how to make space for the big mess of a new writing project

or, writing through the messiness of real life

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 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 writing practice in the coming month.

This is not the newsletter I’d planned to write. After two months of being really focused, in both this newsletter and my own writing life, on finishing things—Little Projects in August, then a bunch of small writing projects in September—I’d looked forward to October as a month to make space for the big mess of a new book project. I have lots of research to do, lots of writing and thinking and brainstorming, lots of mapping and taping index cards to the wall in my office to think about the structure of the new project. And I know lots of you out there are in similarly messy stages of your own writing projects—starting a new novel or a new newsletter, deciding what to work on next, fighting through big revisions. (I’m still thinking a great phrase—“finishing getting started”—that

Priscilla Thomas

shared in our discussion thread about what we finished this month. Thank you, Priscilla!)

Instead, I find myself with a slightly different kind of mess than I’d anticipated. My whole family was in Pittsburgh this weekend, for a long-planned 70th birthday party for my mom, which was wonderful—but with the complication that my mom fell and broke her ankle a few days ago and has to have surgery. So in addition to watching our children run through the house and yard like a pack of wild animals, then descend like locusts on huge platters of lasagna and hot dogs, my sisters and I have been trying to figure out what kind of help our parents will need in the coming weeks.

I’m up first, so my beautifully planned couple of weeks of deep reading and thinking will look a little different than I’d planned. Instead of downloading articles and mapping out concepts, I’m cancelling plans and shifting classes online and trying to navigate some tricky healthcare stuff. I’m also working through the emotional fallout of really realizing that my mom, who’s always been the one to show up and take care of all of us, is now moving into a space where she needs care. And of course it’s not just about the right now, which is manageable, but also the what-if and the what-next.

still trying to do my best, even when what’s possible changes

In a community where so many of us are both writers and caregivers, I know that this shifting and juggling of responsibilities will look really familiar to lots of you. And I know that so many of you are managing much more complex care needs with much less help. I’ve been thinking about

Bronwen Tate

’s beautiful recent writing about caring for her dad during his illness; in that linked piece, she describes her use of a commonplace book as a means of reflection. I’ve also been thinking about my interview with novelist Christina Consolino, who told me, that even as she’s raised four children and taken on caregiving responsibilities for a parent with dementia, “I absolutely refuse to not write.”

"though my writing time decreased, my imagination bloomed"

In case you’re in a similarly messy place in your writing life, I thought I’d share a couple ways I’m thinking about trying to keep moving forward with my writing, even when life isn’t going according to plan. The obvious (I hope!) caveat is that none of this as meant as advice to keep hustling when you’re maxed out; there are lots of times when writing (and other things!) takes a totally necessary backseat to life, and if you’re in a moment like that, please take whatever break you need and know that the writing will be waiting for you on the other side.

ways to keep writing through the big mess

• reading, whether it’s for research or for inspiration, is always an important part of my writing process. and one thing I’m working on now is collecting pieces that will help me. I’m also thinking about how to keep those things close to hand—articles on my laptop at the kitchen table, a book and some post-its on the side table in the TV room—so I can easily pick them up when there’s a moment to dive in.

• mapping and making lists. I’ve learned that when I can’t really produce words, I can often do other kinds of thinking work—notes about what I’ve learned from research, lists of categories and concepts, maps of how ideas relate to each other, and so on.

• doing less. Against the pressure to do more and maximize our time, I think doing less is often the way. Instead of listening to a podcast while I’m running errands on doing chores, I’m trying to just leave a little brain space for thinking. That’s even more important in a busy or unsettling time

💬 a question for you 💬

What works for you when you’re diving in to a messy project, or when you’re writing through a messy time in your life? And, on a lighter note: any recs for TV shows to watch with my mom while she’s recovering? (Optimally, something fun and not too racy. We watched Good Girls together a couple summers ago, which was a hair too sexy for my comfort with my mom next to me, but something in that vein would be perfect.)

this month in Write More . . .

✍️ poet and debut YA novelist Rebecca Stafford talked about working through tough feedback and offered some great, practical strategies for overhauling a whole novel.

how to embrace your "grand, spectacular failures"--and rewrite a whole novel on deadline

Rebecca also talked to

Laura Lippman

about moving from poetry to prose, her dream reader, and more:

Rabbit & Juliet & Rebecca

🌟 poet Violeta Garcia-Mendoza talked about the invisibility of writing and mothering and shared her best tips for jumpstarting a writing session

"The mother-artist is a great ghost."

✨ I shared highlights and the recording from our fall planning party, including how to pick your next One Thing, ways to get unstuck, and why celebration is an essential step of the writing process

three steps to finish what we started this fall

and elsewhere on the internet . . .

for

Emily Mohn-Slate

’s Be Where You Are, I wrote about Jenny Odell (always), the Finnish performance artist Pilvi Takala’s project The Trainee, and making space for thinking work in our writing lives

Thinking Work: a guest essay by Nancy Reddy

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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.