so I wouldn’t accidentally do the splits – and I still couldn’t get up. And years later I finally tried to get up with one ski and I tried long enough and hard enough that I made it. That fall when the lakes cooled down I went back to piano competitions and music theory tests and memorized pages of music from composers like Bach and Rachmaninoff. I was in high school. Eight-year-old me had put in the time being a beginner so that teenage me could enjoy having a skill. 

It’s like that with writing. High school me put in the time writing stories and essays and book reports poorly so that college me could be a bit better and adult me can write a manuscript. I didn’t start writing manuscripts in middle school. I started writing paragraphs – bad paragraphs. And even now in a lot of ways I’m beginning new things, willing to be bad at them long enough to become better. I’m new-ish at blogging and new at joining a writer’s group and new at sending my work out into the world. I’m baby-bottom-soft at fiction, though I want to get better one day (so I keep at it in secret, and hope.) 

I want to leave you with a secret though – and maybe it’s one you’ve already mastered but it’s one I’ve always been a little embarrassed about, and I hope by sharing, we can mitigate some shame for each other. 

Begin privately.

You don’t have to be brand new at something publicly. Start in the quiet. Begin small. Write a future blog post, and then another, and then another until you write one you think you can post. Post it. Write a bunch more until you’ve got another you want to share. It’s ok that this is a process. It’s ok to be new without being on the front page while you’re new. Sometimes I consider my blog the safe place, where I write without the severe editing I put my essays through. Sometimes I don’t even publish things there until I’ve reworked and edited them to my own satisfaction. Sometimes I write something just for the practice of it and I never go back to use it again. 

But however you practice, however you learn, don’t give up being new at something just because you’re new. Remember what I said earlier: this is the worst you’ll ever be. Next week’s blog post will be more practiced. You’ll remember where the keys are. You’ll figure out how to number your fingers so habitually you’ll know them by instinct. You’ll learn to water ski so proficiently you’ll be dropping a ski, jumping the wake, getting up on one foot. Just remember darling: you’ve got to be terrible first if you ever want to be good.

letter no. 6 – start small, but start

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Sometimes we do not move forward because we don’t know what to do next. And sometimes we don’t move forward because we know exactly what to do next, and we’re terrified. (I am raising my hand. It’s ok. You’re not alone. Don’t be terrified of the alone-ness too.)

I felt deeply called out when Helen Macdonald wrote in her book H is for Hawk that falconer and writer James White began to self-sabotage because he was afraid of his own success. I am terrified when I start to do well, to succeed. I think I am terrified of trying to go beyond that marker of success and failing utterly. It’s not a rare fear, you know? It’s not as if nobody has been afraid of failure before. Afraid of success before. I’m still not sure I understand this fear myself, but it’s very real and I’ve let it hold me back from moving in the right direction. 

I don’t have any profound things to say to you about this. I can’t conquer that fear for you. Most of the time I haven’t even conquered it myself. But I want us to take the next step anyway. What is that step? Break it down, love. Don’t tell me it’s getting published or writing a book or something. No, I want to hear the next step. Maybe that means finding one place to submit a story. Maybe it means finding out how much going back to school would cost or even just sending that same magazine another essay. Choose a step, and if it’s too big, break it down until it’s manageable. Don’t try to write your bestseller if you’ve only ever written essays. Maybe instead choose a time and place you’ll commit to writing each day. Don’t put down grad school if you’ve never taken a college class – start with learning what you’ll need, or signing up for History 101. 

I don’t want you to play small. That’s not what I’m telling you to do. Dream big, girl. Dream big and take time to lay on your back in the park making shapes out of the clouds while you let your mind roam over all the bright, beautiful possibilities there are for you. But don’t come home and think “Well if I want to graduate college with honors, then I’ve got to pick a great college and sign up for all the hardest classes right now, this afternoon, day-job be damned.” Let the dreams take their time in coming true while you work on the little steps that are within your grasp. I want you to dream big and play reasonable – there’s almost always a simple, reasonable step you can take right now. And when we come back next week I want us to have taken it. Yeah, both of us. I’ve got some small steps in mind already. I could submit this work to that site, or pick a theme and develop an outline for an essay I hope to submit. There are actions each of us can take. I’m looking at you hard right through this screen: are you with me? I’ll be back here next week. I’ll have taken a step in courage, without waiting for all the fear of success or fear of failure to stop me. Meet me here in seven days. Let’s do this, darling.

