amwriting

Is real life just a fiction?

One day when I was angry over the constraints of American society, I created a 20-something, closeted bi girl named Jessie. Her story took place in a yoga studio where she was trying to discover why her artistic inspiration had vanished. Without thinking twice, I threw in my favorite meditation.

The idea of this meditation is to envision yourself lying in a beautiful forest beside a river, surrounded by fallen leaves. As a thought enters your mind, you picture yourself picking up a leaf and dropping it into the flowing water. It drifts onward and away, just like the thought drifts in and out of your mind. But Jessie is a ruminator, and also resistant to change, so her version went like this:​​ 

“She envisions herself lying in the woods by a creek, the warm sun beating down on her skin. Breathe in, hold, release.  For every thought that enters her mind she picks up a leaf from the ground, feels its crinkly, dry edges on her fingertips, and drops it into the water.  Then the leaf plasters itself against a rock, splayed out so she can see every word of the thought shining in the sun.”

Whenever I tried this meditation again, leaf thoughts started splaying out for me, too, and I could no longer let them flow onward. My favorite meditation was ruined. I told myself that day: be more careful about turning real life into fiction. 

As I was drafting my first novel, a futuristic dystopian story about a young musician connecting with her radical side, I found myself analyzing the reverse of this. Just ask any sci-fi writer: fiction can become real as quickly as reality can become fictional. 3D printers. Tablets. The metaverse. All of this was thought up in fiction well before it existed in real life. If you can dream it, you can make it.

I began to wonder what the difference between fiction and reality truly is. Isn’t society itself just one big Paracosm, an incredibly detailed, imaginary world, that we’ve all agreed to believe in? 

I find this thought to be full of hope. The next time I sit down to meditate, I try the river in the woods again. The leaf thoughts drop into the water, flow toward a rock, and, for the first time in years, keep going, the river carrying them away toward a future built on dreams.

2nd Place in Pen Parentis Writing Fellowship!

pen parentis typewriter.pngY’all, I won 2nd place in the Pen Parentis Writing Fellowship! Plus they wrote the most flattering description about my story, 2021, on their blog. I am floating.

It’s organizations like Pen Parentis that keep hope alive in us writerparents, even during these dark and exhausting times. Not only do they provide this fellowship every year, but they also host monthly literary salons, weekly accountability meet-ups, and multiple other community-building events, all centered around inspiring, motivating, and celebrating parents who just want to keep writing but have so much standing between them and their words. Learn more about their work, history, and future events by visiting their website at penparentis.org and/or following them on Instagram: @PenParentis and Twitter: @PenParentis.

And speaking of events, stay tuned for details on a special Zoom salon this fall in which I’ll be reading my prize-winning story!

Lessons Learned in Covid City

It turns out that Covid City is not just a column to write during a short period of life in lockdown. Instead, it is our new reality for a long time yet. In the weeks since I last posted here, I have learned four crucial things for surviving this new life:

  1. It’s all about creativity. 
  2. Sleep is necessary. 
  3. Meditate as much as possible.
  4. Take the joy when you can get it. Don’t question it, just be in it.

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Big news: after a two-week spell of intense quarantining, Dave and I drove our crew to my in-laws where we finally got some back-up childcare. As I watched L jump out of the car and run off through the yard with his Papa Bob, I felt something physically shed away from me. Dave and I were EVERYTHING for these kids for five weeks straight. All of it. I hadn’t realized how weighty that was until it lifted.

We can’t completely move here for a few reasons and so the plan for now is to go back to New York when we have to and then wait and see if/when we can return. But even if we don’t end up coming back, having a few nights of real sleep has been transformative. Dave and I started quarantine as sleep-deprived parents of a new baby; in the past month, I hit a level of exhaustion I didn’t even know was possible. 

Of course there are challenges. No situation in Covid City is easy. Figuring out how to share space when all of us are in MA has been stressful. Parenting and grandparenting at the same time is weird. We’re all very different personalities, too, with different and often conflicting needs. Things are not lining up with the six of us like they have in the past, and I’m feeling confused by it. But there’s such a deep current of love underneath it all, and, as with everything, we will adapt.

78b36acb-cf00-4285-99a8-d2c429f06949And no matter what tensions may arise with our new arrangement, the fact that Dave and I got some space to ourselves changed everything. Yep, that’s right: Dave and I spent the past two nights alone in Brooklyn while other people took care of our kids. We slept, talked, drank, watched tv, had sex, meditated, chatted with friends, got all dressed up and played some music. We even ate candy in the living room and left the wrappers out on the coffee table and then the next morning, nobody tried to choke on them and nobody threw a fit that we got candy and they didn’t. I miss my kids – a lot actually – but this time to focus on other parts of myself (while eating candy with abandon) has been glorious.

