Instead, she started the workshop by saying we didn’t know each other well enough to critique anything, so our discussion would just be focused on what we liked.

Full disclosure, I was annoyed. This was my one chance to have Sharon Olds read one of my poems, and instead of telling me how to fix it, she’d just say what she liked??

I’ve since become persuaded that Sharon Olds was right.1 I’ve come to think of this, in my teaching, as a pedagogy of liking. Whether it’s first year students in a composition class, juniors and seniors in creative nonfiction, or adults in a community workshop2, I emphasize that what we’re doing together is largely finding what works and offering possibilities for the writer to keep going.

Once I started thinking about this in terms of liking, I could find a bunch of examples of times when what helped me most in my writing was someone telling me what they liked, or, to be a little more craft-oriented, what was working. Here’s a notable one: when I was getting started on my doctoral exams, which consisted of a set of take-home essays written after reading 150+ books and articles, I excitedly sent my advisor the first six pages of a draft. He circled the last paragraph and essentially said, yes! start here! He could have critiqued the opening 5 1/2 pages and told me why what I was doing was wrong or reductive or just boring, but instead, he saved us both a lot of agony and found the part that was interesting. That single paragraph lit the way for the rest of the essay.

Liking is, in some ways, more rigorous than critique. There’s a reason it’s a cliche of the first-year grad student to start labeling everything “problematic” or “fraught.” A take-down is easy. Finding what you like, and saying why, can be surprisingly hard. This is true if you’re faced with six pages of earnest but anxious grad student writing, it’s true when you’re reading drafts in a writing group, and it’s especially true on the internet.

Liking feels especially important now. The world is so dark, and I’ve been feeling truly underwater with everything from the war in Iran to some really difficult funding challenges in our local school district. When I log on to substack or instagram, it’s easy to give my attention to the things that irritate or baffle me (if I see one more take about “broken families” or why the menstrual cycle means women are inherently broken, my goodness). But that’s the thing, right? I log on because I’m feeling a little bad/bored/listless, click on the things that draw my eye, and before I know it, I’m feeling worse. And I’ve taught the algorithm that that’s the content I want, so I keep getting more of it.

Listen, I love to complain3, I love to gossip, I love to talk shit. But especially now, I’m realizing that what I actually need is to find the things I like and put my energy there.

three prompts to practice liking:

• Go back to a favorite piece of writing and figure out what you like about it. What’s happening in it, in terms of craft, that you admire? (This could be anything from a super granular verb choice to the overall structure of the piece.) Once you’ve figured out what you love, use that to craft a prompt for your own writing.

• Flip through your own drafts and find something you like. It’s easy for lots of us to skip straight to what’s not working—but finding what you like is probably going to do a lot more to help you keep going. Highlight or star or put a heart next to the parts you like. Then, if you want, use one of those parts as the opening for a new piece. Or stitch those pieces together and see what happens.

• The next time you’re scrolling social media, look for what you like—the things that are funny, smart, happy-making—and comment or share that.

I’d love to know: what are you liking lately?

Leave a comment

things I like: poems

over on instagram, I’ve been sharing some poems I like, along with related prompts, like this gorgeous poem about my favorite flower

more good things

put up a billboard in Philly and WHYY (our local NPR station) did a great story on it

this piece by about fighting for tiny snippets of not-perfect time to write

Jumping the Shark with Elaine Gregersen

Why writing on your phone isn’t a compromise - it’s survival

My podcast app is full of writing shows hosted by busy women. This is the way I like it. Because I am a busy woman…

Read more

7 days ago · 5 likes · Elaine Gregersen

if you want to carve out some time to write this week, join the Ass in Chair collective tomorrow (Monday, April 20) at noon eastern for a free hour of writing in community

Be Where You Are

⚡FREE Ass in Chair: Mon, April 20th ⚡

Hi friends…

Read more

5 days ago · 1 like · Emily Mohn-Slate and Erinn Batykefer

If this newsletter has helped you in your creative life, you can support me by becoming a paid subscriber or by ordering my new book, The Good Mother Myth.

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Today we’re featuring , whose wonderful book Little Apocalypses: Essays on Motherhood, Climate Change, and Hope at the End of the World, will be out April 14. Below, Kaitlyn describes the writing and revision process that’s helped her intertwine research alongside personal narrative—and she offers a ton of great prompts, exercises, and resources that you can use in your own writing.

I tend to be a fast reader, but I’ve been really savoring Kaitlyn Teer’s Little Apocalypses—one essay, or a section of an essay, each morning with my coffee as I start my day. I took it with me on a ski trip to Vermont this February where, for the second time this winter, my family and I got snowed in. We’ve had a dramatic winter this year on the east coast, and Kaitlyn’s essays, which are so attuned to both caregiving and the cycles of the natural world, have been a great companion through this season. Writing on climate change can be so heavy—but Kaitlyn’s essays infuse tenderness and hope alongside deep research. If you’re raising kids and thinking about the world you’re giving them (aren’t we all), I think you’ll find a lot of wonder and comfort in her writing.

one question for Kaitlyn

One thing I especially admire about your writing is how the essays move so elegantly between these tenderly observed scenes with your kids and this deep research from thinkers about climate change and environmental studies. I’m thinking especially of “World Without End,” where you move between research with climate scientists and activists, evangelical ideas about the apocalypse, and your own attempts to address your kids’ fears about the changing climate and what it means for their future. (There’s also a great nod to Octonauts, a favorite from when my kids were little!) It feels so seamless, and the pieces feel deeply connected, but I know from my own writing how much work creating that kind of effortless structure can be. What strategies or what process have you used to craft that aspect of your essays?

Kaitlyn

That’s SO nice, Nancy! Thank you for this lovely question. Here’s my answer…

For me, an essay’s structure is often the aspect that’s least predictable. I start with a hunch that several threads — whether personal narrative, cultural criticism, historical context, or scientific research — are somehow connected, but usually I don’t know how they will come together until later in the writing process. Much of it comes down to intuition — I like to experiment with an essay’s section breaks in much the same way I imagine poets experiment with line breaks — but there are also several key revision strategies I used to structure the essays in my book, especially when bringing together personal and researched material in a manner that feels tightly knit.

For example, in an essay called “Watching the Clock,” I began by observing my daughter’s efforts to tell time. At first, she referred to everything that happened in the past as “yesterday.” (It was so cute!) Once she learned to read the numbers on the clock, she began to ask me if we were on time. Like many working mothers, I was grappling with various forms of time pressure in my day to day life. Meanwhile, I was also thinking carefully about the Climate Clock and how difficult it is to communicate urgency without implying that it’s too late to take action. While drafting, I started to trace the connections between these threads, but the essay didn’t yet have a structure. Like a collage artist, I was still arranging and rearranging fragments.

Often an essay’s final shape emerges only after I’ve identified a unifying concept or image. In this case, what really unlocked this essay’s structure was when I encountered geologist Marcia Bjornerud’s argument in Timefulness for adopting a “polytemporal worldview.” It’s helpful, she says, to hold in mind the various rates of change that take place on our planet — some fast, some slow — especially when thinking about the climate crisis. As a parent, something about that idea instinctively clicked for me. I’d often heard it said of early motherhood that “the days are long, but the years are short” and that it’s “the longest, shortest time.” Becoming a parent had altered my relationship to time — and that realization brought clarity to how I organized the essay.

Paging through the book’s essays, I’d say that many take the shape of a spiral, in that readers are invited more deeply into the heart of an idea every time a particular thread comes back around and, at the same time, the connections between the various threads become ever more tightly wound around a single point.

Once an essay’s structure is settled, the challenge remains, how to incorporate research — especially when working with several disparate threads of it — without losing a reader’s interest? As a reader of nonfiction, I myself have sometimes felt the pull to skim over researched material, despite appreciating its value, in favor of following a particularly compelling throughline of personal narrative. Although I’ve written lyric essays in segmented, enumerated, and braided forms, for this book, I knew that I wanted the research to feel fully integrated, which called for using all the elements of narrative to present it to readers.

My best advice for blending personal narrative with researched material is to keep in mind that it isn’t necessary to pause the story in order to include a quote or a statistic. Instead of thinking of research as an intermission, like a public service announcement that appears during a commercial break, I try as much as possible to think of it as part of the story itself.

It helps to consider how I would tell friends at a dinner party about something I read recently. How would I set up the material in a way that holds their attention and helps them see why I care about it? The answer is usually some form of storytelling.

In “Watching the Clock,” I tell the story of how I came to pick up Bjornerud’s book. What happened is that, during bedtime one night, my daughter asked me, “Where do rocks come from?” The next day, to answer her question, we searched our library catalog for picture books about rocks, which led me to Bjornerud.

In revision, I look for opportunities to narrativize my research. Sometimes that means narrating my experience of doing the dishes or pushing the stroller while listening to a podcast that offers a surprising flash of insight. Or it might mean including information from the books I’m reading with my children as well as their questions or comments about it.

It can also mean using sensory details to describe my reaction to a piece of research. For example, in an essay on maternal activism, which appears much later in the book, I share findings from the World Meteorological Organization’s “State of the Global Climate” report. But I set the scene by describing what it feels like to read that report in my kitchen while my kids play in the backyard: “Reading through a report like this one, while watching out the window as my children pour out sand in our backyard sandbox, letting the grains run through their grubby fingers…”

Here, I’m looking up from my reading to all the life that surrounds me — I’m not just a disembodied brain taking in information — and it’s where I find imagery that carries the essay forward and out of the researched passage. In this context, my children playing at our backyard sandbox calls to mind the grains of sand that pour through an hourglass, marking the passage of time and underscoring the urgency of taking action.

I’ve found that the juxtaposition between my research and my life is often a fruitful one. Ideally, the research shows how my thinking on a topic has changed or offers context or concepts through which I can make sense of my experiences. I feel that I’ve done my job well if the researched material is as compelling and readable as the personal narrative.

if you’d like to try it out . . .

PROMPTS:

1. Make a list: If you’ve read or listened to something interesting lately, try making a quick list or bubble map in your notebook of as many connections as you can think of between this researched material and your life. For example, in an essay called “Little Things,” I write about what happened when I reread Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, the landmark book about insecticides that led to the creation of the EPA, while my daughter was enrolled at an outdoor summer camp about incredible insects. Next, review what you’ve come up with and make a list of possible scenes you could write.

2. Set the scene: If you’re revising a passage of researched material, try writing several sentences that offer setting and context for your engagement with this information. Where were you, in time and space, when you first encountered it? Where else have you interacted with it? Did you continue thinking about it while you were doing something else, say weeding your garden or playing on the floor with your kids? Did a friend loan you the book or send you a link to the article? If you went looking for this material, why and how did you seek it out? Try to use as much detail as you can to tell the story of how you came to interact with this information.

3. Embodied reaction: Finally, in revision, it can be helpful to look for opportunities to add one or two sentences of reaction after presenting a quote or statistic. Of course, you can share how that piece of information affects your thinking, leading to new questions or connections. But I try especially to include moments of embodied and affective response. It’s not just showing how research makes me think, but also showing how it makes me feel. How does this information land in my body? How has it changed me, as a whole person?

EXERCISE:

1. Drafting: Set aside some time to read or listen to whatever material you’re planning to cite. Then, get up and immediately take a walk without interruptions (no headphones! no children! no multitasking!). When you return to your desk, spend five minutes quickly jotting down whatever questions, reactions, and connections came to mind. Alternatively, if you write about parenting, why not bring your kids? They may just lead you down the sidewalk and into a flash of insight.