Letter no. 5 – not a part-way girl

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[Note: this was written six months ago, while I was still pregnant.]

I think a lot about willpower and discipline, which might be because I wrestle so much with actually building them. I often act like a part-way sort of person: I build really good habits part of the way and then call them good enough, because that’s when it gets really hard to keep improving. 

I don’t eat sugar often. People like me say we’re “sugar free” and it really is true; but even though I don’t eat sugar and I DO eat tons of veggies, I also eat lots of heavy food. Like cheese. I eat a LOT of cheese. (And eggs. And sugar-free, flour-free scones, slathered in butter.) So my friends are always impressed when I order a simple coffee with heavy cream or an almond milk latte with sugar-free vanilla, or something. And they admire my willpower when I don’t eat pasta. But my zucchini noodles are literally dripping with alfredo sauce. It’s a healthy habit that’s been built up part-way and then left. 

I’ve done the same thing with writing. I get a few guest posts published, get paid for an essay I submitted to an outdoor writing site, and I think I’ve arrived. I stop working so hard. I write less and less frequently. And then suddenly my own blog is facing neglect and I’ve started using my toddler’s nap time for Gilmore Girls instead of a writing session (while I eat a low-carb pizza piled in pepperoni, because you can’t watch Gilmore Girls without eating.) And all the while people keep telling me what a great writer I am, so I don’t get bothered about the good habits that I haven’t kept developing.

In my more discouraged moments I think of myself as a part-way kind of person. I take on the whole persona and in an instant I can see a whole future for myself full of part-way plans that part-way succeeded. Maybe they’re enough to help me stand out just a tiny bit from the crowd, but I know that my habits and efforts will have more potential if I will sit down and put in the time. When I call myself a part-way person, it’s like claiming an identity. I don’t just picture that half-fulfilled future, I start to believe it’s all I’m capable of. I start to believe I’ll always quit just before the finish line, right when it gets the hardest. When I think of myself as a part-way person, I start to move in that direction.

That is exactly what I don’t want for us. There is never a reason to believe that we’ve failed until after it’s actually happened. And even then, failure at one step or stage or goal can just be a catalyst to the next one, if you respond to it that way. Why imagine the worst and subtly call ourselves back and downward in that direction? I don’t believe that whatever you imagine or believe hard enough will just happen to you, but I do believe that if we consistently tell ourselves we’re going to fail, that eventually we’ll stop trying not to fail. We’ll stop trying at all: there will soon be nothing left at which to fail. 

This letter is a tiny success story in itself. I set a goal to write every day. It’s an indefinite goal because I have a baby coming sometime who will absolutely interrupt that streak. But let’s just say right here that I plan to write every day until my baby is born. So far, I’ve reached day eight. I don’t think I’ve ever written for eight days in a row before. This is something new. This is me leveling up that writing habit I’d already created. 

I have goals to improve my eating habits – less cheese and butter, more healthy carbs. I have goals to improve how I spend my time – more reading, more cleaning, more time with my toddler; less social media. I’ve gotten stuck on these before, pictured that bleak future in which I’m only capable of part-way achievement. I don’t want to let myself walk that direction anymore. I’m sitting down with these habits and believing they can change, no matter how slowly and incrementally. 

