Writer Mother Monster: Amy Shearn, “Growing a person in my guts. That’s bananas.”

“Growing a person in my guts. That’s bananas.”
Amy Shearn is the author of the novels Unseen City, The Mermaid of Brooklyn, and How Far Is the Ocean From Here and lives in Brooklyn with her children ages 9 and 11. In this episode, Amy talks about giving up on perfection, how divorce has impacted her writing, practicing stoicism, and how “bananas” it is “to grow a person in your guts.” Find out how a woman at a playground inspired Amy’s second book.

Writer Mother Monster is an interview series devoted to dismantling the myth of having it all and offering writer-moms solidarity, support, and advice. 

Transcript

Writer Mother Monster: Interviews with Authoresses, hosted by Lara Ehrlich

Guest: Amy Shearn

Interview: October 15, 2020

Amy Shearn is the author of the novels Unseen City, The Mermaid of Brooklyn, and How Far Is the Ocean From Here. She is a senior editor at Forge and a fiction editor at Joyland, and her work has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Literary Hub, and many other publications. Amy has an MFA from the University of Minnesota, and lives in Brooklyn with her two children.

Lara Ehrlich  

Hi, I'm Lara Ehrlich, coming to you live from Writer, Mother Monster, a new series about writer moms. With me today is Amy Shearn, author of the novels Unseen City, The Mermaid of Brooklyn, and How Far Is the Ocean From Here. She's a senior editor at Forge, a fiction editor at Joyland, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, Slate, Literary Hub, and many other publications. She has an MFA from the University of Minnesota, and she lives in Brooklyn with her two children. So, with no further ado, welcome, Amy, and thank you so much for joining us.

Amy Shearn  

Thank you so much for having me.

Lara Ehrlich  

So, you are our first guest on this new series! Thank you also for being my guinea pig tonight. 

Amy Shearn  

I'm so happy to be. It also means I can't be your worst guest. This is great news for me.

Lara Ehrlich

You would never be the worst guest. You and I already had an event together a couple of weeks ago now. We're both authors for Red Hen Press, and your book just came out and is getting wonderful reviews. So, Amy, just to start, why don't you tell us where you’re from and a bit about your family.

Amy Shearn  

Oh, like my current family?

Lara Ehrlich  

Tell us about your kids, since we're both writer moms.

Amy Shearn  

I'm like, “How far back do I need to go?” Well, I live here in Brooklyn, New York. And much to my surprise, I've lived here for 15 years now, although I'm originally from the Midwest, from a suburb of Chicago called Highland Park. I feel like it's really important to name the suburb because real Chicago people are like, “You're from Chicago? Really? Where? City? Or suburbs?” Just to be clear, I just say that up front. I have two awesome kids, a 9-year-old son and an 11-year-old daughter, which I think are really fascinating ages. And they both seem to be writers.

Lara Ehrlich    

I have a 4-year-old myself, so I know you remember that stage. And we can talk about that, as well: having a very young child while writing your first two novels.

Amy Shearn  

Yeah, it’s such a different ballgame. I remember with one of my 4-year-olds talking to their pre-K teacher and the teacher saying, “The thing about 4-year-olds is they’re sociopaths. And that's okay. That’s the developmental stage. And then they're about to learn all the social cues and, you know, some system of sort of rough ethics and things like that, but they're not there yet.” It's a wild age. 

I kind of at every age, this is the most fascinating. Wow, this is the best one. Well, I don't always think it's the best one. But then they get a little older, and I'm like, no, this is the most fascinating age. Your own kids are very interesting to you.

Lara Ehrlich  

Yeah, I have the same thought, as well. I'm like, “When will she not be cute?” There might be a time when she won't be cute, but so far, I haven't found it.

Amy Shearn    

Yeah, you're still in the era where just everything they say is cute—because they're saying it.

Lara Ehrlich   

We have a lot to talk about, with our kids. But first, you’re also an editor.

Amy Shearn   

Yeah, I'm an editor at an online publication called Forge, which is part of Medium. Forge is a personal development publication, so I write and edit content to help people live their best life and improve as people, which is really interesting. It's a really good space to be in, especially right now with everything that's going on. It feels really nice to have my work be trying to help people feel better. 

It's funny, because I got an MFA in creative writing, and I thought that I would probably end up teaching, because that was just what all the writers I knew did. It just seemed like the job that writers had. And then I moved to New York and found that I couldn't really afford to teach, actually. And also, I found it really, really super draining. I’m fine for a couple hours in the classroom, and then I'm like, I need a nap in a quiet room for three days. I guess maybe you get used to it. But I kind of stumbled into editing, which, as it turns out, is a great path for me. I feel like editing makes you a better writer. And writing makes you a better editor. So, it's a good combo.