2. Revision: One strategy I rely on in order to tighten things up in revision, is to revisit each section break and look for opportunities to create resonance between the final sentence of one section and the first sentence of the next, usually by pulling forward an image or key word.

RESOURCES:

I had the good fortune of studying with Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola during my MFA program. Together, they wrote Tell It Slant, an indispensable book on the craft of writing creative nonfiction. A prolific lyric essayist, Brenda coined the term “hermit crab essay” and has done much to advance experimental forms like the braided essay. For sentence craft, I always recommend Priscilla Long’s The Writer’s Portable Mentor. As a prose writer who loves poetry, I’ve learned so much from Priscilla’s book about working with language and developing an ear for its sonic qualities. Finally, two books that explore the possibilities of narrative shape and structure are Meander, Spiral, Explode by Jane Alison, which is focused on fiction but I believe is useful for nonfiction writers as well, and the Shapes of Native Nonfiction anthology, which beautifully compares the craft of structuring of essays to the traditional art of basket weaving.

You can find more of Kaitlyn’s writing on Instagram and Substack. She is the senior editor for Cup of Jo’s weekly newsletter, Big Salad, where she has interviewed writers like Roxane Gay, Barbara Kingsolver, Catherine Newman, and Aimee Nezhukumatathil. She has taught writing at Western Washington University and lives in Bellingham, Washington, with her husband and two kids.

Kaitlyn’s hosting several events for her book, and you can find the whole list here. She’s launching her book on April 22 at Village Books in Bellingham, Washington, where she’ll be joined by culture writer Anne Helen Petersen. And, if you’re in New York, you can see her in conversation with Joanna Goddard at Park Slope’s Community Bookstore on April 30.

Kaitlyn writes the newsletter Oh, Good, and you can subscribe right here:

Oh, Good

A love letter to curiosity. Essays on books and culture, ecology and nature, creativity and care.

By Kaitlyn Teer

more interviews on structure and research in nonfiction

If you loved Kaitlyn’s interview, I bet these writers would be right up your alley, too!

If this newsletter has helped you in your creative life, you can support me by becoming a paid subscriber or by ordering my new book, The Good Mother Myth.

Subscribe now

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Be Less Careful: A Writing & Vision Boarding Workshop

Wednesday, April 8th, 5:30-8pm, at a private home in the Philadelphia area

A quick note before we dive in! If you’re in the south Jersey/Philadelphia area, I’d love to invite you to join me for a workshop I’ll be leading at the Emet Room next Wednesday, April 8. If you’ve been inspired by the call to Be Less Careful, or if you’ve joined one of our vision board parties, this gathering is for you.

Click through for all the information about how to register. (But be speedy! Registration closes April 3rd.)

🎉 let's BE LESS CAREFUL irl!! 🎉

Today’s interview is with Bobby Elliott, whose debut poetry collection, The Same Man, won the Agnes Lynch Starrett and was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. I met Bobby when he sent a lovely email (not AI! not a scam! such a delight!) to Emily Perez and me about The Long Devotion, our anthology about motherhood, because he’s been dreaming up an anthology of poems about fatherhood.

The Same Man is a testament to the beauty and power of writing about fatherhood—there’s such tenderness and care in this collection. One favorite poem, “Before Anyone Knew,” addresses the speaker’s toddler son and reflects on

that brief period of time
when you were a secret

and only ours to envision

and ends with a sweet surprise that I won’t spoil—you can click through and read the whole poem yourself!

Below, we talk about rising early to write, the poet-mentors who showed him the way to integrating caregiving and writing, and why Bobby “couldn’t have written The Same Man without becoming a father.”

Who do you care for?

Our two sons: Jamie, who’s now five years old, and Peter, who’s two.

What kind of creative work do you do?

I almost exclusively write poems. I’ve begun to dip my toes back into some essay writing — an essay of mine just appeared in Adroit — but poetry has always been what I’ve wanted to spend my life devoted to. I don’t see that ever changing.

What are some ways care-giving fosters creativity and vice versa?

Parenthood — and care-giving in particular — has been a flood subject for me. And while, yes, it sometimes keeps me from my desk, it gives me so much to work with when I am able to sit down and write. I couldn’t have written The Same Man without becoming a father.

When it comes to how my creative life fosters my life as a care-giver, it certainly makes me more attuned to the experience of being a parent in all its complexities — the joys, the agonies, everything in between. Writing also reminds me of who I am at my core and helps me re-enter the work of care-giving with a deeper sense of selfhood, compassion and connection. At its best, it makes me more vulnerable, which is something I find myself striving toward more and more — both on the page and as a father to two young boys.

What’s an adjustment you’ve had to make to your creative process, and an adjustment you refuse to make?

When I became a father, I knew that I didn’t want my creative life to come at the expense of my family and that I had to keep writing. For me, that’s meant waking up before everyone else in my house — I’m usually at my desk a little after 5, sometimes even earlier these days — and being willing to set my work down as soon as I hear footsteps in the hall.

For the most part, that’s been enough to get me through and while I do pine for more writing time, I’m usually able to carve it out in the in-between spaces and times: walking our dog, waiting to pick up groceries, driving home. And there’s nothing like having a poem-in-progress to wake up early to. It might be my favorite feeling on earth, regardless of how tired I am later on in the day.

Who provided a model for you in terms of combining caregiving and creativity?

This makes me think of The Long Devotion, the anthology you co-edited with Emily Pérez. It’s been an inspiration for me and something I’ve returned to when I’ve needed a reminder of what it takes to forge a rich (and resilient) life as both a parent and poet.

Your question also makes me think of some of my all-time favorite poems (Terrance Hayes’ “The Same City,” Li-Young Lee’s “A Final Thing,” Lucille Clifton’s “the lost baby poem”) as well as two people who’ve served as abiding role models over the years: Lisa Russ Spaar and Rita Dove.

I studied with Lisa and Rita at the University of Virginia at a time in my life when I was thinking (and dreaming) ahead to parenthood and wondering how I’d sustain a writing practice with diapers to change and laundry to fold. Both Lisa and Rita were so generous as I asked those questions and instilled in me a strong sense that writing and parenthood could absolutely co-exist. And they’ve been right — I drafted plenty of poems from The Same Man as Jamie (and then Peter) slept in my arms and sometimes think our physical closeness is what unlocked those poems, that book.

What are some creative milestones you’re looking forward to? Or ones you “missed” due to the both/and aspects of your life?

At this moment in my life, I feel grateful for where I’ve been and honestly don’t think I’ve missed out on much. I’ve had to turn down a few opportunities, including residencies, but those have never felt like major losses. They would have been nice, sure, but not necessary to do my work.

What I am looking forward to, though, is getting to a place with the next book where it feels like it has real momentum behind it. The transition from a debut to a sophomore collection is big and I’m yearning to feel like I’m knee-deep in new poems and in the throes of that whole process again. When I get there, I’m guessing it’ll feel like a significant, and exciting, milestone.

What advice would you give someone who has a creative practice and is embarking on becoming a caregiver?

To refuse to relinquish it.

When I look back on it, I became a father at a time when I was beginning to feel plenty of doubt about whether I’d ever have a book in the world. We’d just moved back to Portland (which is where my wife grew up and where we first met) and I was gradually coming to recognize that my graduate school thesis just wasn’t a book. So, I went back to the drawing board and wrote a new book of poems from scratch. It was humbling — and scary — but it’s something I knew I had to see through, regardless of how little sleep I was getting or how daunting it all felt.

Everyone’s journey is different, but I knew that if I stopped writing, I’d never forgive myself. My father gave up painting when he was 19 — and never found another creative outlet — so I’ve been adamant about protecting my own creative practice. Part of that is for me, of course, but part of that is also for my sons — I want them to grow up seeing me do what I love most so that it plants a seed for them to discover something in their own lives to protect and foster, to build a life around.

Bobby Elliott is an award-winning poet and teacher. His debut collection of poems, The Same Man, was selected by Nate Marshall as the winner of the 2025 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize and was recently published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Raised in New York City, he earned his B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and his M.F.A. from the University of Virginia, where he was a Poe/Faulkner Fellow. His writing has appeared in Adroit, BOMB, Poet Lore, Poetry Northwest and elsewhere. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife and sons.

All proceeds from the sales of Bobby’s debut collection of poems, The Same Man, are being donated to World Central Kitchen. If you’re interested in picking up a copy, it can be purchased through a wide range of booksellers, including the University of Pittsburgh Press, bookshop.org, Powell’s and your neighborhood bookstore. Visit Bobby’s website to keep up with everything he’s up to in the coming months and feel free to reach out to him directly at bobby.b.elliott@gmail.com.

You can find Bobby on instagram at @bobbyelliottpoet

If this newsletter has helped you in your creative life, you can support me by becoming a paid subscriber or by ordering my new book, The Good Mother Myth.

Subscribe now

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I posted something on instagram the other day about how March is the October of spring semester, where every week you tell yourself “I’ll just get through this week, then things calm down” and instead it just . . . doesn’t? and got a tidal wave of responses, so I think lots of us are feeling that now.

In the interest of my own New Year’s imperative (thank you, !) to act fast I thought I’d do a quick note today, with a couple of suggestions of ways to keep the writing part of your brain alive if you, too, are in a moment where you’re struggling to find time to actually get your butt in the chair and write.

an incomplete but hopefully encouraging list of things that definitely count as writing

✨ taking a long-ish shower and having one (1) thought related to a writing project

✨ going for a walk and feeling your brain unclench a little

✨ reading a book* that reminds you what writing can do

✨ talking to a friend about what you’re working on or where you’re stuck or what you’re excited about

✨ listening to a podcast or a reading** while you drive to work/chorus carpool/wherever else your day takes you

✨ scribbling on an index card/in your notes app/on a receipt, or recording a voice memo when you have an idea you want to come back to

What else? What do you do to sustain your writer-self when there’s just too much happening?

Leave a comment

*I’ve been reading two great books lately, ’s Little Apocalypses and ’s I Would Die If I Were You. More on both soon!

**When I used to drive in Houston traffic a lot, I got into the habit of listening to a Robert Hass reading from Berkeley’s Lunch Poems series; I think it’s this one, if you’re in the market for a poetry reading. It was wonderfully soothing.

🌟 more on time, from the archives 🌟

🌟 elsewhere on the internet 🌟

I’ve been experimenting with sharing some writing process and craft tips in carousels on instagram; most recently, three big ideas from the weeklong memoir workshop I taught in Florida last week:

If this newsletter has helped you in your creative life, you can support me by becoming a paid subscriber or by ordering my new book, The Good Mother Myth.

Subscribe now

💛💙 buy The Good Mother Myth 💙💛

Hello there! Welcome to Be Less Careful. This is a good creatures interview, a series that explores the intersection of caregiving and creative practice. If you know (or are!) a good creature whose work we should feature, send me an email—you can just reply to this newsletter.

Today’s interview is with Rebekah Hewitt, whose new book of poetry, Creature in Bloom, is out next month. If you’re a fan of this series, I think you’ll love her book, which examines pregnancy, childbirth, and the ongoing anxiety and joy of parenting. Poet (and friend of the newsletter) Cynthia Marie Hoffman describes Rebekah’s book like this:

These multifaceted, fierce, and tender revelations on pregnancy--a ‘baby extracted / like a bad tooth,’ a ‘little unicorn soul’--and on mothering in a world marked by loss and gun violence cement Hewitt’s arrival as a captivating, self-aware poet.

Given the renewed breastfeeding vs formula chatter recently, I also wanted to share Rebekah’s incredibly smart essay about breastfeeding and the cultural weight of expectations we bring to early motherhood, Imagine a River of Milk, originally published in The Rumpus.

