Single-Parent Writers

It’s not fucking fair.

That’s what Cara Hoffmann announced after listening to the rest of the Pen Parentis panel talking about how they so appreciated their spouse for taking the kids for four hours here and two hours there so the writer could finish a chapter of the latest book. She raised a son on her own as a writer – and it was hard and bloody work. Well, ok, maybe not terribly bloody…but if you’ve read Cara’s phenomenal breakout novel, So Much Pretty, you might wonder.

How did she do it? The same way Mahogany Brown raised her daughter alone – as a poet it might be even harder than as a fiction writer – she told her kid that this was her career and she taught her child to treat that career with respect. Really, it’s no different to tell your child “Daddy has to write this proposal so that his company will earn 5M in the next merger acquisitions deal, so please watch Dora on the TV for a little while and then I’ll read you a story.” What you are doing is prioritizing work. And that’s damned hard, but guess what, life isn’t fair. Only people can be fair: and what each of these women admitted was how grateful they were to the industry people who understood when they were told that the deadline would be missed by a hair because, as a single mom, there was nothing to be done about it. 

But here’s what’s gorgeous: both Hoffman and Brown instilled a real respect into their kids. Writing wasn’t a hobby. It wasn’t something done for fun and laughs. Writing was a career. And by incorporating their kids into their lives this fully, these single-moms raised kids who not only respected and admired their mothers, but the kids themselves grew up to be successful artists: Hoffman’s son is in a quite-popular band, and Brown’s daughter won a writing award.

We can do this for our kids. Single parents more than anyone with a double income, should also take advantage of all the grants and fellowships out there that want to fund great writing. Try for a Sustainable Arts Foundation Grant. A Jerome Foundation Grant. Even the NEA grants are not out of your reach, if you are serious. I went to a presentation they made at AWP in Chicago, and discovered that the judges for the NEA grant change every year – you can apply with the same material up to five years in a row without any penalty. In fact they want you to reapply! We all know that taste is subjective, why not keep trying? You can’t win the lottery without playing, and getting grants is a lot like winning the lottery. Find out how these things are run, follow the rules, and apply. Your hardship bio will likely turn a few heads that otherwise are stuck in academic clouds. 

I have absolutely no idea what I'll be writing about next week. I just had a birthday. Maybe that's the problem - saw time, slipping slowly through the glass...

Flee for the Weekend

At the AWP conference in Chicago, I was lucky to attend the panel on pregnancy called Writing Motherhood. I was surprised by a few things 1) how many of the people in the audience were not pregnant, and 2) how many of them were men. It was standing room only in a rather large room (more than a hundred attended) – and the Q&A ran so long the next panel was hovering impatiently at the door.

This is clearly an issue, people.

At the panel, one of the writers admitted that her means of securing real mental space to write is to leave her daughter with her husband for the weekend, every other weekend, while she was working on a book. In case of emergency, mommy was a phone call and a ten-minute drive away, but otherwise, someone else was cleaning, cooking, hugging, reading bedtime stories, curing boredom, shopping and schlepping, and mommy was working her fucking ass off. Again, the guilt-factor was at work. She knew she was 1) spending family money on a hotel. Parents don’t take large expenses lightly. 2) incurring spousal debt. Believe me all favors this big get paid off. 3) only allowed to do this if she really did produce great work.

The power of guilt. It’s astonishing. The writer, by the way, is Hope Edelman and she is the author of 5 books and two memoirs and has a lovely happy daughter.

She is not the only writer to check into a hotel for the weekend. There were lots of parents in the audience nodding in empathy as she discussed her method. Even more writers, particularly, those that are urban-based, pay to use a writing center. Easily 2/3 of the writers we have presented on the Pen Parentis stage are or have been members of an offsite office space. Some have chosen writing centers for the flexible hours, but others have signed up for rental workspace or even leased small offices away from the home.

I myself did the best writing I have ever done when I won a fellowship to the Summer Literary Seminars in St. Petersburg Russia. There's nothing like leaving all your responsibilities behind, immersing yourself in art and thoughtful seeing and just living a writer's life. I came back with a rewritten opening to a novel and a short story that will be published this coming March - after making the short list on three different contests. It's great writing - and it reminds me how high the bar has to be set...even if I have to pick up the kids after school in the middle of writing the best paragraph ever.