Lara Ehrlich  

Can you share one of your favorite pieces of advice from your work at Forge? What have you discovered about how we can be taking care of ourselves during a pandemic?

Amy Shearn  

Well, you know what is funny? Something that's really super popular among the readers of our publication is stoicism—anything that has to do with the ancient philosophy, but also the modern iteration of stoicism. I've worked at Forge for one year, and for months I was just like, “Ew, stoicism—why? It's so boring. And it just seems so male, like it’s telling you not to have emotions or something.” 

I thought, “I don't know why people are so into this.” Then, my fellow staff members asked me to write about stoicism, so this summer, I did a deep dive and ended up writing a feature about stoicism and actually finding it super useful. Stoicism is knowing what you can control and what you can't control and looking at the world and looking at your life and saying, “Okay, what's happening right now? What am I feeling about it? This thing that's causing me stress—is it something I can control? And if not, can I deal with my own emotions about it and just sort of surrender a little bit? And if it is something I can control, then I adjust and deal with it.” 

There's a lot more to stoicism than that—but that whole question of the practice of just giving up what you can't control is so useful in this time when there's so much that's crazy and stressful and that I really am not in control of, as powerful as I am. So that's, I have to admit, super helpful.

Lara Ehrlich    

Yeah, helpful for everyone, I think, but especially mothers! That's a great segue into the writer-mother conversation. As a woman, at least, I feel like I always need to be in control of everything, like our day jobs and our families. We have to make sure that our kids have their doctors’ appointments and their lunches and all the things we need to take care of as moms. And then the writing time—because it's for yourself, it's a personal act—tends to be the thing that falls off the priority list as writer moms. Is that something you’ve found? That's my personal experience, but tell me a little bit about yours and how you prioritize all of these different balls in the air.

Amy Shearn  

Yeah, I mean, I think it's hard, right? As a mother and as sort of like a contemporary, creative class, urban mother, I feel like there's a certain kind of mothering you're supposed to do. You need to be in control and on top of everything. And of course, that doesn't have to be the mother, but every heterosexual couple I know has that dynamic. And you're also expected to do all these things at such a high level—you're supposed to work like you don't have kids and parent like you don't work. And then if you have creative work, too, that's like another layer. Honestly, something that helped me with that was having my whole life just be forced off the rails—which I wouldn't necessarily recommend, but in the last year, I've lived through this pandemic with all of y'all, but I also separated from my husband, moved out, and I am in a different place now. I co-parent my kids with my ex. So many bananas things happened all at once.

Lara Ehrlich  

You had to give up some control.

Amy Shearn  

Right. I'm just doing what I can to do my best. So there's that—that's a technique if anyone wants to try it. And then also, I think just being forgiving of yourself. Something that's helped me is being aware of how much my daughter—and my son—is watching me, thinking about the kind of woman and mother I want her to be or feel like she has to be. I would never want her to grow up and think, “Oh my God, I have to do everything perfectly.” That is so stifling. 

If you're a creative person, so much of being creative is giving up control and letting a little bit of wildness in sometimes. My kids really have loved the past few weeks, because I've been super busy with the book launch and a big thing at work, and they were like, “Wow, our lunches lately have been awesome!” My daughter actually said, “I'm really into your benign neglect.” 

They know that I love them more than anything, and that they're my most important priority, but they also know that I have other stuff going on in my life and that adults have things and that even moms have other things that they're doing. Like my son said to me recently, “I feel like your job is your job. But your writing is your profession” They can see that because they see me making it a priority. And they know it's a part of my life.

Lara Ehrlich  

It’s helpful to have that solidarity, to hear that the balance is hard, and that sometimes things go off the rails and we lose control. The only thing we can do is the best we can. Our kids don't know the level of perfection we're shooting for—they can only live their experience—so as long as they're safe and happy and we're giving them a good example, maybe that's sufficient.

Amy Shearn  

Our kids are watching all of us live through a crazy time, and they're learning from us. So, if we're like, “Oh, okay, this is what I can control, this is what I can't control, this is how I deal with the stress,” that's what they're learning. It's totally fair to have emotions in front of our kids and to be like, “Hey, I'm juggling a lot right now, and these things are important to me and here's why.” It gives them permission to have things that are important to them, too, and to value and prioritize their own passions, their own professions.