Below, we talk about how the compressed time of parenthood gave Rebekah’s writing urgency, the mother-writers who opened the door for her own writing, and the writing groups that give her accountability and community.

Who do you care for?

I have four kids, two in middle school and two in elementary, a husband, a rowdy dog, and aging parents who occasionally need help.

What kind of creative work do you do?

I’m a poet. Sometimes I try my hand at essays/hybrid forms. I’ve also just started working on a project for kids.

What are some ways care-giving fosters creativity and vice versa?

Having kids really changed my relationship to time (as it does!), and I suddenly couldn’t put off writing. I have always been a procrastinator, but having children meant that I suddenly only had certain windows of time to work with. For me, this helped eliminate staring at a blank page or computer screen. I’d often jot down notes on my phone or in a notebook throughout the day and then have ideas to come back to or poems that were already started by the time I found an hour to write during nap time or after the kids went to bed. I think caregiving puts an urgency around writing—there simply isn’t time to say, “I’ll do it later.” You have to have an idea of when you’ll get some work done, and you have to be ready to step into that work, even if the laundry isn’t done and the sink is full of dishes.

more good creatures, on how having kids gave their writing life urgency

Who provided a model for you in terms of combining caregiving and creativity?

When I was pregnant with my first baby, I started reading Rachel Zucker’s Museum of Accidents. Before that time I had been going to a poetry workshop in Chicago called “Poetry from the Outside,” that focused on The Objectivist poets and writing poems that were inspired by things outside the self. Writing from the perspective of the “I” was discouraged. I was still trying to write that way when I discovered Rachel’s work. I was amazed by the way she wrote about motherhood. I wasn’t even a mother yet, but the ferocity, ambivalence, and vulnerability of her work gave me so much permission to write whatever I needed to write. Her work opened the door for me to find other poets who were writing about motherhood (Beth Ann Fennely, Sharon Olds, Lucille Clifton–there are so many!). The mother-writers I read about in college writing courses were Plath and Sexton, who, fascinating as they are, are not exactly great role models. Knowing that there are a whole host of mother poets writing about the complexities of the body, childbirth, and parenting has made it feel possible and worthwhile to keep writing myself.

What are some creative milestones you’re looking forward to? Or ones you “missed” due to the both/and aspects of your life?

My first book, Creature in Bloom, is coming out in March, 2026! I’m in my 40s, and while I’ve been a writer for a long time, I often feel like I’m “behind,” when it comes to publishing, or that I’ve done everything out of order. I pursued my MFA at UW-Madison when I was in my mid-30s and already had three kids. I had a surprise pregnancy with my fourth during the MFA, which became the inspiration for my book. It sounds cliché, but I try to keep in mind that all of us are on our own journeys trying to figure this stuff out. It doesn’t have to look a certain way. When I was working on the poems for Creature in Bloom and having a lot of conversations about pregnancy and childbirth, I found that so many people have complicated or untold stories–unexpected pregnancies, infertility, pregnancy loss, fraught decisions around family life. Things may look neat and tidy on the outside, but I don’t believe that’s the reality for many people. Keeping that in mind has helped me give myself grace when I compare my accomplishments to someone else’s.

ed. note: Rebekah wrote a great essay about earning her MFA and balancing grad school with parenting in her newsletter, here:

The Broadax

MFA...with kids.

In the summer of 2017, my husband and I loaded up a giant Penske truck in North Carolina and drove across the country with our three small children (ages 5, 3, and 16 months.) so that I could start an MFA program in poetry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I had gotten into the program, I had visited for their prospective student weekend, but I wa…

Read more

9 months ago · 6 likes · 3 comments · Rebekah Denison Hewitt

How do you balance creative practice with care-giving?

Does balance even exist? I’m not a daily writer. For me, balance looks like leaning into different areas at different times. Sometimes family or work or even rest need to take priority. I believe it’s okay to have seasons where you aren’t writing a whole lot. But I do have to be mindful not to put writing on the backburner for too long, because it’s easy for it to get crowded out. Being part of a writing group is a big help–it gives me a layer of accountability and a deadline to have something to share. Having some loose structure around my writing life keeps me anchored when life feels extra busy.

What advice would you give someone who is a caregiver that wants to start a creative practice?

I’m a big fan of taking classes, either locally or online. External deadlines, encouragement from other writers, and putting a little skin in the game can be very helpful when trying to kick start new work or to take yourself seriously. Your creative work is important, and it’s worthwhile to invest in that. While writing itself is a solitary act, being in community is essential. Find ways to connect with other writers–that will help you keep going when it’s tough.

Rebekah Denison Hewitt is a poet, educator, and librarian. She earned an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is the author of the poetry collection Creature in Bloom (University of Wisconsin Press). Her work has appeared in journals such as Narrative, Poetry Northwest, and The Rumpus. She lives in Wisconsin with her family. You can find Rebekah on instagram at @rebekah.hewitt and on facebook at @RebekahDenisonHewitt. You can also subscribe to her newsletter The Broadax:

The Broadax

writing about maintaining a creative practice in the midst of caretaking and day jobs, wondering how friendship can sustain us. Author of the poetry collection, Creature in Bloom (2026), mom of four, and school librarian.

By Rebekah Denison Hewitt

Rebekah’s book, Creature in Bloom, is available for pre-order. If you’re at AWP, you can catch her reading at the Baltimore Museum of Industry and signing books at the University of Wisconsin Press table. She also has upcoming readings in Madison and Milwaukee. You can find out more at her website. She’d love to hear from you!

🌟 let’s write together this weekend! or hang out in Baltimore next week! 🌟

AWP is coming! Writers happy hour Wednesday, March 4 at 4pm at Pratt Street Ale House!

If you’re coming to AWP 2026 in Baltimore, I’d love for you to join me and Angela and Danielle, the women behind the fantastic Book Drop MKE reading series, for a writers happy hour on to kick off the conference. We’ll be at Pratt Street Ale House, right cross from the Convention Center starting at 4pm on Wednesday, March 4. We’ll buy the apps, you bring your best book gossip, conference outfits, and/or panel picks.

RSVP here by March 3rd so we know you’re coming!

Finding the Plot in Memoir, a zoom workshop

On Saturday, February 28th from 1-4pm eastern on zoom, I’ll be teaching a workshop, Finding the Plot in Memoir, through Rutgers-Camden’s Writers House, and I’d love for you to join us! This workshop draws on the strategies I used to write The Good Mother Myth, which I wrote about for Literary Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter.

Get all the info and sign up here.

If this newsletter has helped you in your creative life, you can support me by becoming a paid subscriber or by ordering my new book, The Good Mother Myth.

Subscribe now

💛💙 buy The Good Mother Myth 💙💛

✨ three quick notes before we dive in ✨

AWP is coming! Writers happy hour Wednesday, March 4 at 4pm at Pratt Street Ale House!

If you’re coming to AWP 2026 in Baltimore, I’d love for you to join me and Angela and Danielle, the women behind the fantastic Book Drop MKE reading series, for a writers happy hour on to kick off the confernce. We’ll be at Pratt Street Ale House, right cross from the Convention Center starting at 4pm on Wednesday, March 4. We’ll buy the apps, you bring your best book gossip, conference outfits, and/or panel picks.

RSVP here by March 3rd so we know you’re coming!

Finding the Plot in Memoir, a zoom workshop

On Saturday, February 28th from 1-4pm eastern on zoom, I’ll be teaching a workshop, Finding the Plot in Memoir, through Rutgers-Camden’s Writers House, and I’d love for you to join us! This workshop draws on the strategies I used to write The Good Mother Myth, which I wrote about for Literary Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter.

Get all the info and sign up here.

Writing Past What You Know: Creative Strategies for Memoir, a weeklong writing workshop at the dreamy Atlantic Center for the Arts

We’re told to “write what you know”—but what happens when there are gaps in our memories, absences in family history or disagreements about what really happened? In this weeklong memoir workshop, we’ll practice writing what we don’t or can’t know. Experimenting with innovative methods for creative research will allow us to add details that enrich our memories, deepen scenes, expand our characterization and improve our imagery as we build an engrossing world for readers.

This workshop is at Murphy Writing’s Getaway to Write—Florida, at the beautiful Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, FL. Read more and register here.

Today’s interview is with Elline Lipkin, whose new book Girl in a Forest is out now. As you’ll read below, the book was sparked by reading bedtime stories with her son amidst the griefs of the pandemic — both public and personal. I especially appreciated Elline’s observation that caregiving can spark creative work, and help us see stories we’d already loved in a new light. Below, we talk about the struggle to make space for creative work and “fill the well,” and how Elline’s two writing groups have created the accountability and support to sustain her writing practice.

Who do you care for?

I care for my son, age 14, my spouse, and myself, (not necessarily in that order). I also do what elder caretaking I can for my Dad who lives across the country by checking in multiple times per week and flying out to visit as often as I can. Since we lost our home in Altadena in the Eaton Fire (in 2025) I have a sense of caring for the lot where our home stood, working to remediate the soil and to restore the land. I have a renewed sense of caring for the community of Altadena, where I lived for 13 years, as we individually and collectively recover from the devastation of this urban fire. I served as Altadena’s Poet Laureate for two years and have led community workshops and participated in multiple community readings about the fire, healing, and what ‘home’ means.

What kind of creative work do you do?

I think of myself as a poet first, but I also write nonfiction, occasional journalism, some critical work, and masquerade as an academic now and then.

What’s changed in your creative life since becoming a caregiver?

I want to say everything! One of the chief effects of having a child was no longer having the calm and ease to sink into uninterrupted hours of reading, writing, and thinking. Instead, I worked in the circumscribed hours I had a babysitter, and eventually my son’s school hours. If I couldn’t jump into my work immediately, I would feel badly I wasn’t maximizing my time. It also felt like a struggle to balance paying for childcare when I knew that the creative work I was doing wasn’t remunerative, though vitally important in other ways. As a night owl, I would get a burst of writing energy after my son went to sleep (and I thoroughly understand the concept of ‘revenge bedtime procrastination’). Yet, having a young child who woke early made those early years a sleep-deprived haze.

I find there are times I need to just sit in silence and be alone — “filling the well” as my professor Ed Hirsch used to say. That’s still hard to come by now although my child is older, in part since we’re displaced as a ‘fire survivor’ family and have moved among various rentals. It will be awhile before we’re back in a more permanent home and I have some semblance of a dedicated writing space again.

What’s an adjustment you’ve had to make to your creative process, and an adjustment you refuse to make?

Stopping and starting a lot. Literally getting up mid-sentence when I heard a cry from another room. Writing furtively or furiously in my notes app, in a notebook I’m always carrying around, or on the backs of school flyers, trusting that I’ll transfer the ideas in these scraps or literal margins to more centralized places and the impetus within these jottings will still come through. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t. The ‘writing in the snatched moments’ trope of the artist-mother sometimes gets to me. I do it — absolutely — capturing ideas while in the car line, scribbling thoughts on programs during events. But the way squeezing creative work around other obligations is valorized bothers me. I think it’s important to claim time and show that writing has value by letting one’s family know it’s a priority. I do this in various ways — holding sacred the times I meet with my local writing groups, letting my child know what literary obligations I’m upholding, prioritizing attending evening readings and other acts of literary citizenship.

Who provided a model for you in terms of combining caregiving and creativity?

