Wordless techno music plays at the coffee shop. I order an oat milk cappuccino and it comes out the size of my head. I don’t know if it’s a bad thing or a blessing, yet. I check my little emails and send my little invoices for things and I avoid working on my manuscript because I feel like shit. I’ve set aside this time to write, carved it out, as the instructor in my barre class said this morning: “You’ve carved out this hour for yourself!” She told us to breathe out negativity and judgment, but didn’t say what we should be breathing back in.
I had a bad experience last night, one that I didn’t want to write about, but I guess here I am, writing about it. And last week, I had another sort of paralleled bad experience. I link them together because it jives with my narrative—I'm a nobody.
Last week, I was asked to be a reader on a thesis panel for an undergraduate English student. The student turned in a trio of stories, and all I was asked to do was read them and show up to a conference room the following week. I read them. They were great. I walked from the parking lot to the conference room and I was early. I waited in the hallway and reviewed the pieces on my laptop. Still great. The kid would pass the defense.
I was wearing cargo pants and a Coca Cola t-shirt. I had a pamplemousse La Croix in my jacket pocket. I would be leaving the defense and driving over to my daughter’s daycare. I would pick her up and go to music class with her, one of my favorite parts of the week. Another writer walked out of the conference room, her passed defense in hand, smiling, proud, I grabbed my stuff and walked in, took a seat.
Apparently I was in the wrong seat. I was told to move to the side of the long table, which was right underneath the air vent. The room is always freezing. I’ve had many a faculty meeting in there, so I knew to bring the jacket despite the humidity outside. I moved all my stuff, moved myself, sat down, cracked open the La Croix.
“What time is this over?” The professor next to me asked.
“I think it’s 45 minutes max including the deliberation,” I said. “I’ve got a hard out at 3:00pm to get my daughter, so that’s what they told me.”
“I have to pick up my kids too,” she said, but didn’t take her eyes off her laptop.
“I’ve got a one-year-old,” I said and pictured my daughter at daycare eating her afternoon snack. Maybe humus and pita. Maybe crackers and cheese cubes.
“Oh,” the other professor sighed. “Mine are six and twelve. It’s different.”
Different. Yeah, no shit. Her kids are older. But my daughter is still a human being that I care for. The way she said it immediately made her my enemy. I wanted to move again, carry all my stuff to the other side of the table even if it was wrong. Aren’t we parents supposed to stick together?
The defense began and the head of the department looked over at me.
“Take it away,” he said and I almost threw up. I was supposed to lead this thing? I swallowed a gulp of La Croix, audible in the silent room, and looked at the writer. He was holding his manuscript like a sacrificial offering. His hands were shaking.
At my own thesis defense years and years ago, I wore a red dress. I got asked a bunch of questions about why I’d chosen memoir instead of to fictionalize my memories, what sort of editing and revision did I see myself doing after the program, questions about my process and my time in workshop and everything I’d gleaned from my peers and my teachers and the introspective time spent with my work. I felt energized and proud after my thesis was declared “passed” and I went to celebrate by eating an entire slice of cake by myself at a café.
My thesis chair was my greatest mentor in my MFA program. She’s still someone I text all the time, someone who writes my recommendation letters when I need them. She still believes in me. My other two panel members were my nonfiction instructors who had taught me so much, guided me and supported me the whole way through.
But the kid who sat catty-corner from me at the conference table, I’d never met him before, never even seen him in my life. He was wearing a suit. I’d read his work, but that didn’t mean I knew anything about him. I knew his words.
I panicked, then took a breath and pointed to my favorite story in his collection. The story follows a volunteer teacher at a migrant shelter in Mexico as he narrates the story of a six-year-old boy who dreams of becoming an astronaut. Selfishly, I wanted to ask why he’d chosen that dream occupation for the young boy. Why space? Why didn’t that theme ever go further? Why does he mention it once and then it falls away? I make my own connections about how he must have been dreaming of going so far away from himself that he desired to end up in outer space, the ability to look down on the world from above.
But that’s not what the piece was about. It was about what becomes of families in shelters, what doesn’t become of them. It was incredibly moving, and I couldn’t ask him my stupid space question. Instead, I asked about how he might revise, if he planned to make that story longer or make any changes.
