The lean years

Creative work is sustainable when others value it.

From left to right: Rick Becker, a fellow writer; Michael Lichens, my first editor at Sophia Institute Press; Ben, and me. Winter 2016

Writing, when it’s done well, challenges you to step into the risks without guarantee of favorable outcome. Creative work is sustainable when others value it.

Over seven years ago, I drove past a side street that led into the innards of my old neighborhood, where my childhood home remained largely as I remembered it. It was well past dusk, and I was on my way to a friend’s house. Ben and I lived about an hour’s drive north from my city of origin, and we were raising two girls at the time.

It was a rare moment when my thoughts could drift, and they did. I eased into the smooth drive, and I focused on enjoying my music without interruption. Then, something odd happened.

As I passed Monarch Drive, the clear message resounded in every fiber of me: Someday you will move back to this neighborhood, and you will write your memoir.

In 2015, our house was not on the market. Ben and I had not discussed moving. And I was writing non-fiction Catholic spirituality books, not memoir.

Yet, I believed this message. It rattled me as I drove for a leisurely evening of catching up with an old friend, but eventually I shelved it. Because it didn’t fit the context of my life.

In 2017, six weeks away from giving birth to our third daughter, Veronica, I found myself unpacking boxes in our new home - which was in the neighborhood of my childhood. The memory of that ordinary drive past Monarch Drive returned, and for a moment, I felt stunned that it actually happened. To be clear, I did not desire to move back to my old neighborhood, because I associate much pain and angst with that era of my life.

Once we were settled, the next piece of the puzzle reverberated often: You will write your memoir here.

I was in the throes of drafting concepts for two different books at the time: one on suicide survivors (which was under contract, but never got published), another about the paradox of living with grief while also finding pockets of joy in the midst of your misery. I was not writing memoir. Secretly, I wanted to, but I believed it to be beyond my capacity.

I felt crushed by the rejection of publishers with whom I’d worked in the past, and defeated at the possibility that I would not find viable work as a writer anymore. I told myself that maybe my time was up, that my creative work had become an artifact or relic but no longer dynamic.

When I pondered what was shifting in my creative work, this is what occurred to me, every time: You are playing it safe. I did not explore what this meant for several months, only because what it could mean or might mean terrified me. Once I asked myself about its specificity, I sensed that what would be necessary was pivoting from the small, niched Catholic publishing community and…I guess pitch an agent? Find an acquisitions editor?

It gnawed at my nerves that the publishing industry itself could be cutthroat. I did not have a large platform of social media followers or a litany of fantastic venues at which I spoke. I was a guppy in her fishbowl, satisfied until I realized that I’d have to be tossed into the ocean with sharks and pufferfish and clownfish and whales and all sorts of flamboyant, big players.

It took another few years, following the unexpected births of both Joey and Auggie, as well as my sloth-like recovery from postpartum depression, before I would seriously approach the idea that I needed to make this change. It felt urgent, imperative, and I chose to heed it.

Last year, I wrapped up all of my paid freelancing gigs that provided a small safety net of financial security —the work that justified that I was a “real” writer. It’s nonsense, of course, because a real writer is anyone who writes and who values their creative work for its own sake. But my insecurities ran so deeply that I needed a monetary reason to substantiate the claim that I was a writer and that writing was a viable profession, not an avocation I dabbled in.

It’s now nearing the last days of 2023. And I have not been paid this year for anything, except a small editing project here or there. Yet I have completed the first (bad) draft of my memoir, and I rejoice in that. I celebrate it as I send this to you, because it has been no small feat, on either a personal or professional level.

Writing, when it’s done well, challenges you to step into the risks without guarantee of favorable outcome. No one is requesting my manuscript. There is no scout who serendipitously stumbled across an article I wrote and is now connecting me with a literary agent. I hole up in my home office for an hour here and there, away from my family and the laundry and lunch with friends, and I have little to show for my time.

When you write in this way, you have to believe in what you are doing —in your process, but also in yourself, in your work, in your gift. You have to practice. You have to remind yourself on bad days that even the literary greats wrote terrible sentences and forgot important verbs and used dangling participles in their first drafts. In fact, it’s plausible that, in order to stand out and become an excellent writer, you have to trash a lot of what you initially put on paper and dig for the word or phrase that carries the seed of potential.

It might be pages or chapters or an entire book that must be rewritten several, even dozens, of times before it is polished. And I have reached the point where I am investing in that type of work, that level of sweat and deprivation and reclusiveness - for a time.

Writing is the professional work I have chosen, the only one that really fits my lifestyle, particularly since I cannot hold specific office hours when I am taking Sarah to therapy or orthodontic check-ups or an annual visit to the craniofacial surgeon three hours away. I did not realize that stepping away from what I had built for ten years by speaking and writing on the topic of grief would involve so many financially lean months. I had a hunch, but now I’m at a place where I think (I believe) that I have established credibility as a serious writer and that my creative work might be worth something to someone else.

My point here is this: I am asking something of you.

I am asking you to consider financially supporting my writing for its own sake, not because you received a lead magnet in the form of a freebie or access to exclusive content. I want to give that to you, and I will once I am out of the trenches. And if you are reading this and cringing, because you don’t have the money or are uncertain it’s worth the investment, I get that, too.

A paid subscription simply means you’d like to buoy me while I make the transition from niched grief writer to memoirist, but a free subscription is still appreciated —and I assure you that you will still receive full access to my weekly essays, as well as the archives. If twenty of you donated $10 a month, it would sustain my ability to sit in my home office in between my mom and caregiver duties. It might cover groceries or the occasional online writers or marketing workshop that will help me home my style and voice.

But support of authors involves more than financial contributions. It also includes writing reviews of their books, sharing their articles on social media (e.g., posting photos of you with their books and a brief comment), recommending their work to a friend or a group or book club. It means getting their message out there in this vast world somehow, boosting them, accompanying and encouraging them.

In the new year, my goal is to offer paid subscribers excerpts from my memoir and journal, videos (I have a few ideas that involve merging my background in psychology with writing), replying to a reader’s comment or email, a quote roundup of my favorites (I collect inspirational quotes), and additional content that supplements my weekly essay.

Thanks for being here with me, for allowing me the time and space to speak into your life for five to ten minutes every week or so. I know your time is valuable, and if you’re choosing to read this, then I’m honored and grateful for that, no matter how you choose to support my creative work.