Lara Ehrlich  

I still have those conversations with my daughter who's four. I don't think she's too young for that. I think it’s important to respect these little people enough to say, “This is my work,” or “This is my writing, and it's important to me. It makes me who I am, and it validates me as a person, as a woman, as a writer. I want you to know that it's important, but not more important than you”

Amy Shearn  

When kids are readers themselves, or if they take in any media, I think it's fair to say, “Somebody had to make this and put a lot of work into it, and it doesn't just appear. And if you want there to be cool things in the world, somebody's got to take time making them—and maybe that means that week they didn't bake you some muffins or something.”

Lara Ehrlich

And to show them the end product I gave a copy of my book to my daughter and said, “Look, it's dedicated to you. I wrote this for you and your name’s in here.” And she was just thrilled with that. She’ll probably understand that a lot more as she gets older. 

Amy Shearn  

Unseen City is not dedicated to my kids—it’s dedicated to my parents—and my kids were like, “What the hell?” I’m like, ”The last one was dedicated to you guys!” And they were like, “Okay, we want the next one, too.” I was like, “Alright. We’ll talk.”

Lara Ehrlich  

Have they read your books?

Amy Shearn  

They're still a little young, but they both made a big show of Unseen City, being like, “I'm gonna read this.” I feel like the best moment of my life was when they were going through together and just picking out all the swear words. I was like, “I raised you right, and this is amazing.” They're just like, “Ah, I found another one!” And my son, the littler one, was, like, “I'm gonna read this whole thing.” And he was sitting down, he was really reading through it. And then he was like, “I don't really find this that interesting.” 

I was like, “You know what? You're not totally the audience. Maybe, maybe give it a couple years.” I don't know why they would find it interesting. But they're very supportive. And they're very aware. If we go to a bookstore and they see my book, they’re really excited about it. It’s cool to see them be excited about it.

Lara Ehrlich  

Before you became a mother, what preconceptions did you have about writing and motherhood?

Amy Shearn 

It's such a good question. And it's something that I know from our previous conversations that you thought about a lot. And I feel like maybe I actually didn't think enough about it. I didn't think very clearly about it. I was a writer before I was a mother. I had gone to graduate school, my first book had been published—actually, I found out I was pregnant with my daughter the day after my first book came out, which was amazing. So, I think that helped a little bit. 

I think before people have been published, particularly women, we have a hard time calling ourselves writers or justifying writing time if no one has ever seen the result of the work. And so, it really helped me in those first few years. In the back of my head, I knew I had a book, but that book isn't the world, and someday I'll have another one. I think that gave me a little bit of permission to write the second book. I feel like it's always a leap of faith. 

It's always hard, especially when you have little kids and a partner who has needs too. I was home with my kids when they were really little. And then on the weekend, I'd say to my partner, “Okay, cool, you're home, I need to go take some time to write.” And no one's ever really happy to hear that. Everybody wants you to be the mom and wife who's home and doing stuff for them. And it's hard. It's really easy to fall into that trap of like, “Oh, yeah, I shouldn't be so selfish and take time away from the family and work on the book.” But I feel like I was often able to justify it because I get really crabby when I'm not writing. It’s actually better for everyone. 

But to more clearly answer your question: I did have a very clear plan about how I was going to keep writing after I was a mother. I would recommend this: If you're going to have kids, sit down with your partner and have a real conversation. This is so hard to do, but tell them, “I am going to need this much time to work on my writing. When are we going to make this happen?” That's such a privileged thing to say, but I think it probably would have been smart to do that. 

I had a couple years of having a baby and working on a book and just fitting in the writing time whenever when she was napping or when I could get someone to watch her for a couple hours and feeling guilty about it the whole time. That was not a good plan.

Lara Ehrlich  

I'm very, very lucky to have a very supportive husband who wants to give me that time and encourages me to take it. He was the one who said, “We need to make sure you take time for writing. This is important.” And I was the one who, when my daughter was born, held myself back from doing that. I think your word selfish is a very apt one. Maybe this is a female thing, ut we feel selfish for taking that time. I think it goes back to the point that unless you already have a book contract that you're writing toward and you have accountability in that way, it does feel like a personal venture. It's something you do by yourself in a room, something that's just for you. And if you don't have that book contract where you're getting paid at the end, it feels selfish, even when it's not, and that's very hard to combat. How do you deal with that feeling of selfishness?

