How I Return to Real Life After a Long Writing Session
IYKYK
I’ve been working on another longer series of essays (this one on Pride and Prejudice!), which I’ve had to postpone a few times already. Longer essays take more focus than reading goal updates or quick book recommendations, and essay series require commensurately more time, so I can only grind them out in quiet, uninterrupted two-to-three-hour sessions over many months.
Quiet, uninterrupted. Not at my kitchen table between the hours of 6 am and 8 pm. And I’m no night owl. I’m not good for much after 8 pm.
The hardest part of writing is the writing itself. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.
The second hardest part is getting the time to write. Stay-at-home-parents with small babysitting budgets and hard-working, long-working spouses know this. Getting a chunk of time every other week is really good. If you’re writing even more than that, tell me your secrets. (Unless it involves getting up before 6 or staying up past 10; I don’t have that kind of hustle.)
The third hardest part is figuring out how to gracefully re-enter your real life after writing, and it might be the most important part.
Whether you have small kids like I do, or a job that encroaches on your time and mental space, or some other obligation, it’s tough to break out of your writing flow, close the laptop, and reenter a world where people are asking you for help on a project or asking what’s for dinner or simply hollering “BOOGER ALERT!” as they ram their face into your clean pant leg.
I wrote at length about bearing these things cheerfully in my reflections on Catherine des Roches’s poem.
An excerpt: “Rather than resent our interruptions and distractions from the real work we're called to (all phrases I've melodramatically recited to myself), we could find the charm in the "distaff," teasing it as we would an old friend, and reflect on the blessings in the prosaic tasks.”
This temptation to resentment is often strongest when I’m returning home after a few hours of peace and quiet, when I should be most grateful. Rude, I know. I need to remind myself to take some time and adjust my expectations.
Let me share what I’ve learned.
This essay assumes you have kids, have someone you trust to watch your kids, and a quiet place where no one will interrupt you, whether that’s in your own house or somewhere else. I have to go to a coffee shop these days, personally. I hope you’ll find it helpful whatever your life circumstances are.
A good writing session, for me, looks something like this:
I start with about five minutes of reading, which frees me from the mindset that this precious time must squeeze out as many words on the page possible. There are other ways to measure productivity. Reading someone else’s words also helps me calm my usual, frenetic thinking voice and find my calmer writing voice. I might read the book I’m writing an essay on or a bit of non-fiction that won’t distract me from what I hope to write. I don’t usually use this time for the news or reading someone else’s Substack because I do get distracted.
Then I spend ten to thirty minutes on what I’ll call Substack maintenance - tweaking a few things on the website, looking over my scheduled posts and deciding what and when I’ll write next. Basically, this is easy, non-absorbing work that gradually helps me focus on what I want to write today.
The remaining time is spent on the project itself. Whether I’m brainstorming, researching, drafting, or revising, I need a couple of hours of that deep, thinking space - flow - when I can hold the whole project, and nothing but the whole project, in my mind. I forget myself. It’s the sort of energizing happiness I used to get while playing sports or taking walks by myself. It’s good.
Then it’s time to return to real life.
Returning to Real Life:
I jot down any last ideas, especially what I think I’ll need to write next. This will save time when I next get the opportunity for deep work, which will hopefully be soon.
I take another couple of minutes to just feel grateful for the time. In about two hours (or one, if my enterprising two-year-old is especially resourceful today), I will feel just as overwhelmed and exhausted as I did the day before. So just thank God for a moment.
I let my mind wander a little bit while driving home from the coffee shop, just enjoying the silence.
As I turn onto my road, I prepare mentally to give my attention to dinner and laundry and picture books.
I smile in anticipation of the “Mommy onslaught” when all my kids glomp me and make the requests they didn’t make of Daddy or the babysitter.
There
might alsowill definitely be bodily fluids that need immediate intervention.
By now I’m back in the house, and it’s sweet. I like writing in the morning because I haven’t had a chance to have my mood ruined, and because the energy I get from writing can be turned to productivity. However, it happens much more often that I go write in the afternoons and evenings. The good news then is that bedtime is nearer, the return to daily life gentler.
It’s not uncommon that I’ll internally moan on such a day, “I just need a little time to myself!” and then remember that I literally just had some. Quiet time for some non-mom activities is lovely, but it doesn’t exactly “fill my tank.” Calmness and good humor must still be sought throughout the day. Instead of pining for the quiet that I can’t have, I lean into the life I’ve chosen, with all of its chatter, messiness, cuddles, and all-around intensity.
