Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Wren's avatar

Ditto those comments above! And I’ll pray for you. Thank you.

Expand full comment
Heather Cadenhead's avatar

So many gems that I will reference, again and again, in this essay:

“Eggs. Milk. Cereal.

These are lesser words, perhaps, than what I’d prefer to be writing. 

But just try to make it through the week without them.”

“I write a string of words as long as it takes the pot of rice to begin boiling.”

“I must woo myself into the work. Beauty and comfort must lure me. Edith Schaeffer told me to put some flowers on the table. Robert Farrar Capon told me to always sit down to a table with cloth napkins. Give value to the space, they said, and you’ll value the work that happens therein.”

Such richness in these reflections. And the reminder that living a life, while writing, does not make one less of a writer — that a few sentences written as a pot of rice boils might grow, loaves-and-fish into feast. I’m no less a writer, as a home-educating mother, than the writer who is afforded 8 uninterrupted hours a day at a “heavy, burled walnut desk.”

I will reflect on your words, over and over, as I teach long division and start slow cookers and fold towels. Thank you for writing such a life-giving essay for all who are writing amid other responsibilities (which is to say, all of us).

Expand full comment
3 more comments...

No posts