Marching Onward
The importance of your creative work during troubling times, how to find time for that work if you're a mother, and Erika Krouse's sublime "Tell Me Everything."
I've been thinking about how hard it is to concentrate on anything right now except the potential collapse of the world around us on so many fronts, and all the people suffering amid these cataclysms. It can seem difficult, or maybe even frivolous, to concentrate on your own writing, or the enjoyment of other people's art.
According to the nonprofit Freedom House's most recent report on world democracy, only twenty percent of the world's people live in free countries—countries where they are at liberty to write and read what they want, sing the songs they want to, create art, dance the dances they feel like dancing. In the other eighty percent of countries, the only art, music, literature, and dance that's allowed must exist within prescribed, government-approved forms.
We often think of art as something small, done off to the side, when people can find the time to squeeze it in around the necessities of life. Writers, artists, and musicians don't earn much money or respect from our culture. It can seem like they have little power. But when authoritarians come to power, the first thing they do is ban all forms of free expression. The Taliban banned music in Afghanistan during their 1990s takeover, and now that they are once again in power, music is being silenced in that country. Across our country, well-funded conservative organizations are prodding parents and school boards into banning and even burning books.
So what should we be doing in this moment? I like to look to the example of Irène Némirovsky, who was a brilliant Ukranian Jewish novelist born in Kyiv in 1913. Her family fled during the start of the Russian Revolution in 1917, and eventually settled in Paris. She grew up to become a writer, and began to publish her work. In 1940 when Germans occupied France, as a Jew she was no longer allowed to publish her work. But she continued to write. She wrote her gorgeous novel Suite Française during the German occupation of France, between the summer of 1940 and 1941. She feared for her life, and she still found a way to write a sensitive novel about what was happening around her.
While she was writing this book, at the same time she and her husband were writing frantic letters to all the people with whom they'd connected during her literary rise, trying to enlist their support to sustain and save their lives. Before she could finish Suite Française, Irène Némirovsky was arrested and sent to Auschwitz, where she died at age 39. Her older daughter survived and ended up with the manuscript. She didn't look at it for fifty years, because she thought it was a diary that would be too painful to read. When she was going to donate her mother's papers to an archive, she finally looked at it. She had it published. Since then, it has sold over 2.5 million copies across the world.
Even if our efforts will never reach this large of an audience, it's vital that we continue to make our art and appreciate the art of others. Remember, only twenty percent of the world's people live a country where they enjoy the option of creating art. So you, writing your book, painting your picture, singing your song, or enjoying and supporting the creations of other people are not being frivolous. You are asserting your human freedom.
The Assorted Whimsy Portion of The Tumbleweed
Need some whimsy? Well, sadness-themed whimsy? I give you this meme of the dour-looking African Rain Frog, as conceived by Ominous Positivity Memes, which seems to capture the mood of the past few weeks.
The Book Recommending Portion of The Tumbleweed
Today is the official publication date for Erika Krouse’s marvelous memoir Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation. I am lucky enough to be in a writing group with Erika, so we got to see several versions of this fabulous book, but you don’t have to take my word for how terrific it is. It received starred advance reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Library Journal, and Bookpage. Publishers Weekly writes:
“Novelist Krouse (Contenders) chronicles a benchmark sexual assault investigation in this enthralling blend of true crime and memoir…When the scandal expanded into the ‘hidden world of athletic money,’ the investigation escalated into a civil rights case accusing the school of a ‘system of sexual abuse’ that ‘amount[ed] to discrimination,’ and what began as a fight for one woman’s justice becomes a battle Krouse fights against her own inner demons that eloquently contends with systemic issues still plaguing American institutions today. The emotional catharsis delivered by the book’s end turns this sensational tale into a stunning story of redemption and hope. Readers will be gripped.”
Check out the official book launch March 19th at 5pm MST at Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, in person and also via Zoom. Register here for the in-person event (limited attendance, 3833 Steele St Suite 1438, Denver), and here to attend via Zoom.
The Q&A Portion of The Tumbleweed
This month’s question came from one of my students, who was despairing about finding time for writing while she takes care of her two kids. Here’s what I told her:
I really emphasized with your thoughts on the difficulty of making writing a priority with all your daily demands, especially when you have young kids, and if you don’t have extra money for childcare. (I never did.) I like this quote by Harry Crews: “If you wait until you got time to write a novel, or time to write a story, or time to read the hundred thousands of books you should have already read - if you wait for the time, you will never do it. ‘Cause there ain’t no time; world don’t want you to do that. World wants you to go to the zoo and eat cotton candy, preferably seven days a week.”