Here’s to us, babe. Here’s to the habits we’re willing to cultivate beyond the part-way stopping points. Let’s do this.

on inspiration – letter no. 4

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It is popular these days to talk about creativity as if inspiration didn’t matter. I think this is an oversight. It’s simple to say that the important part of making things is to make them; to keep making and creating day after day without waiting for inspiration. There is nothing inherently wrong with this model, except that it’s an oversimplification. Sure, we shouldn’t be waiting for creativity to find us. We won’t write great American novels or paint masterpieces if we’re lying around, waiting for the brilliant idea to come. Creativity does have to be a habit. I’m just convinced there’s more to “inspiration” than that. 

I think inspiration is important, even if it’s not as vibrant and sudden as spontaneous combustion, or doesn’t go off like fireworks in our minds. But I think inspiration can also be cultivated. If you stop and explore what you’ve written or painted or composed or designed, I imagine you’ll discover that your best work happens at the intersection of a faithful creative habit and inspiration. And when you stop to explore where your inspiration comes from, I think you’d find a consistent source or sources for it as well. 

I used to just think I liked long walks, but now I’m realizing that I have my greatest capacity and inspiration for creativity when I can regularly get out for a walk by myself. Even if it’s not very long, it’s like a reset button. I come home a bit refreshed, a bit energized, and with my writing mind a little bit clearer. Maybe it’s the blank space of being unplugged for a while. Maybe it’s that plus the exercise, or maybe the chance to see beautiful things like light on the willow leaves at the park or a stained glass window in a neighborhood house or even a well-planned garden: something about walking without talking, pushing a stroller or glancing at my phone gives my brain a creative boost. 

It’s not as if I come home with new ideas every time I take a good walk. More often than not, it feels like I’m just stretching my legs. But my best ideas and my best writing all come when I regularly clear my mind, and I do that best when I’m walking. I can’t conjure inspiration, but I’ve learned I can make space for it to land. Maybe it’s a ten-minute walk before the sun gets too hot. Maybe it’s a long walk with a flashlight after dark, watching the growing crescent moon and listening to the crickets. Sometimes it’s just sitting outside on the patio without books or phone while my toddler naps – not walking but letting my mind wander all the same. Regardless, it’s clearing this sort of landing space that I know will eventually invite the good ideas.

Maybe your inspiration comes on Pinterest. Maybe it comes when you lie on the floor with your feet on the couch and stare at the ceiling. Maybe it’s a hot cup of coffee or a good playlist or yoga. But it matters that you know, that you find that thing that creates the most space for inspiration and do that thing repeatedly. It should be as much a habit as your actual work. Don’t let that space disappear under the pressure of life. It’s easy to think that time for self-care is selfish or unnecessary or that you’ll get back to your evening sweat session when there’s more time, but more often than we realize, that ongoing time of quiet is one of the most crucial players in our work and creativity. If you have to let it go for a while, don’t stay away too long. 

I did a study on rest throughout the Bible last year, because I think I was trying to figure out how I could rest in such a busy season of parenting. I mostly discovered that rest is pretty much a commandment in the Christian faith. It seemed a bit odd to me still, but I knew I was getting burnt out on a daily level trying to squeeze seven productive days into each week, so I began trying to find ways to rest. I’m still not very good at it, but I’ve found it’s not only giving me a better ability to function, it allows me to find greater creativity too. 

I’m not trying to make this into a sermon – I’m just becoming aware of a correlation between a tenant of my faith and the way it actually brings my creative goals closer to reality. I’m trying to say Look – down-time is so important it’s even in this major book of faith, the one I believe in. So create some restful space with your hard working habits, and watch inspiration step into that invitation. 

Find your rest: I dare you. Don’t wait for inspiration, go out and clear a place for it in your life, like weeding a garden even when you can’t see the seedlings yet. The flowers will grow, they just need time and a little space to breathe.

go live first – letter no. 3

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I think it was Hannah Brencher who said that writers aren’t people who are good at writing about life; they’re the people who’ve gotten really good at living. There is a ring of truth to her words. You can’t write if you’re not living anything. We can all see how true it is for non-fiction; you can’t write what you haven’t experienced. But I think it’s true for fiction too. You can’t write about lives in any believable way if you’re not living in the thick of them. How can you create people if you don’t live with people, love people, mingle with them and celebrate with them and mourn and dance and eat and take long walks with them? There is a vibrancy and a grittiness to real life that we can’t ever write if we don’t ever live it first. 