Amy Shearn  

I think it's so important to have someone in your corner who you can delegate to check you on that. For you, it sounds like that's your partner, and that's lucky and very convenient. I have some very supportive writer friends who I do not know how I would survive without. They’ll talk me down and be like, “No, this isn't selfish. You know that you are a writer and you need to write. Don't be stupid, just do it.” 

For the past few years, I've been connected with this amazing group of women writers and artists. A couple times a year, we'll all coordinate a DIY writing residency inspired by Lenka Clayton, an artist who started the Artist Residency in Motherhood. She has a website where she has all the materials to do your own DIY writing residency, and it's so helpful. She literally has signs you can print out. I have my card. [Reading from residency card]: “I aim to embrace the fragmented mental focus, exhaustion, nap-length studio time and countless distractions of parenthood as well as the absurd poetry of time spent with young children as my working materials and situation, rather than obstacles to be overcome.”

Lara Ehrlich  

I love that.

Amy Shearn  

I have it right here, so I don't forget. It’s important to have that support, whether it's signing yourself up for a residency and making yourself accountable or connecting with a group of other creative friends or just having someone who will check you if you're getting wrapped up in your bullshit, because it's so easy to see in someone else. Like: “You need to do your work. Why wouldn't you?” That's not selfish. Sometimes you need like that outside voice, I think to remind you.

Lara Ehrlich  

This is kind of like a therapy session thing to say, but I ask myself what I’d tell a writer friend. Would I tell her, “You're being selfish. You should never take the time to work on your book”? Or would I say, “Of course you should take that time to do on your creative work. That's just as important as your day job or your children or your spouse”?

I love the recommendation to do a retreat in that way, whether it’s going to a formal retreat—or, something that I've started doing, just get an Airbnb for a night, just in the town over. I spend the whole time in the room, and it's just mine. Something about having that place that's a dedicated time and place makes you buckle down and just plow through as much work as you possibly can.

Amy Shearn  

What I've done a couple times as part of the Artist Residency in Motherhood is to connect with a couple other friends and just plan the weekend. I don't think we've ever rented an Airbnb. It's always been at someone’s house. A friend who's a great novelist very good at locating these places will call me and be like, “Okay, my friend is not in their house on Long Island for this week, and we can have it for free.” And then she's also very good about snacks, which, if you've ever been to an established residency, being fed is kind of the best part. Not having to think about food is so important. 

There's something about that, especially if you've been doing that mother writing thing of scribbling when the baby's down for a second or waiting in line at the Y to register for toddler ballet. When you're used to buying time and finding time wherever you can get it, to have even two days—or even an entire day—of uninterrupted focus … it's like a drug. It's the best.

Lara Ehrlich 

Yes, I had other writer friends tell me before I had a child that their focus turned laser after they had kids, because when they had that time and space, it was like, “Okay, time to work,” and they were not distracted by anything. I find the same thing. If I have that time that I've devoted to writing, it's like, “Nope, don't want to stop for lunch. Don't want to take a shower. I'm just gonna sit here and work.”

Amy Shearn  

Oh, totally. Someone asked me, “How do you keep from getting distracted or blocked in your writing time?” I was like, “I can't. I don't have enough time to get distracted or to procrastinate.”

Lara Ehrlich  

How has your writing changed since you became a mother? 

Amy Shearn  

Ifeel like in the same way being a mother changes you as a person, or changed me as a person, it sharpened my empathy in a way that for a couple years after having my first baby, I couldn't read or see anything scary or violent. It was just like, “That's somebody's baby”—even if it's a schlocky horror movie or something. All of a sudden, you’re going around the world like, everyone is somebody’s baby. It gives me this intense empathy for everyone. 

I don't think I was a mean person before I had kids, but I remember getting that note in workshops—"I don't think you love all your characters”—and being like “What?” And now I get it. I really do love my character in a really intense way. It’s like my empathy muscles got stronger. 

Also, something I think is hard about writing as a mother is that your goal as a mother is to make things nice and take care of people and make things pleasant—but in writing, it’s much better if you’re not doing that, if you’re not trying to be pleasant. You’re trying to be as honest and real as possible. I find it slightly harder to get there. Now I actually think it's coming back a little bit, getting to that more untamed place.

Lara Ehrlich  

Is there a scene from one of your books that you could point to that was really difficult to get into that mental space for?

Amy Shearn  

The very beginning of Unseen City. It was really important to me that this character was trying to find her own way in life and not trying to live life the way people expect a woman to. She's never been married, she never wants to be married, she doesn't want to become a mother, and she's really adamant about that. That stuff was hard to write. At the time, I was a wife and a mother. A little part of me was like, people are gonna read this and be mad at me, because my character is like this. But I knew that was important for her, and I had to get her there, even if it didn't feel polite. 

