Writing Diary 04 | Softening, July 15th

Welcome to The Writing Diaries, a recurring series following the life of a writer—when I write and how I do it, with mixed results, momentary clarity, and the truth of creating amid the chaos of life and living.

Monday, July 15

9:17 a.m.

The baby is home from daycare today so I’m getting some work done while my husband takes the morning shift with her. I don’t really want to say why she’s home—that information is not mine to share—except that it has something to do with other people suffering greatly.

So much suffering continues.

If you read my last post, you’ll know that this isn’t unlike other things I’ve witnessed recently. These events are frightening. Selfishly, it feels like something in the world is coming for me. But then I wonder: Am I in this place because I am meant to hold their pain? How do I do that?

A woman I admire—online, from a distance—recently gave birth to her fourth child. While in the throes of natural childbirth, she said later that her mind was not on getting through it, but focusing on the pain, asking how do I soften?

10:47 a.m.

I spend the morning falling in love with Substacks like Amy Lin’s At the Bottom of Everything and Rachel Schwartzmann’s Slow Stories. They are a reminder that there are other people in the world who are soft like me and are trying.

I responded to one of Amy’s posts earlier in the week, entitled what does it feel like to be you?:

Lately, I’m the strongest most surest person I know. But I still feel like a very tiny child, like I need to curl up and hide from the world. I don’t know how I can be both so strong and so constantly vulnerable.

11:21 a.m.

I walk home and try to get some steps in before I have to be inside for a prolonged period of time. It starts to rain, heavily, so I drop into Value Village for cover.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the place I’ve found myself in life right now: not working the traditional sense of the word, but working nonetheless—on writing, going back to school, becoming something I have not yet been. It’s a lifestyle similar to one I’ve had for years as a freelancer, where I make my own schedule and maintain clients, except my only client now is myself. Or, my future self.

I fear people in my life are taking it for granted—that I am actually working. That, or I am not totally secure in my choice to pursue this. I know it’s probably the latter but sometimes they are mixed.

I do believe this life is for me and I have to take it while it’s happening. I can’t be anywhere else. I’m learning that as long as you believe that the things you want—success, happiness, freedom—are for other people, they will be. As long as you believe that not trying is the easier path—in order to avoid failure—you will successfully avoid the pain of failure, but you will also go without the benefits of living the life you could have lived.

1:26 p.m.

The baby is napping and I’m working on the administrative side of my novel project. I have yet to dive back into the 11K+ words I wrote last fall.

Things I am doing to prepare myself for this next step:

• Do not judge what I’ve already created

• Create a mood board (see above) - emotional / visual mapping of the story timeline, plot, themes

• Compile my resources - books for historical context, books for inspiration, etc.

• Do not get in the way of myself:

  • Editing as I go (no, never do this);

  • Judging myself as I write;

  • Believe harder;

  • Work harder.

5:47 p.m.

The day has quickly become disappointing at worst, uneventful at best. My husband needs to stay late to work so I am home alone with the girls. There are a lot of things I did not get to do today.

I wish I could leave the to do lists behind. All of them, they are everywhere: what I’m supposed to do for myself, my children, my husband, my home. I wish I could settle and just be for a while. But that is not really in my nature.

I make dinner. Feel moderately guilty that their dinner is in front of the TV. Rationalize that it is okay that sometimes I have to mail it in. I clean up dinner, let them play. Interrupt the cleaning and play to help them make peace with one another. Vacuum. Charge the vacuum. Read them books during bath to get two things done at once. Sing. Get them in their pyjamas. Put away laundry while they chase each other around their bedroom.

9:10 p.m.

Early to bed. Thinking again how do I soften when that itself seems like another task, another thing to be?

Writing this now, there is a necessary softness that comes from being with children—singing (!!!), tending, removing worry momentarily, being an example of calm.

I guess I am focusing on softness because I’ve seen a lot of hard things happening. I’ve seen friends harden in response to their lives. Hardening is sometimes necessary, maybe a means to a softer end, but hard can’t be the end. No one is comfortable or growing when hardened.

I’ve just finished Sheila Heti’s Motherhood and was struck by much of it, but this quote in particular:

I think I value softness. Because I also value—and require—openness…

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