There’s a lot of reasons this is hard, but can we just talk about two of them for a second? 1. It’s easy to get caught up in our own heads, trying to write and stumbling against our own lack of experience without realizing it. 2. It’s also easy to swing the other direction, to get so caught up in trying to live a life we can write about that we forget to just live, to be present and unguarded, to be alive in the moments that will later become the stories we have to tell, without having taken notes on or wondered at them as they happened. 

I’ve done both of those before: lately I’ve been living all in my own head, trying to write about life without sinking my teeth into the meat of it myself. It’s a cyclone of an existence. I think of John Green’s book Turtles All the Way Down where he opens up about his experience of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and how it becomes, for him, a whirlpool of thoughts spiraling tighter and tighter in dangerous directions that feel completely beyond his control. On a very different scale and in a manner very much more IN my control, that is what it’s like to live stuck inside my head, and maybe anyone’s head. When you close the doors and sit down to analyze what you have without letting in light, fresh air or new ideas, you spiral around and around in the same frustrations, fears, and failures. 

I began to come out of that shell late this summer. One day during camp, I walked outside onto the sunlit deck and stood, soaking in the morning warmth for a moment. There were kiddos already running back and forth, but there were also mamas. And they were sitting. There were cups of coffee on the arms of their chairs. They weren’t just wiggling their toes in the sunshine before they walked back inside to do the dishes, they were sitting outside drinking deep from the cup of mountain air and children’s playtime and mama-friendship that life was holding up to them in that moment. And I had almost missed it. I had been missing it most of the summer. I don’t want to miss moments like that for the rest of my life; they’ll be the moments that come back in stories one day too. They’ll be the moments of conversation that inspires me, of wisdom that empowers me, of joy that refreshes me. Maybe quiet moments sipping coffee together won’t come up in dramatic retellings of the stories of my life, but they will influence and shape and nurture me as a writer all the same. 

Learn to live, darling. Learn to look up from your desk in time to see a squirrel leap into the trees, learn to laugh at the weird, new, odd things your toddler does that could, if you’re not careful, drive you crazy. Learn to laugh so hard you pee a little and learn to cry when the people around you – your people – are crying too.

But I have a word of caution for you. As you learn to live, don’t think so deeply about it that you begin to spiral in on yourself again. Life is not a race to collect stories or a contest to acquire the richest material. There’s no prize to the one who’s lived in a tiny home and a mansion and also backpacked through Europe: you can live in a cul-de-sac and vacuum your split-level stairs every week and still be living the life that people need you to write about. Trust me on this.

When I moved to Colorado in my early twenties I believed that adventure was out there and I was going to find it. And I also believed that if I didn’t find it, I’d never be the writer I wanted to be. I’d never have the words or inspiration or opportunities that a writer needs if I wasn’t out there living the adventure that everyone wants to read about. It took me a very long time to realize how wrong I was. Adventure wasn’t just waiting in the wild aspects of a life few people get to live; adventure was waiting in the mundane, belly-laugh moments that everybody gets to live. I was given the adventure of a lifetime – the lifetime of one human being, which is always, always an adventure. I had no idea then how poignant, how rich, how write-able that one wild adventure would be. And wouldn’t you know it, here I am with two children and a tiny cottage where I can sit and watch the squirrels, where my toddler counts to ten and inserts “four” whenever he can’t remember what number comes next. Here I am with my one computer and the under-the-stairs bedroom that makes me feel slightly like Harry Potter, and the gallery wall of art complete with kitchen cooling racks that I use as photo grids. There is more adventure in my three red picket fence gates than in the life I thought I would have when I moved out here, single and hoping that a good story would find me.In all the advice that we give writers to sit down and write the thing, don’t forget to go out and live the thing too. I mean yeah, you won’t get far at all without plunking yourself down and opening a tab to your writing platform of choice, instead of streaming another episode. But you won’t get far streaming another episode anyway. You’ve got to be wildly, vastly, energetically present in this one grand life of yours. You can’t hope to write it if you don’t live it. So go live, darlings. Go live deep and real and hard and beautiful. Then we’ll write.

your story matters – letter no. 2

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It’s going to be worth it. It matters. These are the things you need to hear today.