And actually, a lot of The Mermaid of Brooklyn—which I wrote when my kids were littler and I was married—when you have to answer to a spouse, it's hard to write certain stuff. That character is a very stressed-out mother of two children. I was like, “Oh, no, people are gonna think this is me, and my kids are gonna read this and think that he didn't like them or something.” As it turns out, people think your main character is you, no matter what. It's a thing that they do, and you just can't fight it. It's a little insulting because there's this subtext of, “How could a woman really create something from scratch? Obviously, she's just writing about herself.” And then there's a little bit of like, of course, every character is you. It's ridiculous. Every single character from every book I've written came out of my head. I invented them all. It's all made up. So of course, that's part of it.

Lara Ehrlich  

Yeah, it's a weird dichotomy, isn't it? At one of the first events I did for Animal Wife, I felt like I had to say, because my parents and my daughter were watching, “I want everyone to know that I love my daughter and I love my parents. I do not want to leave my family, even though many of my characters do.” You feel like you need to make that apology for yourself, which is problematic. And I would say it's not just kind of insulting, it's very insulting that women get asked that question and men often don't—how much of that character is you, what part is autobiographical—particularly when it comes to sex scenes and things. Like, do really want to know? Why are you asking me that question?

Amy Shearn  

Boring question, right? You're not interesting. That’s for you to think about, I guess.

Lara Ehrlich  

Yeah. If you must, I guess.

Amy Shearn  

Something that helps me when I get stuck in that place is I think about my ideal reader. For Mermaid, I was like, “Alright, it's a little scary to write about an unhinged mother,” but what gave me the idea for the book was being at the playground, next to another mother with our little, teeny babies—they must have been like, eight months old, like just old enough to sit in the swing and also let us have a conversation. 

The other mother said, “I want to read a novel about a mom like me, a mom I can relate to. And I feel like I can't find this book that I want. I want a book that's really honest, and honest about the great things about motherhood and the crazy things about motherhood. Especially in that early stage of motherhood, when it is still about you, and your identity has changed. And you're not actually dealing with the kid as a kid yet.”

I was like, “I'm gonna write that book for her.” And she never knew that she inspired this whole book. I think about the reader out there who needs this book, or who will be moved by this book, and I think about the times I've connected with a book and didn't know the author—which is the majority of books—there’s that amazing intimacy of that relationship between the writer and the reader who never meet each other. It’s almost otherworldly. And it’s why I wanted to write in the first place, so I feel like I have to remember that. I have to remember the lovely people that I work with and the other moms at school who are like, “Oh, I read your book!” I’m like, “Oh, thank you—let’s not talk about it anymore.” That's the vast majority of the people who will encounter your writing, and it's not for them. I mean, it is, and it's great when they read it and are nice about it, but for me as a person. it's like a different part of me that's being tapped into. Do you know, I mean?

Lara Ehrlich  

Yes. And I love that story about the mother at the swing set. What was the feeling you wanted to tap into when writing that book, specifically? 

Amy Shearn  

Well, full disclosure, partial disclosure, she was talking about another book she had just read that was very popular at the time. This was 2009, 2010, and the book was about Brooklyn moms and was supposedly the “Brooklyn mom book.” I remember that book. I read it and was like, “These are very glamorous moms. They’re just having sex all the time and they're super chic and what the hell? Like, I'm a real Brooklyn mom, and I'm losing my goddamn mind.” 

The woman at the playground had had a career that she really cared about. She chose to be home with her baby, and she was already like, “I love this baby so much, but this is not what I was trained for my entire adult life.” She was particularly neurotic. She was like, “I love my kids so much, I love being a mom so much, and I also feel like I'm losing my mind. I don't know what's happening to me. I don't know what the rest of my life and identity is going to be like. Raising kids in the city is bananas. I don't know if it's great. I don't know if it’s good. This is so hard on my marriage, and what the hell?” 

I had had this idea in my head for a while. I'd actually written it as an essay in graduate school, and very smart friend of mine, Amanda Fields, read the essay and said, “This is a novel, not an essay.” It turns out, she was right. 

There’s a family story that my great-grandmother had been depressed, had been standing on a bridge, took her shoes off, and was going to jump into the water and then looked at her shoes and was like, “No, I love those shoes. I don't want to lose those. I don't want anyone else in those shoes. I'm not gonna jump.” 