One person who springs to mind is Eavan Boland, who I met at various points in both of my graduate school programs. When she picked my first book, The Errant Thread for the Kore Press First Book Award I couldn’t have been more thrilled. Her poems which include writing about her life as a mother, the setting of the suburbs where she raised her daughters (in Ireland), and her awareness as a daughter observing her own artist mother, made a deep impression on me. Her beautiful details about caretaking her young children and then teens, within her poems and in her critical work, alongside her refusal to deny her identity as a parent within her professional life, offered the kind of moment something crystallizes you couldn’t have named but needed.

Is there something specific you do to jumpstart creativity?

Meeting with my two writing workshops has been the best way to keep myself accountable with creative work. When my son was a toddler, a poetry acquaintance started a local writing workshop and invited me to join. We have now been meeting for about ten years and about five years ago I joined a second local workshop group. I never want to show up without a new poem, and the support of being with other poets has been deeply buoying. We have read together at local literary festivals, cheered on each other’s projects, and always offered honest feedback. When I joined both groups I was the only member with a young child (still am) and as a result could never host our evening meetups, but staying committed to these groups has meant I hold sacred one night per month to share creative work which bolsters a source of commitment and community.

What are some creative milestones you’re looking forward to? Or ones you “missed” due to the both/and aspects of your life?

I am looking forward to attending this year’s Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference (AWP) coming up fast the first week of March in Baltimore. I’ll be presenting on Friday morning (3/6) at 9:00 on a panel about writing from fairy tales entitled, “Words from the Deep, Dark Woods: Using Fairy Tales as Foil & Fuse.” I will also be signing my newest book, Girl in a Forest at the Trio House Press booth on Friday at noon. It’s also always great to have a hotel room to myself for a few nights! One thing I’ve missed is going to residencies, which I used to do every few years before I had a child. So many only offer one-month stays and I just can’t take that much time away from my family. I wish more places offered shorter residencies — even a long weekend of focused time can be a huge gain.

What are some ways care-giving fosters creativity and vice versa?

The genesis of my recent book, Girl in a Forest, is an example of how a creative project sprang from care-giving. This manuscript got its start during the pandemic when my son was still young enough I read him fairy tales before bed. Somehow, the Grimm tale of Hansel and Gretel haunted me, in part, because I saw everyone as metaphorically (and collectively) lost in a deep, dark wood, desperately searching for clues, or breadcrumbs, to find a way out. This was also a period in which I felt deeply the dual pain of what it meant to be a child who had lost a mother (as in Hansel and Gretel) and to be a mother who could lose a child (which connects to the tale but also the widespread deaths during the pandemic). When I read the story to my son, I saw it as a reformulation of the matrix of a nuclear family and realized I could enter the story as both child and mother. If I hadn’t been reading this Grimm tale to my child, I wouldn’t have encountered the story as I did, or been able to use it as a palimpsest through which to metabolize (and metaphorize) my own story of family grief.

Elline Lipkin is a poet, nonfiction writer, and academic. She holds an MFA and a PhD in Creative Writing and for fifteen years was a Research Scholar with UCLA’s Center for the Study of Women. She currently teaches online for the University of Chicago’s Graham School and offers poetry mentoring and classes.

Her first book, The Errant Thread, was chosen by Eavan Boland for the Kore Press First Book Award. Part of the Seal Studies series, her second book, Girls’ Studies, explores contemporary girlhood. Her most recent book Girl in a Forest, released in October 2025 by Trio House Press rewrites the story of Gretel from the Grimm fairy tale and is short-listed for the Golden Poppy Award. She has been in residence at Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, and was a California Resident at Yefe Nof. A finalist for the AWP Kurt Brown prize, she was selected to mentor for AWP’s program Writer to Writer and served for four years on the committee for the Kate & Kingsley Tufts Poetry Awards. A contributor to Ms. magazine, she is active with WriteGirl in Los Angeles. Her Substack, The Proem, features literary opportunities and news alongside a chronicle of her recovery from the Eaton Fire. For two years, she served her community as editor of the Altadena Poetry Review and Poet Laureate. If you are attending AWP this year, come visit her at the Trio House Press booth on Friday at noon. She is excited to be featured on the poetry stage at the 2026 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on April 18-19th.

If this newsletter has helped you in your creative life, you can support me by becoming a paid subscriber or by ordering my new book, The Good Mother Myth.

💛💙 buy The Good Mother Myth 💙💛

But when I turned to prose, I realized I had to learn a new set of strategies for revision. Even a shortish article (say, 1500 words) requires a different approach. Below, I’ll share the process I’ve taught myself for revising everything from articles to an entire book. (This is the printed version of the zoom workshop we did last weekend, which was so much fun!)

If you’ve got a messy draft you’re trying to wrangle, print it out, grab your scissors and some pens, and let’s work together to get it into shape.

Read more

On Sunday, February 8th at noon eastern, I’ll share the process I’ve used for big revision of countless essays and articles and guide you through getting started with your own big revision. (I also used this process for the really big revision I had to do at the end stage of drafting The Good Mother Myth, when my editor said something like, take these two chapters, totally rearrange them, and then split part of it out into an introduction. Clearly I’ve blacked out the actual edits because it was a huge change but she was right.)

I’ve found that when I’m tackling a big revision, I need a couple things: a printed copy, bright pens, and time. Bonus points if I can get a big wall where I can tape things up, though a bed will work in a pinch. And good snacks always help with serious brain work.

I can’t give you all those supplies over zoom—though wouldn’t it be amazing if we could spend a weekend together working in person?—but together we can make the time you need to dive in to the next draft.

Read more

Hello there! Welcome to Be Less Careful. This is a good creatures interview, a series that explores the intersection of caregiving and creative practice. If you know (or are!) a good creature whose work we should feature, send me an email—you can just reply to this newsletter.

three quick things before we dive in!

I had so much fun chatting with and about writing, medicine, and trying new things in midlife. I have not gotten it together to share the recording yet, but lucky for us, Jennifer did; if you caught us live, thank you! and if you missed it, you can watch here:

A Mind of Her Own

Doctor, Writer, Woman: Navigating Guilt and Identity at Midlife

Join Dr. Reid, psychiatrist, creator and host of “A Mind of Her Own,” and author of Guilt Free, for this conversation with Nancy Reddy, author of The Good Mother Myth and creator of Be Less Careful and Mara Gordon, family doctor and creator of the Your Doctor Friend by Mara Gordon…

Listen now

3 months ago · 6 likes · Jennifer Reid, MD, Mara Gordon, MD, and Nancy Reddy

And if you happen to be in the south Jersey/Philadelphia area, I’ll be at the launch party for Jennifer’s new book Guilt Free: Reclaiming Your Life from Unreasonable Expectations next Tuesday, January 23rd at Inkwood in Haddonfield, and I’d love to see you there!

write with me this February

On Saturday, February 28th from 1-4pm eastern on zoom, I’ll be teaching a workshop, Finding the Plot in Memoir, through Rutgers-Camden’s Writers House.

help me plan the next subscriber workshop

So far we’ve talked about creative urgency in dark times and how to get out of your own way, and we had a really joyful planning party with planner extraordinaire Sarah Hart-Unger. We’ll gather on Sunday, February 8th at noon eastern/9am pacific. Help me pick what we do next!

Today’s interview is with Samina Najmi, whose new book Sing Me a Circle, traces her lineage through Pakistan, England, and California. She wrote the essays in her book across ten years while she was raising her children and working as an academic. This series has featured writers with babies and toddlers and grown up kids and everything in between, and as someone with kids in that middle stage (my 7th grader just attended his first school dance!) I always appreciate the perspective from different stages.

Below, we talk about the “lifeline” of brief moments to write and edit when her kids were very small, how caregiving has deepened her sense of time, and early memories of her mother and grandmother writing that have stayed with her all her life.

Who do you care for?

Until five years ago, it was my two children. They’re now grown, and I’m an empty-nester. So this is a retrospective, unless caring for my elderly cats counts.

What kind of creative work do you do?

I write creative nonfiction, specifically personal essays and memoir. When my children were very young, I wrote critical essays—literary criticism, to be exact—and I’d say that as far as process goes, for me there isn’t a hard line between creative and critical practices. I appreciate the confluences of the two.

What are some ways care-giving fosters creativity and vice versa?

That’s a great question. I was writing (critical essays) long before I became a mother. My children’s early years were an uncertain time in my professional life; I had my doctorate in English but didn’t have a secure teaching position. Then came my daughter and son, 21 months apart. Talk about uncertain! For all the highs, those early years of parenting unmoored me. I was never sure if I was doing the right things and feared that if I made a critical mistake, I could inadvertently do lasting damage. I also missed the quiet. Missed being able to hold a thought.

So I snatched brief moments for my writing and editing projects. They were a lifeline. Caregiving taught me to make the most of small pockets of time. This was revolutionary because I had always assumed I needed at least a four-hour block of time to get any writing or thinking done.

Conversely, I brought to my caregiving long years of observing closely and reading between the lines. Surface-level behaviors in young children can indicate deeper concerns, and my writing practice had trained me to analyze, make connections, and communicate—or at least try to.

When my children were in elementary school, I began writing creative nonfiction. And since my personal essays probe whatever’s on my mind, many of them engaged with parenting in some way. (The essays in Sing Me a Circle were written over a ten-year span while my children were growing up.) My writing still engages with motherhood on one level or another because it’s an integral aspect of my identity. You don’t stop being a parent just because the children have grown up, right? In fact, the existential reality of being a parent bridges the present, past, and future in ways I hadn’t anticipated. So caregiving has deepened my understanding of time, a central preoccupation of my essays.

I’ll add that both the writing life and the parenting life demand focus, discipline, and consistency. They also demand vigilance, a self-critical eye that keeps one open to learning from one’s mistakes and revising course. In other words, both parenting and writing require care and creativity. In that sense, the line between caregiving and creativity feels porous to me.

more good creatures, on time and creative work

Who provided a model for you in terms of combining caregiving and creativity?

My foremothers, of course. I grew up seeing my mother write her “diary”—that is, personal essays—every day. She said it was her way of “sorting out” her life. (She’d use those English words in the middle of Urdu.) It was only a few minutes a day, but my siblings and I knew not to disturb her while she was writing. I realize now how unusual that was, especially in the Pakistan of the seventies and eighties. But you know, her mother (my grandmother) also wrote. She didn’t have young children anymore, but she was writing her memoir for the last twenty years of her life and offered to read from it if we would listen. I wish I had recognized at the time what a rich matriarchal inheritance that was, but they were unsung writers. Even so, those early images of women in my family writing, whatever else they had to do, have stayed with me. And memory shapes our expectations of ourselves. I think of Alice Walker’s 1974 essay, “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” which revisits the daily creative practices of her maternal ancestors and recasts them as art that went acknowledged.

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Is there something specific you do to jumpstart creativity?

For me, the single most important jumpstart is setting my alarm for the wee hours of the morning. 4-6 am seems to be my magic moment for focused thinking and writing. If I manage to be present for it consistently, a draft of an essay is likely to take shape in a week or so. Of course, there’s no telling how long I will tinker with it.

Truth is I’ve always been an early riser. Even as a school girl in Pakistan, preparing for city-wide Board Exams, I preferred to get up early to study rather than stay up late. Years later with motherhood, this became a vital practice: waking up before the rest of my family in order to claim some thinking and writing time for myself. Now much of the day is presumably mine, but those jumpstart hours for creativity remain the same.

What advice would you give someone who has a creative practice and is embarking on becoming a caregiver?

