am i my novel's mommy?

writing as sacred creation

In my last post, I wrote about my fear that if I allow myself to soften, I will lose the edge it takes to write what I want to write (currently: a novel about sex, marriage, liberation, love, fear, and self-obsession). Jessica W left a comment that struck me:

“I think that writing about any topic (whether it’s battling insecurity or the concept of spiritual awareness) is an act of love, because making art is about creation which requires love for all that is good, true and beautiful in this life.”

You all know I’m in my mother era (by that I mean my body has tried and failed to make a baby twice, so now I am communicating with the spirit of my unborn baby every time I see a butterfly or an angel number, trying to coax her into the earth realm…when i can carry a child to term it is sooo over for you bitches) so I read this and was like, “Creation! Yes! That sacred, maternal act!” And it made me realize that I never have really thought of writing as creating. As birthing something special, that could only come from me.

Is novel-writing as motherhood a metaphor that you all are rolling your eyes at, like, “um yeah….groundbreaking…”? Is it a sad consolation prize I’m hyping myself up for because I can’t have an actual child? Is Peter going to wake up at 3am one morning and find me cradling a printed manuscript and singing Hush Little Baby?? I’m pretty sure I’m not actually off my rocker (shout out Betty White) (I have never seen one episode of “Betty White’s Off Their Rockers” but I can’t pass up the opportunity to remind you that there was once a reality show in which she led a band of senior citizens to take to the streets and pull pranks on the youth) so I’m going to entertain this because guys what the hell else am I going to write about on here.

If I’m my novel’s mommy, that means my novel needs me and I need my novel. We’re bonded for life. My novel can’t grow without my guidance: it needs me to teach it the rules, it needs me to show it how to live. It feeds from my teet!! (sorry don’t picture that). It tantrums and I need to have patience. It gets an owie and I need to stick a bandaid on its chubby little leg. It cries and I need to say, It’s okay, baby. I know it hurts. It laughs and I need to, want to, laugh with it. I need to notice what it needs because it doesn’t always know how to tell me. I need to let it have some quiet time, to watch it think a little on its own. I need to surrender control, because I am never fully in control.

And all of that is really just a way of saying I need to love my novel so much that I can barely believe I have loved anything before. I need to make it my universe.

I saw this psychic a few years ago on a trip to Taos and she volunteered that I will have trouble with conception. I had barely sat down and she was like, “You are going to be so happy when you become a mother. Let me check the cards—oop ok yeah that’s gonna be a toughie.” She was like, “You wear rings on both your middle (Saturn) fingers, which is actually a sign of barrenness.” Reader, I slid those hunks of metal off real quick!

This was around the time I was deep in the online lit mag publishing world (by “deep” I mean I mostly scrolled Twitter all day and thought angry things about the writers who were getting better publications than me). I asked her about my writing (she said I’d have success there, so, slay) and the problem I was having, which is that I was feeling so caught up in external markers of success, and I cared so much about what people thought of me/my writing, and I was desperate for these weird, online 40-something year old men (sorry!!!) to tell me I was good enough for them. I asked her how to let go of that. And I still remember exactly how she said, “You need to focus on the work and just be all about it.”

Obviously, many of the things this woman said have haunted me since that fateful day. But I think of her saying that line often. Be all about it. My brain doesn’t do well with that kind of language, because it actually does too well with that kind of language. It loves that language. It loves black and white, all or nothing. Be all about it? GREAT! The issue comes in defining that, behaviorally. To my brain, I’m not “being all about it” unless I quit my job and write for eight hours a day instead. I’m not being all about it if I take a day off, I’m not being all about it if I work on this substack, which is not my novel. This means there are so many different ways to fail at being all about it. It’s pretty much, actually, guaranteed.

But I guess when you’re a mother, you are all about your baby but like, you still live your life. A lot of mothers work. A lot of mothers, I think, aren’t “on” for a full eight hours with their kid every day (is that true? I don’t know). But they’re still all about their kids because they love them so much, and they orient their life around them.

So instead of fixating on the all-or-nothing, I could instead just operate under the idea that, like a mother, I will be all about my novel, I will orient my brain and day around it, I will love it and care for it as if it is the most precious thing I have.

That’s not how I have been relating to my novel. Instead it’s been more like, let me squeeze a few hundred words in before work. Let me look at other people’s Publishers Marketplace Deal Reports and dream about mine, then immediately engage self-defeating thoughts about how this could never happen to me. Let me imagine being adored. Let me write two sentences then open Instagram. Let me think about how scary it will be for other people to read this. Let me imagine how many people are going to think it’s bad.

I am trying to reframe writing. Let go of it as this thing that will help me prove my worth. If I’m my novel’s mommy, then my novel is so much more than a symbol of my goodness. It’s something I created, with so much love, so that it might one day have a life of its own. I want my novel to grow up and go to college and then forge its way into the real world, and I want it to meet you there, and I want you to get to know it on its own terms. If I’m my novel’s mommy, then it’s my responsibility to get it there. I want to, because I love it.

So here I am, writing from inside the softness. The thing that most excites me about having a baby is this: I know we will have so much fun together. I’m having so much fun writing my novel, too.

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*~*~* LPB RECOMMENDS *~*~*

a new segment in which i recommend a random thing that has made my life better lately <3

• Cucumbers in your water!! The simplest little hack that feels so nice! Slice a few cucumbers into your glass of water and suddenly every time you bring your drinking vessel to your mouth you are inhaling the cool refreshing scent of cucumber, you are at the spa, you are remembering why you loved that Bath & Body Works Cucumber Melon lotion so much. It makes me actually want to hydrate. It makes me grateful for life’s small pleasures. 

+ Bonus Recommendation: you must subscribe to come sit by me, a new substack by my friend, the great writer Rachel Beavers. If you’ve ever hung out in the comment section of dear diary, you’ve probably seen Rachel sharing deep insights, keen observations, and dreamy musings, all in her funny, warm, energetic voice. I am so excited for the chance to sit at her virtual table and eat up every thought she graciously chooses to share <3

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And a few updates of possible interest…

+ Reading: Just finished Banal Nightmare by Halle Butler (comes out 7/16/24) and now onto We Were the Universe by Kimberly King Parsons!!

+ Writing: Today I hit 35k words in my novel draft!! I’m feeling really good about it, trying to dismiss all the negative self-talk that stops me from getting to the page. I’m at a really fun part in the story—the part where my characters are about to do the thing that you can’t believe they’re actually gonna do—and I am having a lot of fun living in the fantasy. I’m also deep into the work enough that my characters are starting to feel more clear and real to me. I have a better sense of what they want and what they fear, and that knowledge has felt, at times, like divine guidance as I’m writing. It’s cool to intuitively know what they will say or how they will react to things; sometimes my fingers just type their words before I feel my brain formulate them.