On 40: I Am, I Will Be
A few weeks ago I got to work before the building unlocked — not quite 7 a.m. This used to be routine, during my second and third trimester of pregnancy. My way of writing for thirty minutes to an hour before work. I wrote a 100-page partial of a novel in six months this way. Handed it off to my agent right before I stepped into the greatest unknown. It was not, in this case, would this book sell? I have been down that road before. This time the question was: will I write again? When will I have time? How will I do it? Will I even want to do it? Who will I be — as a writer, as a person — once this baby is on the outside?
And now that baby has been on the outside for just over two years and I still don’t really know the answer. I’m muddling along and that is frustrating and uncomfortable, but oddly, it is not as frustrating and uncomfortable as I thought it would be.
From the outside, with the tattoos, the colorful streaks in my hair, and when I was younger, the cigarette and drink in my hand, it was probably hard to for people to see who I was, who I always have been at the core:
The perfectionist.
The type A, straight-A overachiever.
Lisa Simpson in the flesh.
It was an identity I tried to mask while I was ditching class and smoking pot at fifteen — an identity I thought I’d burned away when I dropped out of college and threw everything away for bad love and alcohol-induced numbness at nineteen — but it was too deeply ingrained, more indelible than fingerprints.
Then there is the identity that is obvious to most who know me:
Writer.
Storyteller.
Person who makes meaning with words.
My parents have always encouraged it. I have the “Young Authors” programs and certificates from my elementary school days to prove it. My father tried to get me to go to college for writing in the first place, but I fought against it. My mother quietly celebrated when I chose it on my own after I went back to school.
Even though words have always run through my veins — been as crucial to my survival as blood, as oxygen; even though I’ve been making up stories and mentally narrating my life for as long as I can remember, I’ve also always doubted this part of me.
These two pieces — the perfectionist and the writer — are in direct conflict, you see. As a writer, I am constantly failing. I will never be good enough to meet my own standards. I will always doubt my abilities.
I sold two books before I turned 30. And then I couldn’t sell another for years.
I quit my full-time job to write and then made most of my money bartending and felt like a total fraud. The pressure built and built and blocked my creativity.
I became resentful of my desire to write — it had held me back from other dreams. “I will give it up,” I said, “to move across the country.” Friends, family, my therapist all whispered, “But it is in you. It always will be,” and I scowled and glared and denied. I also, to certain people, admitted my deepest fear: without writing I would simply cease to be. It was my oxygen, my blood, the fabric of me — even though it felt like poison.
It was a chore to sit down to write this morning. I didn’t think I could do it. My routine was thrown off. My depression is flaring up. Yet here I am, typing away in the Google Doc I use as a journal, writing these words for a blog post that a handful of people will read. And right now I am okay with that.
These past two years, the experiences of motherhood and postpartum depression, have worn away at the sharp edges of my perfectionism. Actually, while that was probably the biggest and swiftest change, I know this has gone on much longer: my struggles with fertility, the move across the country, the ups-and-downs of my writing life/career, the unexpected turns my post-high school life took. In other words, the continual process of growing up/growing older has been like the tide slowly shaping a jagged stone.
In the last decade, I’ve achieved the greatest growth in my writing since I went back to college, and I almost didn’t see it. I was too busy beating myself up for not following the trajectory I thought I was supposed to — launching straight up into the stratosphere like a rocket, or at the very least, selling one novel after the next, steadily building an audience and sales. That time period when my most critical self would tell you that I was a failed novelist bartender, I was also freelancing for the most incredible magazine to ever exist, ROOKIE.
I wrote for ROOKIE for all seven years of its gorgeous existence. I bared my soul in a multitude of ways from my teenage self-injury habit to my love of soap operas. I worked through my grief for a friend who died too young, the lasting wounds of an abusive relationship, and my crisis of faith around my writing. I did not make a living as a writer off of it by any means — it was a supplement to my income, which is perhaps why I didn’t consider it a “real job.” It was the greatest learning experience of my life though. I worked with editors that helped me grow in terms of creativity, writing ability, and as a human being — editors, who like the best personal trainers, pushed me outside of my comfort zone and made me better, stronger. Like when Anaheed Alani dared me to examine why I kept writing about certain things, when Danielle Henderson asked, “Isn’t this borderline hoarding behavior? Write about why.”, and when Lena Singer whispered, “Pitch us fiction.”
My next published book will be a memoir of my teenage years. It’s something I’ve always wanted to write, but never would have without ROOKIE. Not because the site raised or kept my writing profile afloat (though that helped, too, I’m sure) but because I didn’t think of myself as a non-fiction writer. I’d published novels. Fiction was what I did…. Even though I’d pitched ROOKIE to fulfill a teenage dream. In high school — in Oak Park, Illinois, the same town that ROOKIE’s editor-in-chief, Tavi Gevinson, grew up in — I made zines and dreamed of working for an even edgier Sassy magazine.