As he spoke, I was able to mentally formulate more questions. I couldn’t believe how unprepared I was, that I was wearing a freaking Coca Cola shirt, that I didn’t know what I was doing. I'm a writer. I'm a teacher. I’d written a thesis. I’d passed. I’d been so graciously asked to be on this panel. But I had this thing in my head that I was different, that everyone else in the room was supposed to be there and my being there was a mistake.
I made it through the defense and of course the writer passed, with Honors, mind you, and I shook his hand and we all signed the papers and then I left for my daughter and music class. In the class, we sang hello to each other. We sang about ladybugs and blackbirds and kittens. Even though I hadn’t yet learned all the words to the songs, I didn’t feel ashamed. I didn’t feel like I didn’t belong. I felt the happiest I’d felt all week.
At the end, we had a dance party to The Go-Go’s “We Got the Beat.” I picked up my daughter and danced with her on my hip. I threw her up into the air and caught her. She laughed, a brilliant squeal. She smiled so big.
*
Last night, I led a draft chat for a local writers group. I’d been excited about it, but then all day yesterday I started to feel weird. I doubted myself and my abilities to lead. I had no idea what kind of work the writers would turn in, what kind of feedback they were looking for. They were paying to show up and I wanted them to have a fruitful time together. Despite my fears, I welcomed each participant with a smile.
The night went smooth enough. We had reading time for each participant and then discussion time. A few people didn’t show up, so I decided to extend everyone’s post-reading chat time a bit. Everyone had a turn and everyone spoke and gave constructive critiques. But that familiar narrative seeped into the room, the Why am I doing this? Why was I asked? Why me? Don’t they know I'm not qualified? Don’t they know I'm not a real writer? Don’t they know I just got lucky, but now I'm nobody?
Each writer brought something completely different: a story of fertility, a story of time spent in Cambodia, a collection of botany poems, and a work-in-progress investigating a famous orator’s mentor. I brought cookies from Trader Joe’s. I tried my best to give each writer something useful, something to leave the draft chat with that would motivate them to keep going. But am I even motivated to keep going?
Everyone thanked me at the end of our session, but the botanist writer lingered and asked my least favorite question of all time. He wanted to know about publishing. I felt myself descend.
I conjured some response about submitting to journals and magazines that you’re a fan of, a place where you not only wanted to see your work, but a place you actually read and enjoy and admire. But, like, do I even do that? How much of my time is spent perusing literary magazines on the regular? Do I submit because I esteem the work? Or because I want something to post about so I can feel real?
The fertility writer who was also lingering so graciously chimed in that there are whole classes dedicated to submitting work, and with that answer, we all filed out of the building to our cars and went home.
Back in bed last night, I asked Carl to pour me a tiny glass of strawberry lemonade kombucha, my stomach in knots and in need of a fermented remedy. I told him about the draft chat and started crying. I told him, “I'm not here right now, by the way,” something I say to him so he knows I'm experiencing an episode. I go outside of my body. I go away.
A sea of thoughts washed over me:
I thought of the thesis panel and my incompetence, all those eager eyes staring at me, other teachers, other students, everyone in the room—a writer.
I thought of how many coffees I’ve consumed this year in the twelve months since my daughter’s arrival and wondered if my insides are poisoned, destroyed.
I thought of all the digital pages piling up on my hard drive and what if they all just disappeared? Would I be relieved?
I thought of the newborn days, our baby nurse in the living room holding our daughter while she slept, how I sat at the kitchen table and revised a novel, how disgusting I feel for that, for not holding her every second I could.
I thought of pushing her stroller up the hill at Radnor Lake in the heat of July, sweat pouring down my neck, how she slept peacefully, a mini electric fan pointed at her face.
I thought of her hand holding the acrylic mallet and lightly tapping the keys of a xylophone at music class, the hard rubber polyball on the end vibrating, the twinkling sound emitted, the way it was instinctual, performed without thought.
I thought of all the smatterings I’ve read lately on writing—how it’s cathartic, how it’s not cathartic, how it’s easy, how it’s hard, how it’s freeing, how it’s a self-inflicted prison, how it’s inseparable from our identity, how it should not be our entire identity, how it defines us, how it doesn’t define us, how it will change our lives, how it will not change anything, how we can reach our goals if we just keep going, how the goalposts are always moving as we keep writing, how we can get published, how publishing doesn’t matter, how we can win contests and get grants and become fellows and attend workshops and residencies and how we need all these things to call ourselves writers but also how we need none of them, how MFAs are paying your way and unnecessary, how MFAs are beneficial depending on your circumstances, how not everyone has talent, how anyone can write—all these hot takes.