She had a very troubled life and actually married and divorced the same man twice, which I just think is fascinating. She was from Eastern Europe, Lithuania area. I had tried to write an essay about that family story and the mermaids in Eastern European folklore. They're not nice mermaids. They're mean, scary mermaids who seduce sailors and then kill them. I was trying to weave together these storylines. And then when I talked to this mom, it made perfect sense, like I’m living in this weird world of Park Slope, Brooklyn, parenting, which feels like a novel itself, it's so off-the-wall. This woman with her shoes, this weird relationship, mermaids—it all makes sense.

Lara Ehrlich  

That's fascinating. The book I'm working on now is about a mother and sirens and the dark side of mermaids—the ones who destroy sailors. What do you think it is about sirens that lend themselves to stories about mothers?

Amy Shearn  

Well, I think you already know this because in your book Animal Wife, there are so many transforming characters and half-person, half-animal mythical creatures, fairytale creature types. That makes total sense to me, because there's something so weird and transformative about motherhood, and also physically transformative in a way that's so weird. I mean, I don't know if everyone is like this, but for me, I was like, “This is crazy. This is really how we propagate this species? This is nuts!” I think part of that dissonance is that we live the way many of us live, so disconnected from our mammal selves. I was at work at an office today, not seeing any sunlight or breathing air and staring at a computer and also growing a person in my guts. That's bananas. Like, I just couldn't get over it the whole time. Well, the second pregnancy, I was over it—like, “Right, right, right, it’s a miracle, yeah.”

But it's so weird, the way it transforms your body and the way you become so aware of yourself as an animal. Nursing babies is so nuts. That puts you in touch with that animal part of you, and you're so connected and you're transforming and then watching a baby grow and transform into a child is the most fascinating thing. 

Stories like that—half person, half animals—they make total sense to me. It's like metaphors. You have that great story in Animal Wife about the woman who wants to become a deer and builds an exoskeleton for herself. And I've written a short story about a woman who's half person, half goat and lives in New York City and is just trying to figure it out like any of us. She just happens to be a fawn. It’s like a woman who's trying to deal with the wildness inside her and domesticate it and be like, “No, no, no, I'm not a wild animal—I'm a totally normal lady just living.” Your woman's the opposite, trying to un-domesticate herself.

Lara Ehrlich  

Do you feel like that, as a mother? I often do. I feel a sense of wild restlessness, but then I have to, like, make dinner and clean the toilet.

Amy Shearn  

Yeah, totally, yeah. I don't know if it's universal feeling, but I feel like it's definitely something that a lot of people have. And there's this great book called Norma Jean the Termite Queen from 1975 about a mother who kind of does just that. She's like, “I can't take it anymore!” And kind of takes off. 

There’s a Facebook group I was in, in those years when my kids were toddlers, and someone posted, “Am I crazy? Does anyone just kind of want to get in the car and drive away sometimes, or just like take a walk and just keep walking away?” And everyone was like, “Oh my god, yes. I thought it was just me.” 

I felt so much shame about this. I don't even know if that's motherhood so much as domestic life, especially when the kids were little. The parenting part is great. But it's the other stuff that's a real drag. In my relationship, a problem with division of labor that maybe other people have figured out better, but I'm just like, “I used to have a career and I have a master's degree, and here I am just cleaning up after everyone all the time.” In my friend Siobhan Adcock’s great novel The Barter, there's a scene where a mother who's in that very situation is just like, “Here I am, putting the same slightly damp sippy cup on the same shelf, just like I did yesterday, just like I’m going to tomorrow.” I think about that image all the time. The domestic stuff is so stultifying and boring. Who wouldn't want to run away from that?

Lara Ehrlich  

No, it's true. Have you read Elena Ferrante’s Days of Abandonment about a mother trapped in her apartment with her two kids?

Amy Shearn  

I have. It’s such a nightmare. 

Lara Ehrlich  

Yes, and it's all so mysterious, in that you don't know if her breakdown is physical and if her lock really breaks and she can't get out, or if it's mental and she just can't remember how to unlock her door. It’s so relatable in that she's walking through her apartment like, “Okay, I need to make a phone call to get the lock fixed.” And on the way there she has to pick up clothes to put in the laundry, and then at the laundry, she's like, “Oh, but here's some broken glass on the floor. Oh, but before I do that, I need to do this”—and she never gets to where she's trying to go. There is this sense of all the domestic clutter getting in the way of a pretty simple goal: just getting out of her apartment.