I hear all you single parents – I agree it’s not fair to hear solutions that require not only dual incomes but also free babysitting. Next time I’ll talk about what two successful single moms said at our Salons.

Family Friendly Residencies

You may have heard that some of us (Anna Solomon, Greg Olear, Caroline Grant, & Thomas Israel) submitted a panel proposal about parenting/writing for AWP in Boston 2013, I don't know if we will be selected but we intend, among other resources, to present a parent-conscious list of writer's getaways such as family-friendly residencies: writing colonies at which kids can either stay with their parent or there’s programming for them. This is like writer’s gold, and it's a trend we would love to see proliferate. For a start, here’s a list of a few current residency programs that parents are encouraged to apply for that allow kids to remain the whole time with the writer: 

Acadia National Park.

Right. There is exactly one. It’s in Maine. Here's the website. 

The easiest way to search for an appropriate residency is through the online search engine on the Alliance of Artists Communities Website.

But I’ve done the depressing work for you.

Besides the one writing residency program in the world that does not require membership that does allow children for the entire duration of the writer’s stay--Go Acadia!--there are additionally seven residencies in the world that currently allow children for the entire residency, but you have to be a member of the organization sponsoring the residency to apply. Six, luckily, are in the US--though most of them require membership. One is in China.


18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica
Elsewhere Studios, Colorado
Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown
Headlands Center for the Arts, San Fran
McColl Center for Visual Art, Charlotte
Red Gate Residency, China
Spiro Arts, Utah

This has got to change. Either residencies have to acknowledge the difficulties (as Yaddo does) of being away for extended periods without seeing family, and allow for family visits – or writing colonies need to take into account they are losing a vast clientele of great writers with incomes who would happily go away for four days to a week, just to have some mental space.  Why should the Santa Fe Doubletree Hotel gain money that deserves to be spent at StarryNights?

You tell me.  Next time, we talk about some published writers and how they carve out mental space.

Escape to Nirvana

Wow. Sorry that took so long - I didn't mean to leave you hanging in the middle of a blog post, but I was combing hair. Boy hair. Girl hair. My hair. And doing laundry. Some sixty-five dollars worth of it. It's insane how quickly time flies when your kid comes home with...lice.

Yes. Thanks to the vagaries of a boys-only sleepover. I was briefly transported to the middle ages. Horrific. And definitely on the top-ten things I never even briefly thought could keep me from writing until I had kids....ooh. That's for sure going to be a later post.

For now, here's the continuation of my thoughts on creating mental space.

So: 

Who among us hasn’t dreamed of six weeks as a resident in an artist colony, far away from real life, surrounded by genius writers who only want to inspire other writers?  Oh the bliss of waking naturally, refreshed and ready, having breakfast served to you as you sit quietly over coffee thinking about the work you will continue today. The characters are fresh in your mind, and last night, you dreamed of a new plot twist, one that will work admirably to get the Jamaican maid into the room where she will witness the downfall of the young man she must serve but secretly loves. You are excited. You leave the dishes on a sideboard and dash off to your private cabin, where your printout is plastered all over the floor. You snatch up chapter 12 and start to scribble in the margins. Before you know it, it’s lunch time, and someone has left you a basket of fruit, cheese and bread by the door. You go for a solitary walk along a winding forest path and the birds remind you that you haven’t put enough nature imagery into chapter 3. You return to your cabin, brew a fresh pot of coffee, and get back to work. You’re so into it, so inspired, that you skip the dinner as well as the lecture on first person vs. third person by a Nobel Prize winning poet, and you hunker down well past midnight, eating protein bars whenever your stomach growls. 

Sigh. It sounds amazing.

But the reality? It’s damned expensive and your kid's orthodontist just told you he'll need headgear as well as braces. Which means you better also save for therapy. And yes, there are many scholarships for worthy applicants, but let’s just say that you won a full residency with airfare. What parent can actually get away for that long? Six weeks? That’s like military rotation. (ok, military is longer and the consequences are more far-reaching, but give me the metaphor for just a minute).  Six weeks is enough time for a newborn to have a first tooth, take a first step, say a first word, and grow two clothing sizes. Tell me that’s something you'd like to hear about over email with a video attachment.