ROOKIE, my forthcoming memoir — that’s life working in its strange cyclical way. So is this journaling/blogging that I am doing now. Before I did anything and while I did everything else — wrote short stories as a child that led eventually to college for fiction writing and publishing novels; wrote zines as a teenager that led to ROOKIE and a memoir — I journaled. There is a box full of them in my attic. There is one next to my computer, another one next to my bed, and one, now for recording memories and moments in my son’s life until he is able.
Journaling is the form my writing is taking right now. Perhaps it will lead to a second memoir depending on how this first one does. Perhaps it will be something for the handful of people who read what I post online. Perhaps it will just be for me, and one day for my child. Any of this is fine with me, which is both pleasing and odd.
When I wrote that partial, those hundred pages in five months while pregnant and working full-time, I shared my accomplishment on social media. One writer acquaintance responded, “Partials don’t sell, though. Better to write the full.”
That stung a lot. It took everything to write those hundred pages and I was out of time. There was no way to finish the book before I gave birth and I was not planning to write during my maternity leave. (Thank god. That would have been another crushing unmet expectation.) I vented to other friends about the comment. It felt like she was shaming me for not being superwoman, which of course I was already struggling with myself. Perpetuating the superwoman myth, inflicting it on each other, I said, is yet another way that we as women harm each other. My friends agreed.
I still believe that to be true. A lot of the pressure to do and be All The Things comes is placed upon us from outside and we don’t know how to support each other. It is hard work to accept our journeys for what they are, to cultivate patience with ourselves, and it doesn’t help that the world seems to be shouting at us to work harder, do it all, figure it out faster.
I was probably hyper-personalizing this one comment though. This woman was just an acquaintance. She did not know my lifelong personal struggle with perfectionism. Also, she was right. Partials don’t sell. That partial has yet to sell. At the time, it killed me to have that called out because that partial felt like my last gasp. I would not be able to justify time spent writing if it didn’t sell — not with a baby and a full-time job.
I have two unsold books and three unsold partials to my name. I used to consider this Failure. Wasted time. Now I consider it processing life through fiction, through storytelling. I consider it trying new things. I consider it growth, finding my way.
Right now I don’t want to write fiction. I just don’t. Ideas spark from time to time. I make notes in a Google Doc or on my phone. Those three unsold partials are all circling in on the same idea — a novel I have wanted to write for a decade but it hasn’t quite clicked yet. That used to make me frantic, but now somehow I trust that it will happen someday. (The tide has worn away the sharpest part of the stone.)
I don’t know when yet, and that does make me a little uncomfortable. Until motherhood, I was used to managing to fit all of the major pieces — the job that pays the bills, writing five or six days a week, working out four or five, maintaining a marriage, keeping up with friends across the world, teaching a class twice a year, cooking healthy dinners, quiet time for me to watch my soap or read a book — into a regular routine. Everything was in its place. I was balanced, though in retrospect, I was also running on empty. I was bound to burn out and I often did.
Now I am aware that there are too many pieces to make one big pretty picture. I have a toddler. I have a partner. I have a house. I have friends. I have a full-time job in higher ed that while frustrating at times has also wormed its way into my heart — it matters now; it is not just something that pays the bills. I have a book coming out and a writing career to rebuild as well as a need to write and a creative spark to nurture. (I have learned that those two things — the career and the desire to write — are both intrinsic to each other and separate.) I have a physical body to take care of with exercise and food, and I have complicated relationships with both. I have mental and emotional health to tend to, which takes constant tweaking. I want to read and to watch TV and to go outside. I love my family and friends with everything I have and I also desperately need quiet time alone.
There is no balanced routine for this. There is no perfect. There is no end result. There is no winning at it all, all the time. To put the pieces together nicely on one day, means setting some aside. Trying to cram them all together will result in throwing them all across the room. Things will wait off to the side. I will have to constantly relearn what I need and constantly be vigilant for what needs attention. I have to be flexible from month to month, week to week, day to day. Learning to be flexible, to be patient has been hard. It did not come naturally, but I found my way to it. I had to in order to evolve and survive.
I used to beat myself up for not doing enough — not spending enough time writing or getting through drafts fast enough; not working out daily or meeting some sort of physical fitness goal. Now I pride myself on the times when I have made it work. How I can carefully configure each week, balance drop-off and pick-up and work days in order to exercise a few times and write for an hour or two per week. I know I am not lazy. I’ve learned to adapt based on the opportunity. Last summer when I won a free membership to a writing space, I wrote more and used it. For this reason, I know that when a book deadline arises, I will figure it out.
And as for writing fiction again, one day, when my son is older, I will apply to residencies again, I will carve out a week or two to organize and filter through my ideas, and then I will build a new routine for myself. I will have mornings or weekends again, maybe even evenings. One day, I won’t be this tired. Maybe it will be next year, maybe it will be in four or five, but it will come again. I know I will get frustrated. I will measure myself against others — particularly women who seem to be juggling the same things as me and seem to be able to do it better, faster. I will have to remind myself that they don’t have my body, my history, my mind. My path has always meandered. I have always been pieces — many, many pieces — and those pieces form more than one thing. (I should know this. After all, that forthcoming memoir is titled, PIECES OF A GIRL.)
Right now, I am figuring myself out as a mother and as an individual in her latest iteration. I was. I am. I will be.