Things will change, but trust that caregiving needn’t be the end of your creative practice. You will gain other material for your craft, learn other approaches to your art. Above all, believe that you can create in 15-20 minute bursts. Creative nonfiction writer Maxine Hong Kingston has said—and she wasn’t speaking in the context of caregiving—that that’s now her process. After twenty minutes of writing, she stops and takes a walk. She comes back to the page recharged and ready for the next twenty-minute burst of creativity. I’d love that for all of us.

Samina Najmi teaches multiethnic US literature at California State University, Fresno. Her memoir-in-essays, Sing Me a Circle: Love, Loss, and a Home in Time, won the Aurora Polaris Award in Creative Nonfiction and was published by Trio House Press in Oct, 2025. It has received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and is featured among Poets & Writers’ five nonfiction debuts of the year. It is also included in the Best of 2025 roundups by Debutiful and the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP). Samina’s essays have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and have won other honors. Daughter of multiple migrations, Samina grew up in Pakistan and England, and has lived in Fresno since 2006. Here she has watched with wonder her children, her students, and her citrus grow.

If this newsletter has helped you in your creative life, you can support me by becoming a paid subscriber or by ordering my new book, The Good Mother Myth.

💛💙 buy The Good Mother Myth 💙💛

do you have any superstitions? I’d love to know

Leave a comment

I believe there’s power in naming our big dreams, and I also think there’s something magic about holding onto a kernel of a good idea and letting it grow a little in the dark. Sometimes the challenge is knowing when to shout it out and when to let the little flame of a growing project keep you warm as you hold it tight.

As woo as it might sound, I think a vision board can split that difference. I like to spend some time shuffling through whatever materials I’ve gathered, seeing what calls out to me, almost like a divining rod. Then I put my boldest vision on the bulletin board in front of my desk where I see it everyday—but I keep that space to myself. (I share lots of shots of my desk throughout the year, but you’ll notice that the vision board is almost always clipped over or covered with text.)

It’s big dreams, powered by the energy of a secret.

(My dear friend tells me she’s doing my astrology for the year (I don’t fully know what that means) and it’s FULL OF SECRETS, which I love for me.)

🔮 If you need a little big dreams + secrets energy, join us for the fourth annual Write More, Be Less Careful vision board party—Sunday, January 11, 1pm EST/10am PST 🔮

I’ll be cohosting with Gemma Hartley, creator of the great newsletter No One Loves an Angry Woman.

✨ register here to join us. ✨

If you want a little vision board backstory, you can check out this post:

join our vision board party!

writing and medicine: substack live Tuesday, January 13 at 1pm EST

And on Tuesday, I’ll be in conversation via substack live with two physician-writers, Mara Gordon, MD and Jennifer Reid, MD. We’ll talk about their midlife turn to writing, which Jennifer described as “a transformation to a more authentic version of me.” If you’re looking to use your professional expertise in your writing, or you just want to learn more about why Mara thinks medical students need poetry, I’d love for you to join us.

Subscribe now

Hello there! Welcome to Be Less Careful. This is a good creatures interview, a series that explores the intersection of caregiving and creative practice. If you know (or are!) a good creature whose work we should feature, send me an email—you can just reply to this newsletter.

💌 two invitations! 💌

🔮 you’re invited to the fourth annual Write More, Be Less Careful vision board party—Sunday, January 11, 1pm EST/10am PST 🔮

I’ll be cohosting with Gemma Hartley, creator of the great newsletter No One Loves an Angry Woman.

✨ register here to join us. ✨

You can find the recap of the planning party I co-hosted with planning guru Sarah Hart-Unger here. That post includes so many good resources for reflection, vision-setting, and getting clarity about what matters in your creative life for the year ahead.

If you want a little intro to what I mean by “vision board” and how I approach creating one, you can check out this post. (And I’m excited to have Gemma’s perspective as co-host—she’s got a great multi-media approach!)

join our vision board party!

writing and medicine: substack live Tuesday, January 13 at 1pm EST

And next Tuesday, I’ll be in conversation via substack live with two physician-writers, and . We’ll talk about their midlife turn to writing, which Jennifer described as “a transformation to a more authentic version of me.” If you’re looking to use your professional expertise in your writing, or you just want to learn more about why Mara thinks medical students need poetry, I’d love for you to join us.

Today’s interview is with Catherine Pierce, whose writing I’ve loved forever and ever. We first met years and years ago when I very nervously emailed her to offer to send her a copy of my first book as a note of appreciation for her book Girls of Peculiar, which had been a guiding light for me as I wrote. (I still teach it as an example of a perfectly structured first section of a poetry collection!) Catherine’s first book of nonfiction, Foxes for Everybody: Twenty-Four Hours of Early Motherhood, is out next week, and she also has a new book of poetry, Dear Beast, out in March. Below, we talk about changing your writing practice after having kids, picking up a new genre, and why walking is a key part of her writing life. (Make sure you read all the way to the bottom for a special discount on your own copy of Foxes for Everybody!)

Who do you care for?

My two sons (11 and 15), plus a few pets (small dog, gecko, fish). My husband (Michael Kardos) and I care for each other, for which I am endlessly grateful (I came home last night from a long day and he already had the wine poured). I help care for other family members whenever I can.

What kind of creative work do you do?

I’m a poet and essayist (my memoir-in-essays, Foxes for Everybody: Twenty-Four Hours of Early Motherhood, comes out on January 15, and my new poetry collection, Dear Beast, will be out in March). I’m also a teacher and editor, which I also view as creative work.

What’s changed in your creative life since becoming a caregiver?

One of the biggest adjustments for me has been adapting my writing schedule. While I’ve never been someone who wrote every day, I was always a night person, and when I was in grad school and in the years before my kids were born, I liked to write at night, usually after my other requirements (studying, grading, etc.) were done. I liked the spaciousness of that time. I liked knowing that if it took me a while to hook into a poem, it was okay—I’d just stay up later and be a little tired the next day, no big deal.

Then our first son was born and made it very clear from the get-go that he absolutely hated sleeping. For really the first couple of years of his life, he started his days before it was light, woke frequently during the night, and never napped for more than maybe thirty minutes at a stretch. (And just when our oldest started to get the hang of sleeping, our second son was born.) This meant that my relationship with sleeping changed significantly. I was exhausted almost all the time—not the kind-of-tired a late night or two can cause, but the bone-tired, maybe-I-shouldn’t-be-driving exhaustion that happens after weeks and months of interrupted sleep—and so nighttime was no longer my creative time. It was my desperate sleeping time whenever my kids allowed it to be, or, after the newborn chaos, it was a time to wind down and maybe watch something with my husband. But my brain wasn’t at its best in the evening anymore.

So I started writing during the mornings when I could (we had a few wonderful sitters who used to come over and help out during our kids’ early days—usually I’d still be home, but could go into the guest room/office and work with minimal interruptions for a little while), or I’d squeeze in an hour of writing time while I was on campus between classes. During the summers, when my husband and I both had off from our jobs as professors, we’d divide the days—he’d go to a coffeeshop for a couple of hours in the morning while I hung out with our boys, and then we’d swap. I learned to be less precious about my writing time—I’d do it when I could, and sometimes when I didn’t feel like it, and I learned to accept the fact that there were days or weeks or even months when I just wasn’t able to write much at all.

I also learned that it’s crucial to keep adapting. Now my kids are beautiful sleepers (I want to say this again for any new parents reading this—they sleep now! It took a while but it happened!) and sometimes I actually wake up a couple of hours before they do in order to work in a quiet house. Sometimes I work in the afternoons. Sometimes—not often—I work at night. And sometimes there are still days or weeks or months where the writing isn’t happening because so many other things are. I try to find that balance between rolling with my life and staying connected to the work.

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What is difficult about being creative and a caregiver?

Creativity for me requires real focus and sinking-into time, and those requirements are often at odds with caregiving, which requires a constant on-ness. Even though my kids are older now and can (and usually prefer to) entertain themselves, I still struggle to write when I’m home with them. I don’t like being pulled out of deep focus, and I also don’t like feeling like I’m not totally present if someone needs me. I can do *other* kinds of work when everyone is home, but I usually try to do my creative work when I’m alone in the house or when my kids are asleep. I recognize that this isn’t a necessity—it’s fine for me to work when people are around! my kids are Big Humans now and require my on-ness much less than when they were little!—but the issues of focus and time allocation maintain a constant, low-level push-and-pull in my brain.

Is there something specific you do to jumpstart creativity?

I walk—around my neighborhood, in the woods, on the beach. And while I’m on these walks, I like to take pictures of small things (mushrooms, moss, shells). This combination of factors—the alchemy of being outside and moving and having my senses engaged, plus the close attention required to spot small things to photograph—often helps me hook into an image or some language that jumpstarts a piece of writing. And even if it doesn’t, it always helps me feel more connected to myself and the world.

What’s changed about your process? About your medium or genre?

I started writing essays right around the time that my youngest was graduating from toddlerhood into bigger-little-kidhood. It felt so good to embark on this new creative project—not only to be writing essays but to be studying them, really working at learning how to write them. In June of 2018, I set myself a syllabus—I bought a stack of essay collections by a bunch of different writers (Megan Stielstra, Hanif Abdurraqib, Rivka Galchen, Joan Didion, Gary Fincke, Ross Gay, Alexander Chee, Camille Dungy, Beth Ann Fennelly, Anna Journey, others I’m blanking on now) and spent the summer and fall reading those books, thinking about them, writing alongside them. I was hungry to learn, to practice, to explore something big and new, and I think it’s no coincidence that that desire coincided with the shift in my life from parent-of-babies to parent-of-kids. My brain was eager for a new challenge, and, too, I found myself wanting to write about motherhood in a way I hadn’t explored before. Motherhood absolutely was (and is) central to many of my poems, but I wanted to stretch sentences and sustain narratives in a new way.

What advice would you give someone who has a creative practice and is embarking on becoming a caregiver?

Stay attuned to what works for you (and how it might shift and evolve), and allow yourself flexibility and grace. Protect your creative time, and also recognize that creative time might not always look like writing. Sometimes it might look like taking a walk, watching a movie, having coffee with a friend, or just standing in a hot shower for a while. Oh—and cultivate your comfort with fallow times. If you’re struggling to focus, if you run into a patch when you’re too busy or too tired to get words on the page, know that you’ll return to your work when you can. In the meantime, try a small, doable project—before bed, write down a word that you love, or record an image from your day. Anything that keeps you connected to your creative brain is valuable—not only for your future work, but for you as a human.

Catherine Pierce is the author of the (about to be released) memoir-in-essays Foxes for Everybody: Twenty-Four Hours of Early Motherhood (Northwestern University Press, 2026), as well as of five books of poems, including Danger Days (Saturnalia 2020) and Dear Beast (forthcoming March 2026, also from Saturnalia). Her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, The Nation, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere, and has won two Pushcart Prizes. From 2007-2024, she was professor of English and co-director of the creative writing program at Mississippi State University. She recently moved with her family back to her home state of Delaware and founded Studio & Craft, an online poetry community through which she teaches workshops, offers manuscript consultations, and runs free weekly Creative Burst sessions.

A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Academy of American Poets, Catherine served as Poet Laureate of Mississippi from 2021 to 2025.

Find out more about Catherine’s upcoming events at catherinepiercepoet.com, follow her on Instagram at @catherinepiercepoet, or explore Studio & Craft’s spring offerings at studioandcraft.com.

Foxes for Everybody can be ordered from Northwestern for 25% off with code FOXES at checkout.

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If this newsletter has helped you in your creative life, you can support me by sharing it online or with a friend, or by ordering my new book, The Good Mother Myth.