Writing is worth it. Choosing a place you will write consistently and a way you will measure writing consistently and then doing the actual writing – consistently: this is all worth your while. It matters in ways you won’t understand at first. It matters when it feels dull, uninspired, worthless. It matters when it feels alive, golden, real. It matters all the times in between. And I’m using writing because it’s what I know but let’s pull in your own dream real quick: gardening, running, further education, travel, buying a house – it’s worth it. Stay with me.  Translate this whole post in your mind as you read. Put in your goal whenever I talk about writing. These words are meant to be true for you, too.

I know what you want: you want to have done the work. You want the work behind you. You want to see the fruit of your labor. Girl, I want to see the fruit of your labor too. I believe it’s going to be beautiful. And I truly believe it will come. But I know how it won’t come and I know one of the ways that it will. It won’t come by wishing on a star, by taking long inspirational walks in the woods, by sitting outside long enough. It won’t come by reading good books and calling them “field work”. It won’t come by attending a conference and calling yourself a writer with a fainthearted name-it-and-claim-it attitude. 

It will come by writing. It will come by writing the days you believe you’re a writer and the ones you believe you’re not. It will come by writing on the days when you felt wildly inspired and also writing on the days when you were sure you’d have to go back and delete every word, unthink every idea that led to those words. (Yeah. It’ll come those days too. Don’t discount them – remember all the days that I told you matter? Those are in there too.) 

I’m only partly here to reprimand you. And we do need it, a little. All of us begin to think that if we put in the work partly, that should be good enough. (It’s not.) Or we begin to think that we can’t put in the work. (That’s false.) No, you need to put in the work completely. You have to be all in and you have to be in it for the process, the work, the long haul. You can’t be in it for the applause that will not come on a predictable timetable or in an expected fashion. And you can put in the work completely. Honey, maybe you’re working full time and trying to workout and keep up a social life and all that you see is the ways in which you can’t. Then start with five minutes, girl. Start with five minutes and do it day in and day out. Read Atomic Habits and figure out how you can make that tiny, atom-sized habit a real one that sticks. You can write a book five minutes at a time. I believe in you. If I can write while raising a toddler, house-hunting and getting ready to birth a second child into our family, then you can write during your day job, your crazy social hours, your wacky gym schedule. 

There’s more to what I’m saying though. The second thing I’m saying isn’t so much you can or you have to but it matters that you do. It does matter. Your book is beautiful, babe. The world needs what you carry, as Janessa Wait says. She’s right. You’re carrying the stories you need to write even if you don’t recognize them yet. That’s ok, darling. Sometimes it takes a while. I’m still in the process of recognizing some of my own stories. Stick with it. What you find will be worth it. 

People will need to hear the words that only you can say. Please write them. Please write them hour by hour, or minute by minute. Please write them as slow or as fast as they come. But write them. Remember the fire that burns in your stories: think of it like a campfire. Sometimes campfires are little – they burn in the back corner of a yard and people stop by it to roast a marshmallow or warm their hands in between the exciting night games. And sometimes campfires are huge old bonfires. They roar and crackle so hard people need to stand back and turn slowly so they don’t get too hot on one side.

Friend, your fire matters no matter how huge and bright it burns. Your story matters. Tell it. The house you want to buy can be a home where you welcome people, where you welcome yourself finally. That degree can be a means of inspiration for others, a means of joy for you. That perfect latte pour can be your pride and joy and make somebody’s day, all at once. Any creative or artistic endeavor is a thing of weight and glory, darling. Never forget this. It matters. Your work matters.