What Needs to be Written?

a process for depth

This post is dedicated to my Aunt Laura, who proved to me that writing is a worthwhile discipline available to all, and even opened her journal to show it to my daughter. May the world be filled with grandmas like you.

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After having my third baby writing and reading felt like a phantom limb, a part of me that was missing but lingered in the space it should’ve been. They were foreign and unattainable, even as goals. It felt hopeless, this writer-life of mine. With a shitty first novel draft growing dusty and, honestly, of diminishing interest to me, and a long list of rejections, moving toward writing seemed vain. And this especially considering a self-discovery, a beautiful solidity growing in me as a new mother-of-three – the supple, aching, ever-expanding heart of a mother. This growth I wouldn’t trade for any number of perfectly arranged words on a page.

Mom-guilt plagued me. This nagging thought, belief even, that anything I do for myself is selfish and ultimately a waste of time. And so, what of this conviction in me, that writing is an unquestionable good, in and of itself? Between my judgment that I was a failing writer and my belief that it was a good for me to do, I was missing something. I was lost in some uncertain wind that whispered abandon in my ear.

In December 2021, almost a year after Theo was born, I knew, for my sanity, for my faith, for my husband and children, that writing needed to re-enter our life. I decided to take an online class with One Story, a publication I admire (who have read and kindly rejected almost every short story I’ve ever written). It was titled “The Writing Life” and taught by writer and mother Ann Napolitano.

I hadn’t taken a class since finishing my MFA in 2018. But it was low stakes. I thought this is what I need, something practical and understanding of the wrestle for time and emotional capacity to do anything besides take care of the immediate needs of a family. I began to see, with more sober eyes, that mom-guilt needed to be tucked away and tied down tight should any strange wind pick it up and carry it away, and me with it. I knew anything to do with craft would only push me further into my pit of hopelessness at the idea of writing anything ever again. Yes, postpartum is full of mini melodramas. It’s best to embrace them.

As part of this Writing Life class, I drew up a list of reasons I don’t write. Here’s one: “I feel guilty, or something, spending time on something that has no clear end.” My response to myself: “The end of writing is going deeper. Being a person who pays attention, who is dependable and slow and not so overburdened and distracted that I can be of no use to anyone. The end of writing is being an image bearer and allowing the work of creation to be shared with me from heaven and brought to earth. The end of writing is a better wife, mom, daughter, sister, and friend.” These two notes to myself are just below, with asterisks marking them: “Use everything you have, all your muchness, in service of your craft,” and, “Engage with it because it feels like what you’re meant for.” Something was beginning to take shape in me. And it wasn’t vain. It was true.

The teacher encouraged the daily practice of writing down three things I’m thankful for. This gratitude discipline became invaluable in getting my writing legs, wobbly from dealing only with breastfeeding, nap times, and dinners, back under me. It was the perfect discipline to get pen to paper again. No pressure. No strings. It genuinely helped my mental state, so often bogged down and cloudy, if not gloomy, from the daily trudge of being home with kids. I found writing thanksgivings became obsolete because I was giving thanks out loud.

My daily practice morphed into notes. What was I reading? What was I praying? What and who was I seeing? What were my husband and kids doing? Over the course of just two weeks, this all began to refresh the rhythm in my life. This part of me that had been metastasizing into bitterness and discontent began to heal. I could see again. I could write my five minutes a day and not despair of these thanksgivings and notes amounting to nothing.

Through writing, I discovered that my new sold-out-mom heart was more open to receiving the joy set before me each day. The joy in snuggles as soon as we’re awake. The joy of little feet pattering about. The joy of slobbery kisses. And joy even in all the messes and interruptions.

Then, suddenly, it came to me as if floating on the wind. Notes for a new story.

Looking back at the first notes, I see that most of my initial ideas didn’t stick. A younger me would look at that and have judgments over myself as a fickle woman whose words would never leave my dusty notebooks. But now I see that my discipline paid off. My notes for the draft were a helpful tool to keep an active train of thought going. A seed. A record.

Habit holds more power than inspiration. I didn’t have a WOW moment in which a vision appeared before me and this draft unfolded from start to finish. I followed a wind. The wind, I think I see now, was the answer to this question, this Anne Lamott prayer that ended up on a post-it above my desk. “Help me get out of the way so I can write what wants to be written.” What wants to be written? If I can keep finding ways to first, get my sails up, or get out of their way, so I can then let them fill with the wind of what wants to be written, I will be fulfilled as a writer.

These reminders, Lamott’s, and now my own, are never stale. When I sit down to write, I’m beginning an act of creation. I re-read Bird by Bird recently and was comforted by Lamott’s many assertions that writing is sacred. I believe this can be true for any person who devotes themselves to practice, not just the world’s journalists and novelists. “There is ecstasy in paying attention,” she writes. “You can get into a kind of Wordsworthian openness to the world, where you see in everything the essence of holiness, a sign that God is implicit in all of creation.” When I sit, even to write down notes for the day, I’m practicing paying attention, remembering, being thankful, and being introspective.

Through this exercise, writing to figure out what I think, what I’m paying attention to, and how to find that wind in my sails, I have managed to write something helpful to myself at least, and maybe even a little interesting to others. I see now that I have the power and freedom to amend Lamott’s prayer to suit me. I’m not trying to write what wants to be written, but rather what needs to be written.

This exploration was needed for me after a two-week slump that followed a rejection letter. I’d submitted the very story I’d been led by the wind to write post-partum, and then had to face my own vanity, yet again. This constant, nagging wrestle – if my writing isn’t deemed worthy by one publication or another, one judge or another, then it’s not worthy at all. What I see and remember now is that I’m worthy as a creator, and my creation benefits me and everyone around me. My legacy isn’t words but a joy I can pass to these children, even a discipline, an understanding of myself, that can be theirs.

Now I await a fourth baby, and I look forward to seeing who this one is and how they’ll change me. I look forward to knowing my resolve to write, no matter the stakes, is that much more founded. It’s a steady ground I can return to when the winds of the world become louder than the truth.