💛💙 buy The Good Mother Myth 💙💛

And if you’re craving our new year’s tradition of a Write More vision board party, don’t worry, we’re doing that, too! (Info right below the recording.)

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🥳️ But today, we plan! 🥳️

This afternoon, at 2pm EST, I’ll be joined by planning guru for a zoom planning party. Sarah has a brand-new book, Best Laid Plans, that’s full of tips and wisdom for making space for what matters to you in a busy life. What I love about her book is how it takes into account that we all have busy, messy lives and big dreams—and she argues that devoting regular time to planning is the key to spending our time on the things that matter to us.

If you’ve got big dreams for your creative life in the year ahead, join us today and spend one hour planning how you’ll make it happen.

Register here to get the zoom link. (I’ll send out the recording and some written highlights afterward, if this time doesn’t work for you—just make sure you’re subscribed!) Zoom workshops are normally a perk for paid subscribers, but in the spirit of the spark of new year energy, this one is free and open to all!

🎉 it's a planning party! ✍️

If you want the slightly longer pitch for why planning is actually essential to caring for your creative spark, you can find that here:

We went on a cruise this year for Christmas, and the best part of it—other than the sunshine and not even thinking about making a meal for a full week—is that there’s no internet on a cruise ship. (Actually, there is, but you have to pay for it, and I was not about to pay to be tethered to the outside world.) We sailed out of north Jersey, and two days in, when we docked in Florida, my phone connected to service. I checked my email, opened up instagram, immediately felt a little bad and anxious and thought, is this how I feel all the time? what am I doing?

I’ve got all kinds of practices for minimizing the time I spend on my phone, but it’s been a big year of book promotion and living on the internet, and I had no idea how much I needed that hard reset. It was really startling to be reminded of how my brain feels without the constant interruption of notifications and dopamine seeking of checking across all the platforms. I’m still working out how to hold on to that clarity, but for right now, my major point of reflection is about spending my time and attention in the ways that matter to me. (My guiding light for thinking about time and attention is Jenny Odell, and I wrote about how her work has shaped my creative practice for Electric Literature.)

For now, I’m trying to think really practically about time and attention: what does it look like to actually put the things that matter on your calendar? how can I reflect deliberately on what I’m doing with my time each day and if it’s moving me in the direction I want to go? I’m asking not in a hustle culture, make-the-most-of-every-second way, but more like: is this actually what matters to me? Am I devoting my time and attention to the things that feel meaningful?

I’ll share some practical ideas and things I’m trying in today’s planning party—and I’m also going to try to nudge Sarah into helping me problem solve.

🎉 register to join the party 🎉

previously, on figuring out what matters

So if you want a little question to carry with you as the new year starts, I’d suggest that one: what matters to you? Not what you have to do, or what you should do, but what matters?

If this newsletter has helped you in your creative life, you can support me by sharing it online or with a friend, or by ordering my new book, The Good Mother Myth.

💛💙 buy The Good Mother Myth 💙💛

If 🥳️planning party🥳️ chimes a bell inside you and you’re all in already, go ahead and register right here.

But if you want a little more info, here’s my pitch: we’re not going to become a shiny new and improved version of ourselves as soon as January 1 ticks over AND it’s a great time of year to take advantage of all that new start energy to think big about what we want for the year and how we’re going to work for it. If you have big dreams for the year ahead, come join us as we share those dreams *and* get into some of the brass tacks of how to get it done. (And honestly, if you’re still a little worn out and worn down by 2025, same. We can rally together.)

If planning feels at odd with creativity, here’s my argument: creative work is one part magic, and one part making space for the magic to arrive. And that’s what planning can do: help you cultivate an inspiring vision for your work and clear the space and time to make it happen.

This year, we’ll talk about developing a vision for the year ahead, hot planning topics like “word for the year” (I’ll share my spin on that for this year, if you’re interested), and what Sarah calls “Metaplanning”—focusing on your systems. This zoom planning party is open to all subscribers. I’ll send out the recording afterward, if you can’t make this time—just make sure you’re subscribed.

Register here to get the zoom link.

🥳️ come plan with us! 🥳️

🌟 here’s the full vision board backstory, starting with the time I made one and then hid it even from myself—which, friends, is the opposite of what we’re after here 🌟

If this newsletter has helped you in your creative life, you can support me by sharing it online or with a friend, or by ordering my new book, The Good Mother Myth.

💛💙 buy The Good Mother Myth 💙💛

What a year, friends. I am looking forward to Christmas, and I am looking forward to a fresh start for 2026.

I’ll be hosting another New Year’s planning party with planning guru Sarah Hart-Unger, whose new book Best Laid Plans is out TODAY! We’ll talk about developing a vision for the year ahead, hot planning topics like “word for the year” (I’ll share my spin on that for this year, if you’re interested), and what Sarah calls “Metaplanning”—focusing on your systems. This zoom 🥳️ planning party 🥳️ will be open to all subscribers.

Help us pick a date!

And if you are newish, here’s a recap of our recent vision board parties, including my pitch for making one, even if it feels a little woo:

I got to know Sarah when she invited me to be on the podcast she co-hosts with Vanderkam, if you want to check that out:

the most important thing I’ve unlearned this year

I wrote a whole book about unlearning our bad ideas about how to be a good mom, but it turns out . . . I have more bad ideas left to shed. Buy me a drink sometime (see you at AWP in Baltimore?) and I’ll give you the whole list, but here’s the big one:

rest is great and important . . . for other people

I had a big winter and spring of book events for The Good Mother Myth. It was wonderful, and by the time May rolled around, I was cooked. Like, well and thoroughly fried. I kept making lists of things to do and then just . . . not doing them. I’d open my computer to work on a pitch or revise a draft and come to half an hour later, my eyes a little blurry from scrolling, my mood decidedly worse.

I eventually decided that sitting at my desk in a posture that might be mistaken for work was not in fact more virtuous than just watching TV. So I did that for a little while. I’d knock out whatever absolutely had to be done, then around mid-day I’d cuddle up with lunch and some medium-bad TV. (I watched White Lotus, Sirens, and Your Friends & Neighbors that way.) Do I wish I’d done more in those months? Sure. Do I think I was actually capable of putting my nose right back to the grindstone. I do not, actually. Eventually, a little creative spark came back and the TV stopped calling me quite so loudly.

And the bigger picture of all that has to do with learning to listen to myself—the little voice that says, take a break, sweetie; the even quieter (I’m trying!) voice that says, just log off, babe.

on that note:

🍵 let’s chat: lessons from 2025

I’d love to know: what have you learned this year? or what are you unlearning?

Leave a comment

If this newsletter has helped you in your creative life, you can support me by sharing it online or with a friend, or by ordering my new book, The Good Mother Myth.

💛💙 buy The Good Mother Myth 💙💛

Hello there! Welcome to Be Less Careful. We’re exploring how to sustain a creative practice in a busy life, the big and small reinventions of midlife, and how to be happier at home.

This is a good creatures interview, a series that explores the intersection of caregiving and creative practice. If you know (or are!) a good creature whose work we should feature, send me an email—you can just reply to this newsletter.

Today’s interview is with Jackie Hoermann-Elliott and Jenna Morton-Aiken, whose new book, Parenting While PhDing: Surviving and Improving the Working Conditions of Graduate Student Parents, is a smart, warm anthology including essays by more than 40 current and former graduate students raising children. (My own kids were born while I was in my PhD program, something I wrote about in The Good Mother Myth, so the topic speaks right to my heart.) One of the things I love about the collection is how inclusive it is, including queer, trans, disabled, BIPOC, immigrant, and first-generation college students, as well as students from a range of disciplines. “Parenting” is so often actually just a shorthand for mothering, and I really appreciated how Jackie and Jenna were intentionally really broad in the parents whose perspectives and advice they included. The book offers practical and much-needed advice for graduate students, professors, and administrators.

Below, we talk about the non-writing pursuits that make writing possible, the way caregiving feeds creative work, and learning when to say yes—and when to say no.

(And scroll all the way to the bottom for a fun books + cookies round-up by , the recording of a chat I did with about book events, and two opportunities to write together in the new year!)

Who do you care for?

Jackie: My 3-, 6-, and 8-year-old sons, my amazing teen stepdaughter, my husband, many plants, and many students. Quite a few of my graduate students at Texas Woman’s University (TWU) are parents, who face immense, unrelenting caregiving demands. I have a tender spot in my heart for them because I was a student parent once, and that’s part of the motivation for writing Parenting while PhDing. I wanted my students to have the book I needed so desperately while finishing up my degree.

I deeply care for undergraduate students, too. At TWU, which is also the nation’s largest university system for women, our unofficial slogan is that we’re a “Campus with a heart.” Compassion drives so much of how we teach and support students outside the classroom. In fact, we have a CARE Office (CARE standing for Campus Alliance for Resource Education), which offers student parents everything from free groceries and Christmas gift donations, emergency funds, and so much more. I also partner with CARE every summer to teach for a very special summer bridge program called FAST Academy. FAST stands for Foster Care Alumni Succeed and Thrive, and through my work with this program I have the honor of caring for some of the strongest students I’ve ever met.

Jenna: It’s a really interesting question because I feel like I would have answered differently had it been framed as who are you a caregiver for versus who do you care for. If asked who I was a caregiver for, I would say my 13-year-old and 10-year-old daughters and our two always hungry cats. But the circle of who I care for, and what that care takes from me in terms of emotional labor, is much larger. It includes my wonderful husband, my family of origin, and my family by marriage. It also includes my friends, the people who work for me, and the people I work with and for. I’m invested in all of the students who work with me as writing fellows, the students who touch the edges of writing as they go through the University, and the faculty who feel overwhelmed by all things, especially when it involves writing. And, as Jackie says, always care for the new, experienced, or to-be parents in academia who cross my path. I coach my daughter’s robotics team and participate in a community of faith. Though the care in these spaces differs, it is still the giving of care, and energy, towards other people and other goals.

What kind of creative work do you do?

Jenna: Writing is still my favorite thing and my first creative love. Fiction writing brings me joy while academic writing brings me intellectual satisfaction. That said, the more experience I gain in academic publishing, the more I feel confident exploring my creativity within those genres, like I think we have in our book. While I love scholarly writing, it’s high stakes, so I try to carve out my hobby fiction writing as something personal that I do simply for the love of the process, and not about the pressure of publication or performing to anyone else’s expectations. Outside writing, I went on a deep dive into cake making during Covid-19, and right now I am in the process of making my daughter a three-tiered, two-flavored, Wicked for Good-themed cake for her birthday this weekend. I also have watercolor and other painting supplies that are used far too infrequently, and I’m always up for a good dance party.

Jackie: Much like Jenna, writing is my favorite art form, and I am fascinated by how our physical and sensory experiences move us to write (sometimes quite literally) in the most unexpected ways and places. My first book – Running, Thinking, Writing – explored how creativity comes while running, walking, and through non-exercise forms of movement promoting embodied cognition. I think it’s miraculous how our physical forms allow us to compose. Most of my ideas for books, articles, op-eds, or social media content come while in motion. So I write, first and foremost, but I also dabble a little in arts and crafts. I took a stained glass art class recently that set aflame all my childhood memories of sketching and painting. My middle son (a kindergartener) has also been really into drawing lately, and I’ve been encouraging him to draw whenever he feels bored because I see the ways in which it strengthens his little hands for the work of styling letters and numbers.

What’s an adjustment you’ve had to make to your creative process, and an adjustment you refuse to make?

