Thoughts on a Writing Life
The boundaries between work and life have been blurred for a long time.
The boundary between my work and my life is ratty and frayed if it ever existed at all. There are no clear lines between writing and living and the distinction is permeable but totally unified.
Covid-related changes even have me sharing my office space with my husband blurring the lines further.
Life—and death—push in too, the stresses and strains of being a mother and friend and paying the bills, and getting the job done.
The writing work is no different than any other job in this way—hard to juggle when life events are demanding and stressful.
Writing & Living
What I’ve known since the beginning though, is that for me, one can’t work without the other. Writing requires me to live and feel my life. Living requires me to write to process and understand my experience as a human being.
Real-world moments are fodder for my stories, questions, and challenges become magazine articles and essays. I process the world through writing, but my writing can only ever happen if I engage in my life.
It isn’t this way for everybody. And it doesn’t have to be. All I’m saying is for, writing is a way of living. It’s a lifestyle.
Notice I didn’t say publishing. I do that too. But, the writing is always first. I can live well without publishing, there are other ways to get paid. I cannot live well without writing.
So, I’m a Little Nerdy.
I’m reflective and prefer deep, intimate conversations with a bottle of wine.
Small talk is not my jam.
I hang with people who are smarter than me. Ask a lot of questions.
Quiet time spent pondering is a hobby.
Fountain pens, smooth paper, and cool books and notebooks.
My computer history is filled with weird searches.
I travel with at least two notebooks and six or seven pens.
I have pens I use and the pens others are allowed to use.
Morning pages are a way to ground and calm myself.
I’ve been to more gatherings than I can count, where I’ve left the conversation to go to the restroom and make notes about what just happened.
The experience is almost always more interesting than the outcome.
Writing doesn’t only happen when I sit down at my desk in the office. It happens behind the scenes in my mind, often while I’m facing a parenting challenge or stressing about work, or watching a movie with a great story structure.
And it is a job.
The boundary between work and life becomes a lot firmer when I head into the office to pay the bills, schedule the interviews, and write the pitch. It is all work when I’m 20 minutes from deadline and the piece isn’t ready yet.
Living a writing life is not romantic. It is not easy, nor inspired. but it is not a pipe dream either. I’m doing it after all in deliberate steps that merge that entrepreneurial mindset with the writer mindset. It comes with the same ups and downs and stresses that I imagine any job has.
Whether this one is hard or not, is all in how you think about it.
But a life without writing seems the hardest thing of all.
-p
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