Amy Shearn  

You're making me think of this great book called Forty Rooms, by Olga Grushin. It's about this woman who is a poet and has all this promise—her teachers have all this excitement about her future as a poet and she has all this excitement about her potential as a poet—and she has this almost mystical ability to summon spirits and talk to this muse that appears almost like a ghost. But she also wants to get married and have kids. So, she does, and they obtain this beautiful house—and she's really into her house—but then, over the course of the book, she starts to realize, and you start to realize, that the house is becoming her creative work and is taking all of the juice out of her. 

She has a moment where she's like, “Wait a minute, am I just a totally ordinary person just in a house now? What happened to this art I used to have? What happened to this connection to this other realm, this great gift I used to have of these things speak through me?” It’s really sad, but I think it really captures that thing that can happen and that we’re all kind of worried about, because every mother writer I know is working through this. My hope is that we're figuring out how to evolve slightly, and our daughters will have an easier time being able to balance these things and be able to be a mother and not feel trapped in a room or house or something.

Lara Ehrlich  

We really are conditioned to feel like we can manage all of these things at the same time. The subhead of this series is “Dismantling the myth of having it all.” Because it is a myth. We grow up thinking: “Now we're liberated women, we can have careers and families and passions—all the things we want, if we just work hard enough.” Then we find that, yes, we might have all those things, but we feel like everything is crashing down on us, and we can't be 100 percent everywhere. We feel like we’re failing in various places. I think the word evolve is so important. We are evolving women’s rights, but the systems in place to support us in that evolution are not evolving with us.

Amy Shearn  

It's not really fair to say our daughters will have it figured out because sure, they will. The structures that are in place just make it impossible—like the fact that, for so many people, childcare costs in this country cost more than their income. And we're in a moment right now where there are historic numbers of women dropping out of the workplace because they can't manage kids being at home and manage home schooling. Whether it's finances or the patriarchy or whatever, the husband's career is being prioritized. And that's not a failing on the part of those women; the system has failed.

Lara Ehrlich  

And just to remind all of our listeners who might be feeling this way that we are in a global pandemic, and it's unprecedented. So why are we beating ourselves up for not accomplishing enough in a time that no one has ever lived through? No one living right now has been through a period like this, so there's no precedent for it. But that said, in the next couple of minutes that we have, let's talk about a couple really easy things that we’ve found—because we both have careers, we both have families, and we both have published books—for women to prioritize their writing. What can we do?

Amy Shearn  

I'm cheating slightly, because for me, the pandemic has coincided with me moving into my own place—it happened right before the pandemic—and co-parenting. I know this isn't totally practical, but I truly believe that every couple should co-parent as if they are divorced and have 50/50 custody. It's the first time since I've had kids that I've felt like I have the time and the bandwidth for everything. And it's because they have to be somewhere else every other weekend. And, yes, I miss them when they're not here, but I have every other weekend to myself, so I almost feel bad talking to my parent friends who are freaking out, saying “This is terrible—I never have a minute to myself!” And I'm like, “Oh, I do. It's great. I really recommend it. I feel so much better. I always know that some time is coming to catch up on work.” Because the rest of the world is pretty shut down, it's really easy to like prioritize writing in that time. 

But in a more practical way: quarantine life reminds me of when I was home with toddlers. I didn’t have any childcare or anything, so it was just that compressed time all together, being stuck in the apartment or the house or whatever. Something that helped me in those times was if I didn’t have a space of my own, and I couldn't carve out time during the day, it was a matter of chipping away where there’s some give, where I can create some time and space for myself. In those years, it was early morning time. For a couple years, I’d go to bed when the kids went to bed, and then woke up at 4:30 or 5, just knowing that the next few hours are mine and making that like sacred time.

There’s a line from Norma Jean the Termite Queen where she's talking about TV—which now seems super wholesome. The character turns on the TV so the kids will watch it and she can do her work, and she says, “Sometimes you absolutely have to forget that their brains are being destroyed so that your brain can survive”—or something like that. Just finding that time, whatever it is. For some people, it’s after their kids go to bed. 

Something else that helps is being really not precious about the amount of time you have. If you just tell yourself, “Alright, I'm gonna write for 15 minutes”— maybe it's gonna be 15 minutes, but maybe it ends up being more. It's easier to commit to that when you're tired or there’s a pile of laundry. I’m gonna face the other way from the laundry that needs to be done and just give myself at least 15 minutes. 

And also, I signed on very early in my parenting career to outsourcing everything. What can be delivered? What can be ordered? What can someone else do? I’m not gonna be precious about that. Let’s just minimize my work.