Nonetheless: people do it. For parents who want to go to residencies, timing is everything. Some residencies, like Yaddo, are good for parents who need to get away because they do pay allow for shorter stays and for brief family visits. And they pay for everything. That’s a serious bonus.

As a parent, you’re already super-focused and working in whatever time is allotted. A parent who takes two weeks away from his kids is going to damn straight get to work. There won’t be any navel-gazing at all, because the minute his mind strays from his novel, he will be faced with a wall of guilt. And believe me, guilt is a fantastic motivator to keep you on track. Parents who attend colonies feel they have to make the time away worthwhile—so let me tell you—that time is productive. There are pages to show for it. It’s not just a resume booster. It’s real working time.

It's definitely worth it, if you can get away. But can you?

Next week: Family Friendly Residencies.

Mental Space for Rent

Ever since you first picked up Dorothy Parker or Jack Kerouac and fell in love with the writer’s life, you’ve had an image in your head of what it means to be “a writer.” Probably that image includes some vice (sex, alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, luxury yachts) that you deserve because of all the time you spend writing. Because almost without fail, the image that comes to mind when you think “writer” is someone all alone in a room somewhere. A quiet room. With only writerly stuff in it and a means of composition. Books. A nostalgic typewriter. Possibly a window, but if so, a window that opens onto a peaceful scene.

When was the last time a parent was alone in any room devoid of kid detritus?

You do not think of a writer as a person who has to make non-peanut snacks for fifteen kids and then a doctor’s appointment which will entail at least one shot before sitting down with her manuscript. You don’t think of a National Book Award winner setting an alarm to ensure he/she picks up Coraline or Jeremy from soccer camp no later than 3:25pm. Definitely not the image that comes to mind. But that’s what we do. Every damn day.

How the hell do we accomplish this?

Let’s just say there’s often a hero spouse in the picture. Let’s say someone is willing for YOUR career to do all that daily stuff, at least on occasion so a few sentences can be strung together and called a paragraph. Let’s say that’s true for about 40% of parent authors. (could be more/less depending on divorces, remarriages, business trips, and spousal reluctance) … it could also be a mom or paid nanny/sitter/day care that takes over the parenting for a while—

There is still the issue of mental space.

After all, writing a cohesive short story (not to mention a whole novel!) requires a certain amount of focus, wouldn’t you say? Focus that is not razor sharp when Coraline and Jeremy are fighting with the caregiver in the next room over whose turn it actually is to choose the TV show. Focus that can be ripped from you even with a stray thought; oh crap, tomorrow is Coraline’s share day at school and I promised to ask Joe to loan out his old fireman’s helmet and I totally forgot. Focus that is utterly destroyed when your cellphone buzzes and the caller ID says “Jeremy’s School.”

“We’re so sorry,” says an administrator when you pick up. “Jeremy threw up in the lunchroom today. He seems fine now, but our policy is to have the parents keep him home for 24 hours after an incident like this.”  Say goodbye to the next 24 hours, since your spouse has already told you she’s got a meeting at ten tomorrow with the CEO of her firm.

So that’s our lives. We know it. Why am I bothering to blog about it?

Because there are plenty of writers who have managed to put out amazing novels despite having kids at home. People who nonetheless pick up their kids from soccer and who sit with them when they have fevers.  People like Jennifer Egan, who, oh I dunno, wrote novels that were good enough to win Pulitzer Prizes.

When she wrote A Visit From the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan was helping to put food on the table and pay for soccer classes for two boys. That prize came to her because the quality of her work was fantastic—not the other way around. We often laud writers’ work after they win prizes: but every last one of them was not a Pulitzer Prize winning author before they won that prize. (members of Pen Parentis can log onto the website and hear a podcast of her discussing the book BEFORE she won the prize... it's astonishing.)

It is vital to remember that the prize-winning authors that we so admire had to carve out time to slave over their writing, same as you. 

In the next blog, I’ll talk about some specific ways that published novelists who are also parents have carved out enough mental space to get some real writing done.

Want help? Give it. Part 2.