I was thinking about this last weekend, when almost the entirety of my time was spent grocery shopping, cooking for people, cleaning, helping kids with homework, driving them places, and filling out the forms for their activities. Taking care of kids will spread out to fill the entirety of time that you have in a day. So I look at my task as trying to claw back and defend at least one hour a day. And it's possible to get writing done if you only have one hour a day. Ann Patchett wrote about that approach here for the Washington Post.
The first step is to look at your schedule in maybe the opposite way you usually look at it—instead of looking for where you can cram in or steal time for your own creative work, look for where you can build in time for your creative work, a regular stretch of time that you won't allow anything else to seep into. A lot of people with families write late at night or early in the morning. I don't write well when I lack sleep, though, so I claim the middle of the day—like noon to 2, for my writing. Before that and after that, I'm driving people around, working on my paying gigs, feeding people, taking them to appointments, helping them with homework, etc.
I used to also make sure that the work I do for pay got done first, but I've found that it tends to eat into my creative writing time, and that I always somehow get my paid work done—if I have to work on nights or weekends to finish a teaching or journalism assignment, I will, but I can't summon the creativity I need to write fiction when I'm worn out. Writing fiction is hard—you need to give this task the best hours of your day, when your brain is at its best, and your attention has the fewest other demands on it.
Now, this isn't always practical. But really, if you try to find one or two hours a day, I think you'll find them. I completed the revision and publication edits of my first novel by working about one hour a day, when my toddler napped. I was exhausted, so I would rest for ten minutes and then go write until she woke up. I figured out how to rig a Boppy pillow by my keyboard so I could nurse a baby while I wrote. In the summers, since my kids are different ages, I had to stick them in different half-day camps when I could afford it, and I'd work it so with all the driving, I'd have one to two hours at home to write before I had to pick them up again. I printed out stuff I was working on and took it to whatever sports or music practice I found myself at.
You have to be a little severe with your boundaries—I didn't chitchat with the mothers on the sidelines of the activities, because I was busy with my work. I only volunteer a little at my kids' schools. I try to do one-off things, like field trips or helping kids with long-term projects, rather than getting roped into being room or team mom. Mostly I ignore the volunteering requests—someone else will do it. Especially here in Boulder—you can just draft off all the other moms' energy. You might not be the most popular mom among the moms, but who cares? You want to be a writer, not a super mom whose sacrifices no one will remember in a couple of years.
There have been times when I didn't write for a long time—like when the pandemic and online schooling first hit. But during those times I'm always looking for the next opportunity to claw my way back into at least an hour a day.
Also, never clean or do chores when you are alone in the house. Use that time for yourself, and besides, you get more "credit" for doing these things when you do them in front of other people. They don't even notice if you do them when they're not there.
If you're a writer, you won't be happy when you're not writing. You will be a better mom if you give your kids 80% attention and take 20% for your own writing, than if you give them 100% attention and you're crabby because you're not writing.
The Self-Promotional Portion of The Tumbleweed
I had a great time talking to Scott Semegran of Austin Liti Limits about Mixed Company.
I enjoyed my conversation with Brian Seemann for Aims Community College’s Words With Writers series. You can check out the video here, and also see the teal-colored walls of my basement office. (The paint is called Cote d’Azur.)
I reviewed Tiphanie Yanique's new novel Monster in the Middle, a book that shows how the choice to love is always a leap of faith, for America.
I was honored to contribute a short story to Love in the Time of Time’s Up, a Me-Too-themed collection of fiction edited by Christine Sneed. Tortoise Books will publish it in October, and it includes stories by May-lee Chai, Victoria Patterson, Karen Bender, Gina Frangello, Amina Gautier, Cris Mazza, Lynn Freed, and many more. If any of you are book reviewers, the publicist, Sheryl Johnston, has ARCs available. Her email is sheryljohnston@aol.com.
On Thursday, April 7, I’ll be giving a talk and reading at the Denver Women’s Press Club called “Writing the Real West: Diverse, Urban, and Contemporary.” It starts at 5:30 p.m. and you can get tickets from the DWPC.
On Tuesday, April 26, I’ll be talking with the great Patricia “MacArthur Genius” Limerick of CU’s Center of the American West about their Thompson Writing Awards (I won one the first year they offered them!) and Mixed Company. Stay tuned—it might be on Zoom, or maybe somewhere on CU Boulder campus.
Next month: Lighthouse Lit Fest’s craft classes go on sale! I’ll be teaching a bunch of them in June.