Lara Ehrlich  

I think that's great. That's a lot of wonderful advice. One of the parts that you said might not be relatable, the part where you co-parent and alternate weekends, I think is relatable. You’re saying you don't have to write every day; you can find a chunk of time that can be just yours—whether your partner takes your child for two hours, or you go away to an Airbnb for two days, or you get up really early while they're sleeping or stay up really late—it's not about, as you said, being precious, like, “Every day starting at 4 PM, I will write 50 pages.” It’s about cherishing that time and saying, “I will prioritize my writing. I will take this time and claim it.” 

Amy Shearn  

Also, not getting too attached to the ritual. People love the idea that there's like some writing routine that you can set yourself up with and that then it'll be like a magic formula—like it’s gonna be 5 AM every day and I’m gonna light a candle and I’m gonna do this and I’m gonna write 1,000 words or whatever it is. If that helps you, that’s great, but the problem with that is if you don’t do it one day, or it gets ruined or interrupted, then it’s easy to say it’s not working and now I can’t do this. I think you have to give yourself the permission to have your writing time be different every day. I don't write my own stuff every day. I just don't. I do write in big chunks on weekends. There’s no right way to do it.

Lara Ehrlich  

We've come full circle now to giving up control. It's giving up control over those rituals and the preciousness and instead leaning into the fact that your writing life is messy. Sometimes you're writing next to laundry, and sometimes you're writing in an Airbnb, and sometimes you're dictating to yourself while you're driving to your kid’s dance lesson.

Amy Shearn  

Sarah Ruhl has this great book called 100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write. They're really great. They're all these really short little ideas. In one of the first ones, she writes about how she can't write these essays because her children are constantly interrupting her. And then she writes about having this moment of revelation where she realized, wait—life is not interrupting the work; life is the work. This is the work. This is part of it. This is my life that I'm writing about, which I feel like can be really liberating.

Lara Ehrlich  

Absolutely. I think I need to go read that book right now. And it's a wonderful place for us to close on. Thank you so much, Amy, for joining us. Where will you be next?

Amy Shearn  

Oh, good question. Things are calming down a little bit for me now. After this, I'm doing a craft talk about setting in writing on Oct. 26, through The Resort, a great, co-working and writing space in Long Island City in Queens, and they're doing all this online programming. And then in November, you and I are doing a panel for Politics and Prose with some other great Red Hen Press writers about crushes and writing, which is my favorite. We’ll come up with a December thing. It’s gonna be great.

Lara Ehrlich  

Sounds good!

Amy Shearn  

And your book is a book that all mothers and humans should read. It's a very good, wild mother book.

Lara Ehrlich  

Thank you so much. And thank you to everyone who has been with us tonight on various platforms. We really appreciate you tuning in. We will post the recording and have this talk on social media so you can catch it again. You can watch it every night if you want to or share it with other writer minds.

Amy Shearn  

Just like on a loop!

FROM THE EPISODE: READING LIST & RESOURCES

Amy Shearn’s website

https://www.amyshearnwrites.com/

Amy’s books

Unseen City (Red Hen Press, 2020): https://www.amyshearnwrites.com/unseen-city

The Mermaid of Brooklyn (Touchstone, 2013): https://www.amyshearnwrites.com/mob

How Far is the Ocean From Here (Crown, 2008): https://www.amyshearnwrites.com/hfitofh

Forge, Medium’s publication on personal development

https://forge.medium.com/

Amy’s feature on stoicism: Forge, “What Happens When You Go Full Stoic”

https://forge.medium.com/what-happened-when-i-went-full-stoic-cd4e7dca9967

Norma Jean the Termite Queen, Sheila Ballantyne (Doubleday & Company, 1975)

https://www.amazon.com/Norma-Termite-Queen-Sheila-Ballantyne/dp/0385032641

The Barter, Siobhan Adcock (Penguin Random House, 2014)

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/314347/the-barter-by-siobhan-adcock/

The Days of Abandonment, Elena Ferrante (Europa Editions, 2005)

https://www.europaeditions.com/book/9781933372006/the-days-of-abandonment

Forty Rooms, Olga Grushin (Penguin Random House, 2016)

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/529916/forty-rooms-by-olga-grushin/

100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write, Sarah Ruhl (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015) 

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374535674

Lenka Clayton’s Artist Residency in Motherhood

http://www.lenkaclayton.com/#/opensource-artistresidencyinmotherhood-1/

The Resort 

A workspace outside the home with virtual monthly memberships, craft talks, and accountability groups

https://www.theresortlic.com/