Write More, Be Less Careful

Home
good creatures
intentions
sparks
tending
Archive
About
how to start with a dress and end with a poem
poet Karen Rigby on using art, from paintings to figure skating and fashion, to inspire the poems in her new book FABULOSA
 • 
Nancy Reddy
"I’ve had to fight for this time but also accept that what’s possible shifts from season to season."
poet and professor Bronwen Tate on the "beautiful exhaustion" of life with small children and how her daughter's artwork reminds her that "ideas come in…
 • 
Nancy Reddy
7
"my kids are expanding my sense of possibility for how to be in the universe, and that can only be good for my writing."
writers Alyse Knorr and Kate Partridge on the wonder and boredom of little kids, and why their "unsexy" plan for dividing time is actually the key to…
 • 
Nancy Reddy

June 2024

3 questions for the center of the year
reflecting on the year so far in writing and strategies for writing through the fractured time of summer, plus discount codes for the Writing Co-Lab's…
 • 
Nancy Reddy
8
"Taking care of my child has unequivocally made me a better, more deeply feeling and acutely perceiving person."
BRUTALITIES author Margo Steines on leaving the house to switch into her creative brain and becoming more ambitious in her career since becoming a…
 • 
Nancy Reddy
5
"you need less time to write a book than you think"
novelist Katharine Schellman on planning and setting the bar low as a way to get a ton of writing done
 • 
Nancy Reddy
30
"Caregiving has completely quieted the angsty existential questions I had in my 20s."
Catherine Newman, author of SANDWICH and WE ALL WANT IMPOSSIBLE THINGS, on the model of "utter graciousness" her mother provided and collecting tidbits…
 • 
Nancy Reddy
 and 
Catherine Newman
7
"writing this book has made me a better parent, because I have had to really think hard about issues that were pretty invisible to me…
BOYMOM author Ruth Whippman, on how the "weirdly freeing" "loss of selfhood" she experienced in motherhood helped her become a writer
 • 
Nancy Reddy
 and 
Ruth Whippman
12
“The Way to Keep Going in Antarctica”: How to Maintain a Lifelong Writing Practice
Sara Lippman of the Writing Co-Lab on "candid strategies for perseverance"
 • 
Nancy Reddy
8
"becoming a mother not only provided me with the gift of having something to say, but the confidence to share my words with others."
memoirist Barrie Miskin on how motherhood gave her both a story she needed to tell and the confidence she needed to become a writer
 • 
Nancy Reddy
3

May 2024

"Caregiving forces you to look away, to look up and out, to understand that nothing we do is in isolation."
The Leaving Season author Kelly McMasters on the classroom as a space of creativity, the first person to give her a journal, and a perfect writing…
 • 
Nancy Reddy
 and 
Kelly McMasters
4
"intense tight-knit communities become this testing ground against which people are able to find out who they really are and who they are…
Housemates author Emma Copley Eisenberg on writing "housemates and roommates and strange uncategorizable friendships and mentorships," plus a writing…
 • 
Nancy Reddy
2
© 2024 Nancy Reddy
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start WritingGet the app
Substack is the home for great culture