Hitting That Work/Life Balance Beam Nose-First: Books, Children, and Time
Where Cat goes when she disappears...
Note: I’m working on a big essay for Monday and a year-anniversary follow-up to the piece that launched this newsletter for next week. In the meantime, the following essay is cross-posted from my Patreon (with a few changes for contextual clarity) on account of it being an explanation for my recent WEIRD-ASS QUIETUDE which also was weird, ass, and quiet here on Substack. This is what’s been going on with me; I did not die, I just had a brutal deadline and no time or space to breathe. It’s under a paywall here because it’s under a paywall at Patreon, I do apologize but times are tough for artists everywhere and I have to play fair with the amazing people who support my non-fiction writing online.
The preview is pretty damned load-bearing, though.
Please do consider becoming a paid subscriber so that I can justify more Garbagetown yelling and not be so stressed out all the time. Much more content next week!
Everything I’m about to say in this essay is pretty much borne out by the October and November in my world, in which many things went corkscrewed, but most noticeably in this space and most of my others, things went radio silent.
Call it a proof: of concept, of theorem, of life, which is only 35% a joke.
Don’t mind me. I’m just tired. So tectonically tired.
On New Year’s Day, I will have been publishing fiction professionally for 20 years.
For 15 of those years, interview questions that revolved around process were generally some form of: Do you write every day? What’s your writing space look like? What inspires you?
Then, five years ago, I had a baby. And I still get asked those questions, but now they have a friend, who is much less fun, the kind of friend you have to lie to, for, and about because they’re just so fucking crazy there’s no other way to deal with it and the truth just sucks too much. That friend is: How do you balance your writing with being a parent?
I usually do lie. You can tell by the nervous little laugh threatening to turn into a laughter-to-tears gif of Pedro Pascal at any moment. Oh, well, you know, one day at a time, I try to let go of the little things, do most of my work doing school hours, and my kid is getting older so it’s not as bad as it used to be…
Well, I’m here to tell you the actual answer, which is YOU JUST FUCKING DON’T EVER AND EVERYTHING IS ON FIRE ALL THE TIME, LITERALLY IT’S ALL ON FIRE RIGHT NOW, AS WE’RE TALKING, THAT’S WHY I HAVE A ZOOM BACKGROUND ON FOR THIS INTERVIEW YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT’S GOING ON BEHIND THAT ALGORITHMICALLY BREEZY BEACH IT’S A WHOLE HIERONYMUS BOSCH SITUATION IN MY HOUSE, BIRDHEADS EATING BUTTS AND PLAYING TESTICLE-FLUTES IN A PILE OF SCAFFOLDING, BROKEN DISHES, AND UNFINISHED WORK AND IT NEVER STOPS EVEN FOR A SECOND.
AND THEN THE LAVA COMES.