Dear Huma: I feel this horrible sense of shame

Dear Huma,

I'm currently stuck in the grind of writing for my day job (articles, copywriting, etc), but I have books on my heart (a non fiction book that ties together some threads of my journalism, a collection of poetry I've half started, and a novel idea that I first thought about 16 years ago when I was 19, that gets more urgent every day). I'm a mother, and work around my kids' school hours, and also while my husband is the primary breadwinner, we need my ‘extra’ income to pay the monthly bills. But there is no ‘extra’ really, we're just getting by. I'm finding it hard to make time for my creative writing, the at-least-for-now-unpaid-writing, which feels like what I really want to be doing, and in the meantime I feel this horrible sense of shame that I'm living this life - like I'm not doing what I know and have always known I really want to be doing. I've tried getting up early to write, but I'm so tired and my thoughts don't seem to flow when I'm cutting corners on sleep. I have had weekly writing time for a couple of hours a week for the past year, while my husband puts the kids to bed, and that has helped - this is how I've grown a collection of poems. But it doesn't feel like enough anymore.

The other day I was at a wedding and the man sitting next to me asked what I do for a living and I felt the shame creep over me again in a big wave when I explained. It sounded so... piecemeal. He asked what my husband does and it rushed over me that he's pursuing his dream career and I'm biding my time. This happened accidentally to us, as you so beautifully describe in How We Met. I'm very happy he's doing his dream job, and I love my kids and want to be there for them after school, but I also feel so much frustration.

Elizabeth Gilbert says not to make your creativity pay the bills. I think that's good advice - I can see how you might start to feel such a deep sense of panic at rejection if your income depended on it. But... I know you and many other mother-writers have made the transition to writing as your ‘day job.’ I'm pretty sure you can relate to that feeling of falling behind, the shame of knowing what you want to do but never quite getting around to it. What did you do to get unstuck and start moving towards the career and writing life you wanted?

–S

Dear S,

I feel every word of this letter. I’ve spent entire days crafting my reply to you, because there’s so much I want to say. You are right, I can relate to those feelings of fear and falling behind. There was a six year gap between my first book being published and my second and third ones. The second came out when I was 39, the third when I was 40. It’s no coincidence that in the space of those six years, I gave birth three times; in those six years I stopped and started again and again, trying to figure out what kind of writing life I wanted for myself.

Sometimes, when I step back, it feels like it took such a long time to get here. Depending on my mood, I either feel sad for my younger self about that or certain that there was no other way it could have happened. Mostly, I believe it happened when it should have, when it was right for me, and I wish there was a way for me to give you that conviction.

I will tell you, because I can’t not, that there’s absolutely no shame at all in what you are doing; raising children, working, all of it. What you do matters in a different way to sitting around writing books about people who don’t even exist. And yet, I know it won’t matter if I tell you this. Because I'm pretty sure you know all this already; and for whatever reason, sitting around writing books matters a great deal too. It sucks that sometimes we find ourselves accidentally biding our time. I don’t know what the answer to that is, but it feels bigger than anything I might attempt to write here.

But you didn’t ask me that. You asked what enabled me to get unstuck and move towards the career and writing life I wanted. Big question, for which I need two answers, an emotional one and a practical one. Settle in…

What got me unstuck? My emotional answer: fear and panic.

Long story short, one summer a few years ago my youngest son Jude (some of you might recognise his name from How We Met) fell quite seriously ill (he’s 100% fine now, please no one panic). A few months later, by which time he was much better, I started writing the stories that would become Things We Do Not Tell The People We Love. I’d been writing the beginnings of novels on and off before, but they never got anywhere. This time, it was different. The more I wrote, the more I decided that I was going to do whatever it took to get these stories published. I can’t exactly explain why or how, but I think subconsciously the fear and panic I felt in the hospital did something to me. It made me want to be in control of something, because I had been shown something uncontrollable and I did not like it one bit. And so I wrote these furious, dark stories that only I was in control of, and I wrote really quickly, like there was a fire in me. And I think there was a fire in me. That fear and panic startled me. I learnt how quickly things could change, from one minute to the next, and I didn’t want to sit around and wait for things to happen, helplessly. I remember explaining this to my husband and he got it, completely. I finished the book in six months; it sold three or four months later.

What else got me unstuck? My practical answer: time and not doing a freelance job that drained me.

After he got better, Jude started nursery while his brothers went back to school. He was only at nursery for three half days a week, but it was the first time that I finally had all my children in some kind of educational place. I used that time for nothing else but writing my stories (and then also How We Met) and I was strict with that because it felt so urgent (and it was). I could also do this because by that time, I was doing less journalism but still earning money. Freelancing took up so much time and energy, and so much noise on Twitter, for not an awful lot in return. Meanwhile, I’d been blogging for a number of years, and had already launched my first writing course, which was doing well. With my then-writing course running in the background, I could spend my time working on my stories or, later, preparing my submission to agents, instead of pitching articles that I didn’t really want to write anymore anyway. I still feel so overwhelmingly thankful every single time anyone signs up to my writing courses now, because honestly, they have no idea what it means to me; it means I can keep writing.

To me it sounds like more than anything you need time and extra childcare, both of which cost in different ways. You’ve not asked me for advice about your personal situation, so I won’t intrude unnecessarily. I hope there’s a way for you to carve out a few more hours in the week for your writing, and I’m sure you’re having those conversations with your husband already. I’m not suggesting for a minute that you do something drastic like change your job or seek out fear to start a fire! But at a certain point it becomes necessary to prioritise your creative work in order to let it grow. It’s maddeningly frustrating that the growth is dependent on things often out of our control but sometimes, with the right support, you can make it work, you can give it a go.

I wonder if it might help to choose between poetry and the novel, just temporarily; so you can focus on one thing entirely in the limited time you do have, and keep building the collection of poems you’ve started, instead of feeling quite so overwhelmed. I stopped and started novels when my children were small because I couldn’t contain them, where as short stories I could hold in my head and write in bursts (and many short story writers have said the same about writing with small children). I wonder if it’s the same with poetry? Not that it’s easier to write, but that you can contain it in a different way to some huge plot that you need to spend time with to unpick.

Would you consider submitting your poems to magazines or competitions or agents? I know the fear of rejection is another monster entirely, but forget about that for a moment. I think taking these real, solid steps of sending your work out into the world will remind you that you are doing real, writing things, you are moving.

Also, and this might sound like stupid advice, but: embrace your phone. It can help you stay connected to your writing even when you don’t have the luxury of endless solitary hours at your desk. I normally do my edits on my phone while making dinner; I will often tweak a sentence here or there while waiting at the school gate. These little things, they add up. They will keep adding up.

Finally, for what it’s worth, don’t underestimate your day job. You say you are writing articles, I don’t know what kind. But the writing world moves in mysterious ways. One of those articles could lead to something, anything. A reader got in touch once over social media because of an article I wrote for my piecemeal-journalism work. That reader ended up being my editor for How We Met. It didn’t happen immediately, but it happened. I know you might think it won’t happen for you, because I thought the same for the longest time too, and I know it will sound like a cliché, but I promise, all it takes is for one person to notice, one inch of a door to open. Your talent and passion will shine through.

You must believe, you have to, that you will get there. Please don’t give up.

Sending much love,
Huma