Conor Hilton recently asked on the Association for Mormon Letters Discord server about people’s process for writing short stories, specifically with the goal of having a regular process for producing work. My reply got a little long, so I thought I’d expand it further and turn it into a blog post.
I am still struggling to get back into a regular creative rhythm. Part of that is me getting too excited about all the different opportunities open to me and accidentally turning all my writing time into time confetti. But part of it is also that I am a baby fiction writer. In college, I developed a pretty good process for creating creative nonfiction on the regular (implementing that now is one of the aforementioned time-confetti creators) but developing fiction is a whole different animal.
With that caveat, for my last two short stories, my process has been something like this:
Here’s what the life of astronaut Chris Hadfield can teach writers.
This week I had a chance to re-listen to a favorite of mine, An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield. One of my book clubs chose to read this one at my suggestion, and I’m so glad they did. Chris Hadfield is the astronaut you might recognize from his viral music video from the ISS or any of his great educational YouTube videos on the everyday life of astronauts. I find Chris’s writing delightful, his life fascinating, and his insights to life spot on.
This time through, I read the book with an eye towards how his advice could apply to a writing career. As you probably know, I’ve been a stay-at-home mom for over a decade. Now that my youngest child is in kindergarten, I’ve started to think more often about what I want to be when I grow up. I know I want to do something with words, but nailing that dream down can be hard.
This is where Hadfield’s advice comes in. Here’s what the life of an astronaut can teach writers:
I have a friend who struggles a lot with mental health issues. Recently, her therapist has mandated working on her sleep health (going to bed at a reasonable time, not using screens in bed, not sleeping during the day, etc). She was sort-of-pretend complaining on a Zoom call the other day about how she was “being mean to herself” by forcing herself to skip her typical three hour afternoon nap. I think she knew inside herself that it was necessary to skip afternoon naps in order to be able to get a full night’s sleep. But she still felt like not taking a nap was “mean.”
This conversation gets at the problem of the whole “self care” movement. The definition of caring for ourselves can mean different things to different people at different times. Sometimes a nap is self-care, sometimes it’s not. If you are occasionally exhausted, allowing yourself a break for a short nap is a kind and productive thing to do. But if you chronically stay up late and have trouble sleeping and end up crashing for three hours in the afternoon, then a nap becomes something unhealthy, a bad habit to break. How do we make sense of this?
Like many others, my writing productivity has suffered during the pandemic. I went from having mornings free of kids to pursue my writing (and physical therapy) to suddenly supervising four kids learning at home. (Stop me if you’ve heard this one.) It was stressful and many times it was all I could do to get the kids through their school work in the morning and spend the rest of the day on the couch, obsessively reading Google News and Facebook.
After a month or two, I started building a foundation that allowed me to come out of hibernation. Honestly, I was forced to. I had agreed in February to write a blog post due in June, and my deadline was fast approaching. I had to find some way to come out of my funk and get some kind of work done.
I have written a post like this several times over the years on various blogs, announcing I am really, for reals this time, going to start being serious about writing. Obviously, the fact that I’m writing this again means that I have failed every time before now.
Then why keep going?
I have written a post like this several times over the years on various blogs, announcing I am really, for reals this time, going to start being serious about writing. Obviously, the fact that I’m writing this again means that I have failed every time before now.
Then why keep going? I have learned from running half marathons that you have to keep picking yourself up and trying again. If your first attempt ends in an injury and you have to stop running for months, you have to pick yourself up and try again. Even as people pass you and you’re hitting the wall and you can’t believe you ever thought you could do this, you have to keep going. Every extra step you take this time is progress. Moving from a 13 minute mile to a 12 minute mile feels like nothing when you see people effortlessly running 8 minute miles, but it is not nothing. No effort is lost in the universe.
How do you keep yourself from feeling like a failure when you are not able to power through? The most truthful answer would be, “I don’t know.” I feel the jealousy, the sadness of watching friends doing the things I wish I could be doing. Fighting the battle against comparison is a tough journey. A more extended answer is in my one publication from this fallow period.
Then why keep going? Why restart? Because I have learned that my identity is not my successes and failures, and it’s not whether someone else has succeed or failed more than me. My identity is my intentions and goals. I restart because this is who I am. Inside, I am a writer, and I can’t give up just because I went through a season without any harvest.
What’s different this time? This time, my kids are older, for one. My older kids can unload dishwashers and clean bathrooms, and I am finally coming out of the sheer exhaustion of caring for a baby. My youngest is at preschool for a few hours each day, which I hope to jealously guard for writing time.
But more than this, my kids are to the point where they can be a support. Yesterday during family prayer, my son prayed unprompted for Mom to be able to finish her book. Even though I’m barely at the beginning of this journey, I nearly cried to know that my son believes in me and wants me to succeed. They will all watch me to see if it is possible to do something hard, something you’ve always wanted to do.
Then why keep going? Why restart? Because I want my children, and myself, to see that eventually, if you work hard enough and keep getting up, dreams are possible. I want to show myself that I can do what I’ve set out to do. To take some of the mental toughness I’ve gained in running and apply that to my first love, my writing.
Frodo and Sam’s journey began by simply moving further from home than they had ever been. Even if I only move one step farther than I’ve been before, that will be enough.
So let the journey begin, until the next time I can start again.
