Hello, readers!
I love reading about writing advice, and I really love reading detailed accounts of the writing life of other writers. I don’t just mean well, I write every day. I mean I wake up at 6:30 and start the coffee. I hang my comforter out the window and light the gas lamp on my little kitchen table, and then I stand on the deck of my houseboat which is docked on Svalbard and I look at the northern lights and then I go inside and sit at the table and write for three hours. I like really, really specific details.
I feel the same way about other accounts of motherhood, actually. There is a fabulous blog series at Cup of Jo called Motherhood Around the World, and it’s one of my favorite things. There are essays by mothers who parent in countries around the world, and these essays are fascinating and cozy and encouraging. I really can’t recommend them enough, especially if you’re a mom. Read them with a cup of coffee, or when you need to hear that other moms have kids who lose their absolute sh*t in public sometimes too, all the way across the world. (They do! It’s not just yours. It’s not just mine.)
When it comes to detailing my own writing life, however, it’s not always as appealing as the fictional writing life on a Svalbard houseboat. In earlier stages of a book, I write when I can, in the spaces between parenting my three kids, meal planning, cooking, housework, mucking out the ducks (and soon the geese! They arrive in June!) and other life things.
In the later stages of writing a book, however, there’s Gremlin Mode.
I warn my family in advance. I try to make sure things are in order before I start. And then I basically check out for a month. (I mean, as much as a mom can check out.) I write all day long. I dangle weird carrots for myself as I go that I do not recommend to other writers. Things like you can refill your coffee AFTER you finish this chapter. I spend the whole weekend holed up away from everyone else so that I can write as much as humanly possible before Monday. I live in sweatpants basically all month, because sweatpants are comfortable, and they also dissuade me from wanting to go anywhere but home. The meals I plan and cook are 90% things that I can throw in a crockpot early in the morning.
Gremlin Mode is a once a year thing (maybe twice a year if I’m lucky), and my family is very cool about it. My husband is super helpful, and takes on as much of my house-and-kid work as he can, in the spaces around his own work. (He’s a video game-making software developer by day, a Gremlin Mode enabler by night.)
This month-long writing retreat in my own head and house is so necessary for me when I need to finish a book, and coming out of it is the best feeling in the world. I finished. It’s done.
And then my husband reads it over the course of a couple of days, and makes notes, and then I go through the notes, make changes, and send it to my agent. We’re so close!
The elation I get when I’m emerging from Gremlin Mode gets me through the unpleasant shock when I look around at the wreckage of my kids’ rooms, the laundry situation, the pantry. We’ll call that post-Gremlin Mode work.
Anyway. It would be cool to be the Svalbard houseboat writer, but obsessively working in sweatpants is good, too.
Renee
Some Dates:
Tuesday, June 25: Book release day for Dinner at the Brake Fast! Info about my launch party is forthcoming.