Jackie: I’ve had to become less rigid and unflinching with my daily writing practice. I thrive on routine, and I schedule an hour for writing time every morning at the start of my work day (after I’ve worked out, showered, chauffeured children to school, and settled into my office with a bowl of baked chocolate squash oats – much yummier than it sounds). Inevitably, there are mornings when I feel frazzled because half of my family is down with a stomach bug or my administrative work at the university requires me to shift my morning routine. Even so, the general consistency of my routine assures me that I’ll be back in sync with my usual writing rhythm the next day.

Speaking of administrivia, that’s also an adjustment I refuse to give up: a daily writing practice. I think I’ve irritated some colleagues with my fierce protection of my first-hour-for-writing policy, which I protect with all the slow-burning rage of a Canadian goose guarding her goslings, but I have to firmly declare “Hands off the writing time, people.” Saying yes to others’ demands means saying no to my writing time, and in turn, I am saying no to the creative process that gives my life so much meaning.

Jenna: My main adjustment has been when I can find to write versus when I would like to write. I can’t stay up until 2 AM writing and then be functional the next day. My creative energy spurts are not well aligned to parenting or adulting in general, and I’ve really had to balance going to sleep at a decent hour so that I can get up in the morning. I struggle to go to bed at a sensible time, but if I don’t get that creative work done first in the morning, it doesn’t happen, so I’m trying to cultivate my early to bed, early to rise circadian rhythm to support my creativity.

An adjustment I refused to make, in the end, was to remove my passion or voice from my writing in order for it to be legitimate or count in scholarly circles. When I started publishing, I thought I had to write one specific way if I was going to be taken seriously or that it would even be good enough to get by the gatekeepers so that I could just keep building my CV. I became a writing professor because I think words have genuine power and can change the world, but that change in the world means speaking from our own experiences, taking risks, and using our own voices to change the world for the better. I still get nervous about it, but ultimately, I’ve started refusing to remove my creative self from my publications. That might mean that my contributions are never considered to be rigorous or scholarly by the old guard academy, but I do believe it makes my writing more significant and more powerful for the people who need it the most.

How do you balance creative practice with care-giving?

Jenna: This has been a long and complicated journey that is still unfolding, but as I talk about my section at the end of the book, I finally realized I needed to keep my sense of self alive if I wanted to be any good to anybody else. And that means taking time out to write, or time to spend reading, walking, dancing, or just being by myself so that I still have the mental bandwidth to write when I sit down to do that. I tried to be really transparent with my kids about the fact that we are all humans with different needs, and to model for them that it’s important for us to set our own boundaries. It is important to me that they see me as a whole person, not just the caregiver, and so we have some pretty frank conversations about when I need to be my actual self. They see me sitting and writing, and we often have a conversation that ends in “I love you but I need you to go away right now.” They don’t always like it, but they respect it, and I hope it provides them with a sense of self-value that they will take with them going forward. I also always have music that moves me or motivates me, so that I can feel a sense of creativity and connection with something profound even during the most mundane tasks of caregiving and life in general.

Jackie: I don’t even try or pretend to balance the two because that’s always felt like I’m placing the two at odds with each other. In my creative world, they’re inseparable. Caregiving can be so draining at times, but when it starts to feel this way it’s usually time for a mental reframe. Time spent with my kids releases me from the pressures of work and frees my mind to be silly and playful, to have fun. Also, as a mom to three boys, I want my kids to see their mother working hard and pursuing creative endeavors that sustain her. Sometimes this means I have to miss a soccer game to attend a writing conference, and other times it means dancing in the kitchen with my two littlest ones instead of responding to a work call. What I hope I’m modeling for them is the ability to attune to their own creative and care-giving needs, and to respect their future partners for doing the same.

What advice would you give someone who has a creative practice and is embarking on becoming a caregiver?

Jackie: I love this question because it aligns with the narrative advice chapters in our collection, but it’s also so hard to answer when so much good advice abounds. That said, my tiny tagline piece of advice would be: “Say yes.” Say yes to you, to your boundaries, to your family, to your creative time, to new opportunities, and to being humbled by all you have to learn as you evolve into this creature that makes life and learning possible for others. Doing so runs the risk of finding yourself in an emotional, physical, or spiritual drought at times, but that’s also why I’m going to admonish saying yes to yourself first. And finally, be discerning enough to know that sometimes saying no to one person or opportunity is actually a yes to yourself (in disguise).

Jenna: You won’t lose it. You might feel like you lose touch with your creative practice in the short term, especially if you are in a significant transition and perhaps one that was unexpected, but it is a fundamental part of who you are, so trust that you won’t lose it. But also build some space to have compassion for yourself when your practice, and maybe your dreams, shift. Caregiving, for me as a parent, has been amazing, irritating, and overwhelming. I love my kids, husband, cats, and everyone else mentioned in the opening paragraph, but ultimately, I have to be able to live with myself, and nobody wants to live with an emotionally malnourished self. At some points, creativity was just about daydreaming while walking the baby, or sketching out publication ideas in my head while we colored together. It didn’t look like the writing life I’d expected for myself, and that was okay, but as the kids got older and needed less physical care, I realized that I needed to reestablish my creative reserves. Writing this book, working with Jackie and our contributors, was a great way for me to rebuild that bridge, to bring the creative and scholarly and parental lenses to this experience, and to write in a way that felt true to my creative self rather than what I might have expected from an academic setting. Now the book is out there, and I realize how much I value the creativity and artistic exploration that went along with the production of that book, I find myself more confident that I’ll be able to navigate and flex between caring for myself and for others in ways that are also creatively nourishing and generative.

Jackie Hoermann-Elliott, Ph.D., is the author of two books — Parenting While PhDing: Surviving and Improving the Working Conditions of Graduate Student Parents (Rutgers University Press, 2025) and Running, Thinking, Writing: Embodied Cognition in Composition (Parlor Press, 2021). At TWU, she serves as an Associate Professor of English and Co-Director of TWU’s First-Year Experience Program, where she has the joy of getting to support dozens of young writers every day. She holds a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition from Texas Christian University, and her areas of expertise include writing pedagogy, cognition and writing, and supporting student success for special populations, including student parents, foster-care alumni, developmental learners, and dual credit students. She lives in Denton, Texas, where in her free time she can be found running or walking, baking with her kids, creating art, or indulging in salty dark chocolate. You can find her on Instagram or Substack at @drjackiewrites.

Jenna Morton-Aiken, Ph.D., is the author of Parenting While PhDing: Surviving and Improving the Working Conditions of Graduate Student Parents (Rutgers University Press, 2025) as well articles in Technical Communication Quarterly, WPA Writing Program Administration, The Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics, and other peer reviewed publications. At Brown University, she serves as the Senior Associate Director of Writing and English Language Support, runs the Writing Fellows program, and teaches in the English Department. Dr. Morton-Aiken works with undergrad, graduate, and faculty writers across Brown as writers and as teachers of writing in practice and pedagogy. She mentors at Brown through the BEST program and helped launch and publish on SciWrite@URI, an NSF NRT-IGE funded grant, which included supporting science graduate students and their faculty with teaching and writing best practices and pedagogy. She lives in North Kingstown, RI, loves evenings boogie boarding at Narragansett Beach, would almost always rather be curled up on the couch reading next to her kids and cats, and still thinks her husband is genuinely funny after 22 years together. You can find evidence of her rare encounters with social media on LinkedIn or Twitter.

🤓 elsewhere on the internet 📚🍪

For ’s newsletter, I shared a bunch of recommendations for books I like to give to adults and kids alike, as well as two cookies I make a bunch this time of year. It’s full of recommendations from lots of other writers I admire—definitely worth checking out, whether you’re buying books or making cookies!

A Wonderful Mess

Give a Book and Eat a Cookie...

This is a very special post of Reading While Parenting. It is so full of great links, it might now get cut off in your email. Don’t miss out on a thing! You can click “View entire message” and read all of the good stuff here. There is no audio this week either since it’s full of links…

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4 months ago · 15 likes · 10 comments · Kathryn Barbash, PsyD

And I did a Substack Live chat with about planning bad-ass book events!

Andrea Bartz: Get It Write

"My big theory about life is that we're all desperate to connect with each other and just need that nudge."

I loved my convo with Nancy Reddy, the author of THE GOOD MOTHER MYTH and the Substack Be Less Careful. We discussed what people really want from book events, specific tricks to make a book launch interactive and memorable, where events fit into the…

Listen now

4 months ago · 7 likes · Andrea Bartz and Nancy Reddy

✍️ two chances to write together in the new year! 😎

Finding the Plot in Memoir—Sunday, Feb 28, 1-4 EST on zoom

I’ll be leading a workshop through the Writers House at Rutgers-Camden on Finding the Plot in Memoir. (It’s connected to a piece I wrote for Lit Hub over the summer, so if you liked that piece and want to work through the ideas together, this workshop is for you!) Here’s the full description:

Whether it’s an essay or a book, a memoir project is built out of the stuff of your own life–but memoir still benefits from the engine of a plot to pull your reader through! In this workshop, we’ll try out several approaches to finding the plot in your own life. If you’ve got a great story to tell but you’re having trouble putting it all together, you’ll leave with a toolkit of strategies and approaches to build your project. Bring your messy draft or a collection of good ideas; we’ll work together to give it a shape.

You can register for the workshop here.

Get Away to Write — Florida, March 9-14, 2026

And then, in early March, I’ll be teaching at Murphy Writing’s Get Away to Write—Florida at the dreamy Atlantic Center for the Arts. This will be a generative, week-long workshop (with time for walks, naps, and trips to the beach) titled Writing Past What You Know: Creative Strategies in Memoir. Here’s the full description:

We’re told to “write what you know”—but what happens when there are gaps in our memories, absences in family history or disagreements about what really happened? In this memoir workshop, we’ll practice writing what we don’t or can’t know. Experimenting with innovative methods for creative research will allow us to add details that enrich our memories, deepen scenes, expand our characterization and improve our imagery as we build an engrossing world for readers. We’ll also use what essayist Lisa Knott calls “perhapsing” to speculate about those parts of our histories that we can never truly know. We will leave this workshop with lots of new words and strategies to keep writing long after our time together. Open to beginning and experienced writers.

You can read more and register here.

Subscribe now

If this newsletter has helped you in your creative life, you can support me by sharing it online or with a friend, or by ordering my new book, The Good Mother Myth.

💛💙 buy The Good Mother Myth 💙💛

Here’s the big idea—the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what we’re capable of us shape us in profound ways. I wrote about this before, after hearing an interview with psychologist Jonathan Adler on Hidden Brain:

I believe in listening carefully to the stories we’re telling ourselves about your creative work—our dreams, our potential, our ambitions, our failures—and then intentionally reframing them to be kinder, more accurate, and more helpful. In this past Sunday’s workshop, we talked about the stories we’ve been telling ourselves and how they get in the way, and we connected those stories to the habits and practices that shape our writing lives.

Become a paid subscriber and join us below the paywall for the full presentation, including questions to ask yourself as you summon up the boldest version of your writer-self for the year ahead.

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I wanted to talk to Laura because when I started reading No More Mediocre, I could see so clearly how our books were in conversation—my book mostly focuses on early motherhood and really unpacks the origins of our bad ideas about how to be a good mom, and then Laura’s picks up with slightly older kids and really practical, warm advice about how to make your relationships work better. I feel like my book is the deep dive into history, and then hers is the how-to.

It was such a fun and rich conversation that it’s hard to excerpt, but a couple big ideas I want to highlight:

💛 Talking about the mental load and domestic labor doesn’t have to be (shouldn’t be!) combative! Instead of seeing domestic work and caregiving as a battle or as transactional (“I’ll do the dishes, but only if you fold the laundry”) Laura frames it as a reciprocal relationship. In her book, she writes that “in a reciprocal relationship, giving time and effort and care is done with the understanding that it’s in service of the relationship, and trusting that the care will be returned but not keeping score.”