Carl puts his hand on mine.
“You’re already doing it,” he said and I am pulled back down to the planet. I am tethered, again, to the current moment.
“You have a gift, and you’re using it.”
I do believe I’ve been given a gift to write. But sometimes, quite often, quite regularly, I don’t know what I'm supposed to be doing with it. I don’t know if it matters, and I don’t know how to make sense of it mattering or not mattering.
All I know is that during that thesis panel, during that draft chat, during music class, I am taking mental notes to jot down later and reflect on. I sit and drink the coffee and let the words hit the page.
*
I recently hosted a Parent Writer Meet-Up. Only two other writers showed up, but the three of us read and wrote and chatted for over an hour. It felt nice to be around other parent writers. I shared an excerpt from a novel, a scene where the narrator takes her daughter to a grocery store and the daughter has to pee, but the mom has a panic attack when she recalls a troubling memory and the two leave the store without buying anything. The daughter has a tantrum. The mom has to hold all of it.
We all related to the scene. We are all that mother holding it together and failing to. Maybe on the outside we are exiting the store and getting everyone home safely, but inside, we are having a very bad experience that we might not be able to make sense of later.
One of the writers said something about how in parenting there are no tidy lessons, how everything is a complete mess and everyone’s just doing their best. “There’s no right way to do things,” he said. “Sure there are wrong ways, harmful things one can do, but all these websites and accounts and even the doctors, their way might not work for your family. You have to do what works for your family.”
I think with writing, too, we try to come up with these tidy lessons for how it’s done, how to reach the right way of doing it. We have to write 1,000 words a day. We have to carve out an hour. We have to have an excel sheet. We have to write when the baby naps. We have to show up every day to the work. We have to, we have to, we have to, or else! And it’s true that since becoming a mom, my writing has changed.
I told the other parent writers how my perspective as a human being has changed, now having to care for another life, it couldn’t possibly be the same as before. The ego in my writing has slipped away, and in turn, there is a mother at the helm of every page. I have a maternal care for myself in my work, for my characters. And she’s not going anywhere.
I left the small group and went home to my family. My daughter was eating lunch in her high chair. I kissed her forehead and she continued eating her chicken and veggies. Carl suggested we go for a long walk, and so we did. On the walk, Carl held our daughter above a stream and dangled her little feet into the water.
The day had its ups and downs, its tantrums and its resolutions. But I tried to stay in that stream, mentally, that moment where it was just us, just her feet in the water. Could it be that simple?
*
One recent hot take that didn’t piss me off was from a friend’s Substack. Maybe it’s because Lindsey is a therapist in real life, but she has an acute awareness of herself—her desires, her inner life, her expectations of herself. Maybe it’s because she’s a writer that she can deeply question these things, or maybe it’s just because she’s a person living in a body. In her latest entry, she questions the “Why do I write” debacle.
i think that maybe writing projects are more sustainable if we work on them because of our own spiritual need to, because there is some sort of Self-led knowledge that expressing this particular story in this particular way will bring us closer to the version of ourselves that we want to be.
I commented on her post, “…I feel like we (I) need to understand that we already are the version of ourselves we are meant to be…we should always strive to be learning and growing, but we’re still us throughout that process. The self is a spectrum (?) We carry all the things. IDK!”
I do feel a higher calling bringing me to the coffee shop. It sits me down at the table and opens up my laptop, pulls up the document, begins to type.
I keep continuing where I left off. I keep going because, I don’t know, I guess deep down, I believe in myself.
I ask for a cup of ice because I’ve let my drink cool. I pour the leftovers into the cup and drink it this new way now. Another ambient song plays. Again, it has no words.
—
I loved this, Brittany. As an attendee of that Draft Chat and grateful beneficiary of your feedback, I also want to suggest that your presence, warmth, and encouragement of other writers is another way that higher calling manifests. It's not technically the writing *work* (churning out words) but it's the writing *life* (creative community, paying attention, tuning your life to the sublime) and you model that so beautifully. This year, I've been trying to make the writing life my goal and trust that the writing work will follow. As always, very thankful for you and your writing!
There’s nothing like your higher power speaking through Real. It just flows. I can tell why you’re writing, that’s why you are such a prolific writer.