"caregiving brought out the importance of community in all aspects of my life"
Cameron Walker, author of HOW TO CAPTURE CARBON, on surfing, science writing and storytelling, and learning to ask for help in writing and parenting
Hello there! Welcome to Write More, Be Less Careful, a newsletter about making space for creative practice in a busy life. My next book, The Good Mother Myth, will be out in January 2025, and you can pre-order it now!
This is a good creatures interview, a series that explores the intersection of caregiving and creative practice. I’m so excited to showcase people doing lots of kinds of caregiving—people caring for kids or pets or other family members and/or caring for space through gardening or community work or activism—and lots of kinds of creative work.
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 Cameron Walker, whose gorgeous and wild collection of short stories, How to Capture Carbon, is out this week. From the very first story, about a pandemic that turned children into sea creatures, I was hooked. And you don’t have to take my word for it—Sabrina Orah Mark calls the book “brilliant” and writes that “Cameron Walker has reimagined the natural world to honor its hilarious spells and breathtaking miracles and somber cries for help.”
Below, we talk about the wide range of Cameron’s creative work, from science writing and freelance journalism to essays and fiction, and how needing to ask for help in early motherhood helped her learn to lean on community in her writing life, too.
Who do you care for?
This should be a simple question, but it feels hard to answer, because any caring I do feels very mutual and reciprocal. Short answer: My sons (10, 13, 15), my husband (15-year-old sense of humor). Our pandemic puppy and her soggy, sandy coat.
They all do so much caring for me, too—I am showered with love (and also showered with fur, in the case of the golden retriever). And our little house feels like it cares for all of us. It’s full of musical instruments, pull-up challenges, tap dancing, impromptu singing, occasional arguing, and lines outside the bathroom door. My husband does almost all of the official cooking, which everyone is happy about. My main caretaking activities now with older kids are scheduling, carpooling, laundry, and remaining calm.
What kind of creative work do you do?
I write all sorts of things: books, short stories, essays, journalism, grocery lists, texts about carpool schedules. I started as a science journalist, and over the years have continued to do that as well as moving into essays and books for kids.
I’ve always written fiction, too. Often in secret. For a long time, it felt like I should be focusing on more “important” work, particularly when my kids were little and my time was really limited.
But my kids also helped me to realize how important stories and storytelling are—both to them, and to me. My husband and I started telling a series of stories about a kid named Sam and his friend Lydia, who lived under a volcano, to one of the boys who didn’t like to be alone in the bathroom. We read stories together, we listened to a wonderful podcast called Sparkle Stories, I started telling more stories about a brother and sister, Victor and Ella, and their flying house. Even now, I tell stories with my youngest son on our walk to school. These ones are often retellings—sometimes very edited!—of whatever book I’m reading at the moment.
Being surrounded by stories made me feel more comfortable leaning into fiction—and eventually led to the publication of my first short story collection, How to Capture Carbon, which is coming out this month from What Books Press. [ed. note: it’s out now!]
I’m a surfer, and being in the water feels very creative to me (although it probably looks less like creative flow and more like slapstick comedy to anyone who’s seen me on a wave). If I have time, I also like to bake: pies, muffins, bread, cookies, and anything that can be a vehicle for chocolate chips.
What’s changed in your creative life since becoming a caregiver?
I think caregiving has shown me that it is almost impossible for me to function well without help. I was very overwhelmed as a new mother, and I ultimately had to surrender to that feeling and ask for help—which ended up helping me feel more connected to the people around me.
This definitely happened in my personal life. Having to ask my own mom for help with my kids in those early days of parenthood was really challenging for me, but it made us closer. Even today, seeing how she loves and cares for my kids allows me to feel the love she has for me in a way that I wasn’t able to before. I also haven’t always been a group person, but I found that going to mom’s groups when I had babies and toddlers was very supportive when I was struggling. I wouldn’t say that the experience transformed me into someone who loves big-group social activities, but I found that these groups were great places to make a few close friendships.
I think those experiences then made it easier for me to connect with other writers through writing groups and classes, to ask writer friends for advice, to find and work with teachers and mentors, and then to be able to support other writers, which I love. I think caregiving brought out the importance of community in all aspects of my life.
This does not mean my asking for help problem has been solved! Right now, I have these big bruises on the insides of my arms because I was trying to fold up a bike rack on the back of the van and it wouldn’t budge. Did I say yes to any of the people who stopped to see if they could help? Of course not. Because I could do it myself. And I did, eventually, but with bruises. Maybe that’s the lesson—I can do it myself, but it hurts more and it’s not very fun.
What’s changed about your process? About your medium or genre?
I was pregnant during the last year of my MFA program, where I was working on a novel as my thesis. I set it aside after that first baby was born, and then I’d pick it up again, and then—well, I kept having babies.
Having smaller, more unpredictable amounts of time with younger kids steered me toward smaller writing goals, and also smaller reading goals. I love reading short stories, and one of my favorite times of year is when the new edition of the Best American Short Stories comes out. I can read a story while waiting for school to get out, or in between the interviews I do for my freelance work, and still feel swept up in another world.
After having my second son, I also started writing more essays. Suddenly the world felt more tender to me, and I think something of that showed up in my writing. I don’t think you have to have kids for that to happen! But for me, the new connections and openness and vulnerability that came with parenting really deepened my writing.
You don’t know how your work and your life will touch someone else. There is a person out there who needs to hear your voice, to see your art, to experience the gifts that you offer. What you do and who you are will help someone else feel more understood and less alone.
What advice would you give someone who is a caregiver that wants to start a creative practice?
This might sound like advice, but the following are also things that I have to remind myself of all the time: Be gentle with yourself. Small things add up to bigger things. If something feels creative and important to you, it is creative and important. It doesn’t have to look like what anyone else is doing. (I think all of this applies to caregiving, too.)
Here’s another thing that I try to tell myself: You don’t know how your work and your life will touch someone else. There is a person out there who needs to hear your voice, to see your art, to experience the gifts that you offer. What you do and who you are will help someone else feel more understood and less alone.
Cameron Walker is a writer based in California. Her journalism, essays, and fiction have appeared in publications including The New York Times, Hakai, The Missouri Review, and The Last Word on Nothing. She’s won awards for her writing from the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the American Institute of Physics, and Terrain.org. She is the author of the short story collection How to Capture Carbon. She is also the author of National Monuments of the U.S.A., a book for kids beautifully illustrated by Chris Turnham, and of the essay collection, Points of Light: Curious Essays on Science, Nature, and Other Wonders Along the Pacific Coast.
You can find Cameron on Instagram at @applepieandink and at her website www.cameronwalker.net. She has a very occasional Substack. Please come say hello at one of her upcoming events, including the What Books Press launch at Village Well Books in Los Angeles on October 20.
👩🔬 more science writer good creatures 👩🔬
🌟 Core Samples author and climate scientist
on “inefficient efficiency” in writing
🌟 Erin Zimmerman, author of Unrooted: Botany, Motherhood, and the Fight to Save an Old Science, on writing her book while caring for baby twins and how parenting has put work success and failure in perspective
Write More, Be Less Careful is a newsletter about why writing is hard & how to do it anyway. I’m so glad you’re here.
If Write More has helped you in your creative life, you can support me by sharing it online or with a friend, or by pre-ordering my next book, The Good Mother Myth.
I loved this interview! Cameron’s words about caregiving, creativity and navigating life inspired me. I’m looking forward to reading her new book. Thank you!