💙 The way we both find hope in how relationships can evolve over time. If you’re in a tough spot in your partnership, you can change that—but you have to start by talking about it and working toward concrete change. Laura also pointed out that sometimes the change is divorce, which can also be a great choice!

💜 We also talked about how so many of our challenges in sharing housework and caregiving are actually bigger structural problems—like, if you don’t have health insurance or paid leave, that puts a bigger burden on individual families!

❤️️ A tip for navigating the season of holiday magic—talk to your partner about what you really value as a couple and as a family. What do you remember from your childhood? What do you want your kids to remember? Then, rooted in your own values, you can make the choices that feel good for you, instead of being pressured to follow what all the good moms on instagram seem to be doing!

Laura’s book, No More Mediocre: A Call to Reimagine Our Relationships and Demand More, is out January 6 and would make a great present. You can order it from the Write More bookshop, get a signed copy at Women and Children First in Chicago, or anywhere else you buy your books.

And if you want to give a copy of The Good Mother Myth to a mom you love this season, I’d love to send you a signed bookplate and bookmark to go with your gift. Just email me an address and I’ll pop it in the mail!

💛💙 become a paid subscriber and join us Sunday, Dec 7th at noon est for a zoom workshop on how to get out of your own way 💛💙

our next subscriber-only zoom gathering will be this Sunday, with the theme of how to get out of your own way. if you’re feeling a little stuck creatively or just want to spend some time reflecting on what’s working for you and what you want to change in your creative life, I’d love for you to join us. we’ll work together to reflect on the habits, practices, and beliefs around our creative work. before the new year begins, we’ll think about what to take with us and what to shed.

become a paid subscriber, and you’ll get the zoom link in your welcome email. (if you’re already a paid subscriber, I sent it earlier this week via email. let me know if you need me to resend.)

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If this newsletter has helped you in your creative life, you can support me by becoming a paid subscriber or by ordering my new book, The Good Mother Myth.

💛💙 buy The Good Mother Myth 💙💛

📚 the books that stuck with me this year

I read a *ton* every year, but these are the books I keep thinking about. If you or someone you love are in early 40s/now what kind of phase of life and could use some support in learning to listen to your own voice or encouragement to harness your perfectionism for good, I’d start with these three, which have felt like guides through a wild year.

The Magic of Knowing What You Want by Tracey Gee

(I talked to Tracey here and here, if you want a sense of the book and why I love it.)

Everyday Intuition by Elizabeth Greenwood

The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control by Katherine Morgan Schafler

📖 for the writers in your life (including you!)

🌟 for a whole year of creative community, get yourself a paid subscription to Be Less Careful, or give one as a gift. (if you upgrade now, you can join us at Sunday’s subscriber-only zoom, how to get out of your own way!)

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Give a gift subscription

✍️ Get yourself or someone you love a writing class for the new year. Local to me, I love Blue Stoop and Murphy Writing, which both have lots of virtual offerings. Writing Co-Lab also has a great mix of craft workshops and accountability groups.

📗 The Los Angeles Review of Books has a great membership program. Memberships include a subscription to the LARB Quarterly, as well as a LARB tote bag and invitations to member-exclusive events, including a quarterly Book Club.

💞 if you or someone you love could use some regular writing accountability, I’d recommend Ass in Chair, a weekly writing gathering via zoom hosted by and . When I’ve got a busy day (or week or or 😦) and need to make sure I get some writing time in, showing up at Ass in Chair each Monday always does the trick. there’s a free session coming up December 15th if you want to give it a try before you subscribe.

Be Where You Are

❄️Ass in Chair: December details & Free Solstice party!❄️

Hi friends! This is your ONE monthly post with all the December details & links! Let’s get into it…

Read more

5 months ago · 1 like · Emily Mohn-Slate and Erinn Batykefer

💫 of Nebula Notebook is running a great special through TODAY only—buy a copy of her new book, Quickening, for yourself or a friend and get a free year of Nebula Notebook. it would be a great gift for the creative mom in your life, and maybe even better if you bought one for yourself and one for a friend.

Nebula Notebook

Last Day to Get The Quickening Bundle

Giving Quickening is an easy way to say “I see you. I love you. I’m deep in it with you.” The essays, poems, journal prompts and creative exercises are designed to help moms of all kinds reconnect with their creative spark. ⚡️…

Read more

5 months ago

⏳ For a lot of writers, the absolute best gift is time. I was talking to a friend recently about how she’s telling her husband that this year, she just wants three days alone, and in lieu of any wrapped presents, she’s scheduling a reading retreat for early January. Brilliance! So if you’re the writer, maybe just ask for time and/or space. That could be a day pass at a coworking spot, a weekend away, or gift certificates to a favorite coffee shop with the expectation that you’ll use them to go write.

🏡 If you’re looking for something a little snazzier, The Barn at Boyds Mills, in northeastern Pennsylvania, is my absolute favorite spot for a writing retreat. You get a little cabin, three delicious meals a day, and your choice of several quiet spots to work.

🔮 If you or someone you love has a question or a decision and could use a little nudge, Catherine LaSota is offering single-card tarot readings. You pose an open-ended question, then Catherine pulls a card and sends it to you along with information about the card and some journaling questions for reflection. (I recently did one and loved the answer Catherine sent me so much I printed out my card using the good copier on campus and glue-sticked it inside my notebook.)

Here is the link to purchase a single-card tarot reading. They are on sale ($15 instead of $20) through the end of 2025 only. Steps:

1. Purchase a reading.

2. You’ll then receive an email requesting your question for the tarot deck. (If you want to give this as a gift, please reply to that email with the name and email address of the person you wish to gift.)

3. Within 72 hours of receiving your question for the deck, Catherine will send back: an image of the card she pulled; interpretation of the card; and personalized journal prompts based on your question and the card.

💛💙 The Good Mother Myth + my other books

If you love your kids but feel like *being a mom* is kind of a scam, I think you’ll love The Good Mother Myth. I started writing it because I was truly shaken by how hard early motherhood was for me (for me! an A+ student! turns out babies do not care about your diligent research or good grades!) and kept writing because I was angry at the myths I’d absorbed about how easy and natural motherhood should be, if you just did it right. In the end, it’s a book about love—the transformative love for your kids, and the lifechanging power of community in parenthood.

I think it would make a great gift for any mom who could use some reassurance that being a “good mom” is a rigged game—but if she loves her kid and tries her best, she’s already doing great. You can buy it anywhere books are sold, and if you buy a copy for yourself or a mom you love this season, I’d love to send you a bookmark and a signed bookplate. (Just send me an email with your address.)

You can find all my other books on the Write More bookshop, and if you buy any of them this season, I’d be happy to send you a card and some swag to accompany your gift. (Just send me an email with your address.)

🍵 let’s chat: a gift you’re giving this year 🎁

I’d love to know: what’s a gift you’re excited to *give* this year? I have not even started thinking, and I could use some inspiration!

Leave a comment

If this newsletter has helped you in your creative life, you can support me by becoming a paid subscriber or by ordering my new book, The Good Mother Myth.

💛💙 buy The Good Mother Myth 💙💛

Hello there! Welcome to Be Less Careful, a newsletter about making space for creative practice in a busy life. This is the monthly intentions email, which goes out the last Sunday before a new month starts. It’s a chance to pause and set some goals for our creative practice in the coming month.

I’ve been thinking for months now about the idea of an inner voice. When I first heard Elizabeth Greenwood describe her book Everyday Intuition at a reading in New York, I thought, oh, I don’t have that. I’ve never thought of myself as an intuitive person. Smart, sure, a hard worker, yes. But intuitive? Not really.

But her book found me at exactly the right time, in the exhaustion and space of what-next? after the publication of The Good Mother Myth. I’ve spent months trying to listen as I think about what matters to me now. As I’ve shared before, my inner voice has often been saying I don’t know. (With one memorable exception over the summer, at a gathering I’d been on the fence about attending, when a voice said clearly to me, you don’t even like these people! If I were a bolder woman, I would have walked right back out then, instead of sitting through a couple hours of conversations I didn’t really want to have.)

For me, everyday intuition is less about having visions and more about giving yourself some space and quiet to hear yourself think. If you want to learn to listen to your inner voice, you can’t always be jamming content and podcasts and distractions into your brain.

The most important thing I’ve learned about listening to my inner voice is that I can only hear it when I give it space to speak. That can be a no-phone walk with my dog, working on a medium-interesting cooking project, or even folding laundry. Even vacuuming, cleaning windows, wiping down the baseboards can work. There’s something about the monotony and movement that lets my brain get to work.

one question as you set intentions for your creative practice this month

Where can you create more space to hear your own voice?

I think it’s helpful to scope of kinds of activities or parts of your day as no-phone zones. For me, that’s walks with my dog, driving and walking my kids to school, my gym and the walk to it (it’s group fitness, so I don’t need my phone for music; I do keep a little notebook in my bag for all the ideas that a good workout unglues). The throughline seems to be an activity where my body is occupied and my brain can hum along in the background.

🍵 let’s chat: what are you working on this month?

December is such a jumbly month between holiday activities and end of year stress. I’m thinking of the first half of the month as a time for one last push of submissions and pitches—and then the second half as a chance to kind of go into a cave and do some deep thinking and reflection that’s just for me.

What does your month look like? What are you working on?

I’ll share a couple year-end goals in the comments, if you want to know . . . 👇

Leave a comment

💛💙 let’s hang out 💙💛

how to get out of your own way—via zoom, next Sunday, December 7th at noon eastern

our next subscriber-only zoom gathering will be next Sunday, with the theme of how to get out of your own way. if you’re feeling a little stuck creatively or just want to spend some time reflecting on what’s working for you and what you want to change in your creative life, I’d love for you to join us. we’ll work together to reflect on the habits, practices, and beliefs around our creative work. before the new year begins, we’ll think about what to take with us and what to shed.

if you want to get a sense of how much fun our zoom gatherings have been, I’ve unlocked the video from the November gathering, about creative urgency in dark times

become a paid subscriber, and you’ll get the zoom link in your welcome email. (if you’re already a paid subscriber, keep your eyes peeled for an email later today!)

Subscribe now

two upcoming Substack lives

Wednesday, December 3rd at noon eastern with , who you may know from her whipsmart commentary on weaponized incompetence as @thatdarnchat on instagram and tiktok

(and if you’ve been thinking about ordering Laura’s new book, No More Mediocre, as a gift for yourself or someone else, you can juuuuust squeak under the wire and get her to send you a postcard if you order by 12/1!; share your order info here)

Monday, December 8th at 11am eastern with ; we’ll be talking about hosting book events and building community. I’ll share what I learned from a year of Good Mother Myth events and the smart writers and thinkers I talked to for this Poets & Writers piece.

💌 this month in Write More 💌

🪴 an interview with in the new Chrysalis series, about women making big changes in midlife. one thing I especially loved about L’Oreal’s interview is how she decided to go after a big dream she’d been holding for “someday”—and how that dream isn’t just about her, but is really about creating community

🦕 poet Laura Cresté talked about her new book In the Good Years, writing with a toddler, and why she felt “newly vulnerable” after having her son

If this newsletter has helped you in your creative life, you can support me by becoming a paid subscriber or by ordering my new book, The Good Mother Myth.

💛💙 buy The Good Mother Myth 💙💛