"Caregiving has completely quieted the angsty existential questions I had in my 20s."

Catherine Newman, author of SANDWICH and WE ALL WANT IMPOSSIBLE THINGS, on the model of "utter graciousness" her mother provided and collecting tidbits from her daily life as a way into writing

Hello there! Welcome to Write More, Be Less Careful, a newsletter about making space for creative practice in a busy life. I’m a poet and an essayist, and my most recent books are the poetry collection Pocket Universe and the anthology The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood, which I edited with the poet Emily Pérez. 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. If you know (or are!) a good creature whose work we should feature, send me an email—you can just reply to this newsletter.

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Today’s interview is with

Catherine Newman

, who you may know from her gorgeous novel We All Want Impossible Things or her memoir Waiting for Birdy, both of which made me cry-laugh-cry so much I simply could not read them in public. (Her newest novel, Sandwich, is out now, and I’m probably cry-laughing reading somewhere as you read this.) Or maybe you know her from her many years of writing the absolute kindest etiquette advice at Real Simple, or her absolutely incredible house tour at Cup of Jo? Or maybe you’ve cooked all the chickpea recipes and made all the mocktails at her lovely newsletter, Crone Sandwich? In any case, if you already know Catherine Newman’s work, I’m sure you’re already excited to hear from her, and if you don’t, you’re in for a treat.

Below, we talk about caring for little kids when they’re sick, collecting bits of conversation and juxtapositions as a way to ease the path into writing, and how the anxiety onslaught of having little kids cured Catherine of her “angsty existential questions.”

Who do you care for?

I care for my partner (55) and our grown-ish children (24 and 21) and my old-ish parents (92 and 87).

What kind of creative work do you do?

I write books and essays and recipes and whatever else anybody will pay me for.

buy Sandwich if you, like Ann Patchett, love a book that makes you laugh continuously and also cry

Is there someone who inspires you that both fosters a creative practice and is a care-giver? Who provided a model for you in terms of combining caregiving and creativity?

When the kids were little and we were so stretched and busy and scrabbling to trade them off back and forth and keep all the many balls and flaming rings in the air all the time while also feeding them nonstop mac and cheese and removing turds from the carpet, they would sometimes get sick—and by “sometimes” I mean “all the time” because of the way little kids are—and I would channel my own mother. She had this gracious way of taking care of us that made us feel not like we were a problem to solve but like we were permanent treasures in need of some temporary coddling. She’d bring us poached eggs on toast on a tray or she’d buy our favorite popsicles (Wacky Pops) or even a pack of butter-rum Lifesavers because she had this mantra, which I think is uniquely British: “A little of what you fancy does you good.” We’d watch hours of Green Acres and The Price Is Right and she’d check on us and put a cool hand to our foreheads, and I felt completely safe.

I thought about this a lot when the kids were small and ill: the fact that they were unwell people whose lives I could brighten, and not just an unruly puzzle piece that wasn’t fitting into my day. I thought about this, too, when my best friend was dying—that what she often needed was a lot of little treats and a certain quality of attention that looked more like me quietly mending socks by her bedside than scrolling on my phone (I wrote a novel about that experience).

I also, in hindsight, see that there were 2 major differences between my mom and me: 1) She’s English (I’m only ½ English and also ½ New York Jew, which is a very different caretaking ethos that is way bossier and involves a certain sweet and eggy preparation called gogl-mogl); 2) She didn’t work outside the house at the time that we were sick little kids—even though caregiving was itself a creative practice for her, and one she was brilliant at. So I’m aware of how I may have held myself to impossible standards, and yet still I’m so glad I had the model of utter graciousness. And because what I’ve always written about is actually the caregiving itself, there’s never been a disconnect between caregiving and creative work. In fact, it’s been completely the opposite. 

and oh my goodness, do yourself a favor and buy We All Want Impossible Things (Catherine’s previous novel) immediately, if you haven’t already

Is there something specific you do to jumpstart creativity?

I try to write down all the funny or interesting things from my daily life—odd conversations or utterances, painful ironies or comedic juxtapositions—and when I’m ready to write something (an essay, say, or even a novel), I print these out and start thinking about what the story they’re telling might be. The novelist Carolyn Chute, who wrote, among other things, The Beans of Egypt Maine, once said in an interview that she writes by gathering ornaments and then figuring out the shape of the tree she wants to hang them on (that’s not an exact quote), and I think that’s what I do too. This has been an ideal practice for me as a creative caregiver because it means I get to mine my life and relationships for material rather than needing to retreat to a separate space where I am creating entire worlds. Another word for this is cheating.

❤️️if you find Catherine and our other good creatures inspiring, click the red heart at the top or the bottom of the page to help other creative caregivers find us!❤️️

What has caregiving given you / taken away from you?

Caregiving has completely quieted the angsty existential questions I had in my 20s. My kids were born alongside a clear and absolute raison d'être (pardon my French), and that raison d'être was keeping them alive. But also, because it was so consuming—the having of babies—I thought about it a lot, and some of this thinking was just chaotic, amorphous, pointless postpartum anxiety (They’re going to die. I’m going to drop them down the stairs. They’re going to choke on an acorn. They’re going to die.) and some of this thinking was more like what you’d call actual ideas, and which seeded much of my writing about parenthood. What caregiving took away from me was my sense of myself as a person who did not suffer from a mental illness called generalized anxiety disorder. I just laughed writing that, but it is literally true.

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Catherine Newman is the author of the memoirs Catastrophic Happiness and Waiting for Birdy, the middle-grade novel One Mixed-Up Night, the kids’ craft book Stitch Camp, the best-selling how-to books for kids How to Be a Person and What Can I Say?, and the novels We All Want Impossible Things, and Sandwich. She has been a regular contributor to the New York Times, Real Simple, O, The Oprah Magazine, Cup of Jo, and many other publications. She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Catherine is on tour for her new book Sandwich and you can find out where she’s headed (and how cute her cats are) on Instagram at @catherinenewman or, ideally (if she remembers to update it) on her website catherinenewmanwriter.com. (I’m hoping to see her in Manasquan on June 25, so if you’re going to be there, too, or could be persuaded to come hang out, let me know!) She also writes the Crone Sandwich newsletter on Substack, which (ed. note!) you should subscribe to immediately.

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