Face it, there’s a reason you’re not getting an agent: it’s not because your writing sucks. If your writing sucked, you wouldn’t be getting encouraging emails from agents saying they are sure it will find a market at some point. You would be getting only standard boring-as-hell, form-rejection letters that probably don’t have your name on them (if you are getting only this sort of rejection, quickly go take a writing workshop or writing class and find out why—the problem is likely technical and easily fixed)—but no, YOU are getting rejection letters that feel like apologies for not wanting a second date after a great first one… Short little half-apologies with lame excuses. Often it’s that your subject matter isn’t easily marketable, that your novel isn’t easy to categorize, that it doesn’t fall within typical guidelines, or just that the agent ‘didn’t connect’ with the material. I mean, if you were writing a zombie detective novel, or a torso-baring typical romance novel with a main character named Delphinia who at 27 is still a virgin, it would already be in print. But then you, dear author, wouldn’t be you.

Now the advice I’m about to give is time consuming, so listen up. I’m talking about FRIENDS here. I’m talking about people that you went to grad school with and held their hair as they puked and didn’t post the photos to FB (okay there wasn’t FB back then, but whatever) – I’m talking people who went to your kid’s first birthday party and who you swore to be friends with forever. Don’t let one-sided success screw up a good friendship. Just don’t!

I am NOT talking about the crazy guy from the MFA program who keeps friending you from other accounts because you sat next to him one day and were nice. I’m not talking about the crazy bitch from day care who keeps haranguing you to have a playdate because she has just written her fifth novel manuscript and wants you to blurb it (oh wait, crap, that’s me, nevermind) – and I’m certainly not talking about anyone that you don’t actually LIKE.

But that does leave a handful of friends. Even writers, you know who you are, have friends.

So what can we do to help each other? Well, you’ve done the first step: you’re seeking community. We really CAN help each other. It’s just that the one-on-one “here’s my agent’s cellphone number” help isn’t going to happen. Here’s a list of what we can do for each other:

• 1)   Read your friend’s books. (yes, some of them will suck. But just the fact that you bothered to put them into your long reading queue will mean SO MUCH to your friend that the next time his agent asks if he knows someone who writes X and you do, your name might come up.) – this goes for published and NOT published books. If you have three novels under your hat and your best friend from grad school is still struggling, well, do the shlub a favor and read his MS. And be honest: tell him, you need to take a writing class (he will hate you, but he won’t hate you more than if you keep NOT reading his MS). And vice versa: “I’m working on my own novel” is no reason not to read that friend’s book. Skim it. Read pieces. It’s not nice not to. If it’s awful, be gleeful in private and plan how yours will be better.
• 2)   Review that book wherever you’re a member, but keep the review really short (it was a great read! Or I loved this book!) – long reviews for friend’s books seem nepotistic. But do give your friend five stars if they deserve five stars: that’s just being nice. Plus (added nepotistic bonus) they might thank you in their blog which has 20,000 followers. And if the book really sucked, just skip the stars and say what you liked “great character of Pauline on page 245!” And published author-dude and dudettes: if you do read an MS that was great, guess what? Your 20K followers might want to know that too. You don’t have to be embarrassed to say “I just read a friend’s unpublished novel and really enjoyed it; I hope they find an agent soon!”
• 3)   GO TO YOUR FRIEND’S EVENTS! It’s so important to stay in touch, and if you are the only one who showed up at Barnes & Noble on that rainy Saturday, it will mean so much.  I learned this from my days as an actor: I can’t tell you how many auditions I got (mind you, it wasn’t jobs, no one hires you without trying you out: not in theater and not in books) – just because I showed up at a friend’s show. And it’s really good for YOU to go to these events: you’ll meet other authors. You’ll meet your friend’s agent. You’ll be able to network. Maybe you’ll meet your next editor, or at least know one editor’s name when you send your book out. Hell, just leaving the house for something other than a milk-run is a bonus these days.

These are super-easy things to do. Well, okay, the events thing might require a babysitter, but in general, what I’m saying is that we are a COMMUNITY. It is important to stand up for your friends. And yeah, Stephen King might not really notice when you show up, but he’s a freak of nature anyway. You went to high school with him and were best mates and now you saw him at a live event? Blog about it, cc-his alumni email address or tag him on the Facebook note, and maybe, just maybe, he will reply. Which will earn you a “like” on your site, which will lead to another blog entry, which will gain you a few Twitter followers, &etc…