This space has also allowed me to reflect on the past five weeks and think about how we can improve the indefinite span of quarantine left ahead of us. I opened this post with the lessons I’ve learned through this time of reflection. Now I want to leave you with some of my recent joys:

  • I rediscovered my passion for writing fiction and it has felt wonderful.
  • L turned five years old, and Dave and I completely rocked the whole birthday-in-quarantine thing. Gotta admit, the fact that he was genuinely happy all day long was super satisfying.
  • M talks! He says hi, mama, and dada. In that order. (I beat Dave, ha!)
  • We’re getting into a new musical project! James Kurk, the friend I have known for longer than anyone else, sent over loads of tracks for us. We had a Zoom brainstorm all together and now Dave and I are making some weird sounds over here. Connecting to creative people in creative ways is my new motto for quarantine.
  • Fiona Apple released her new album and it’s perfect for right now.

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Trusting the Process

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I wanted so badly to be done with my novel, to send my manuscript off to agents then try to forget about it until one day, that magical email from someone just dying to represent me popped up in my inbox.

Yet I stalled on emailing any agents. I blamed my delay on nerves and fear, told myself to push through it, finally sent out three queries. But then I stalled again, despite the spreadsheet of 20 other agents’ contact info sitting in my Google docs.

I kept telling myself to stop making excuses. It’s been five years already! Send it out, let it go.

Finally, I meditated on it and listened to my gut: “Don’t rush, Becky. This is your one chance to find an agent. Ask another reader for comments. Give this book all the time it wants.”

It turns out that my new reader not only caught a handful of errors (look at those post-it notes!) but also made a comment that led to an enormous breakthrough on a section I’ve never felt 100% about. I am now back to work, and it feels great.

Another breakthrough: The agents will be there when this book is ready, whenever that may be. And even then, no one may want it! But I believe in Bone Girl, I believe in the process, and I will see my book through to whatever end is in store for her.

To all my artist friends out there: enjoy your acts of creation, no matter how long they may take.

P.S. That glimpse of gorgeous artwork is brought to you by Letisia Cruz!

Dancing with Relapse – New Publication!

“While anorexia was familiar, intoxicating, even empowering, it was also a terrifying hell I thought I’d escaped from.”

After spending a decade in therapy working to finally put my eating disorder behind me, why have I spent the past five years writing a novel about a teenage artist who develops anorexia?

My latest essay, “Dancing with Relapse,” published today on The Women Who Get Shit Done, reflects on recovery, relapse, and the risks and rewards of fictionalizing my past demons in YA novel Bone Girl. Check it out!

Writing While Mothering

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L and Nana sharing some morning tea in Massachusetts.

I am alone this weekend for a writing “retreat,” and while the mental and physical space is glorious, I miss my little bug.

It’s so strange how parenting never stops. How it’s all or nothing. How it simultaneously feeds you and feeds upon you. The act of finding balance is constant and crucial.

I’m lucky and grateful to have my in-laws. And I’m thrilled for the opportunity to once again dive into my stories and not resurface until I damn well please.

But also, I’ll be looking forward to those sweet texts with pictures of L, enjoying retired life with his grandparents, without me.

To all the mama writers out there – you got this.

How We Tell (and Edit) Our Stories

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I’ve been thinking a lot about the micro memoir. I’m a wordy writer (and person in general), and I typically fall victim to over-explaining my ideas in an effort to be extra sure that I am understood. This often results in clunky sentences and unnecessary repetition, not to mention how time-consuming it is. When I edit both my fiction and nonfiction, I try hard to channel my inner Hemingway and delete, delete, delete. Focus on the power of what is left unsaid. Except I’m bad at leaving things unsaid.

I’ve also been thinking a lot lately about the choices we make when it comes to the mood and tone of our stories, the language we use silently in our minds versus the language we share with our mouths and our fingers. So much of how we see the world, our place in it, ourselves in general, is our own choice, and this is so deeply affected by the way we frame our own stories. Yet how much of this framing really is our choice? How much of our personal narrative comes from our parents, their parents, and their parents? How much comes from early childhood memories we don’t remember but feel like we remember because our family has remembered them for us? From our genetic makeup, from the makeup of our neighborhoods, from the makeup we put on before we go out into the world?

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Last year, Lew loved the ocean water. He would run into it and shout with glee, jump, splash, run away, run back. This summer he is two-years-old and has developed the capacity to fear. Now when he goes close to the water, he freezes and screams, partly playful, mostly afraid. He loves it when I carry him in, he’ll beg me to go deep enough that the waves splash against his delicious round belly, yet he clings to me so tightly that I can let go of him and he doesn’t even slip down my torso. The other day, as he and I were digging holes in the sand and filling them up again, my friend asked me if Lew liked the water and I said, “Oh he loves it but he’s also scared of it. It’s a new development this year. I hope it doesn’t last long.” Later that afternoon, Lew and I walked to the shore hand-in-hand and then right when we approached the ocean’s edge, he stopped, scrunched his nose and eyes together, reached his arms to me and cried, “Mommy, up, up, I scared of ocean water!” He had never used the word scared before.

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In thinking about my story, Lew’s story, the story of my family, and the tiny pieces that come together to make up these stories, I am deeply grateful for all the things I get to experience. Yet at the same time, I am deeply exhausted. An editor might say that my story is going in too many directions.

Leave more unsaid.

I’m reminded of Rivka Galchen’s book Little Labors, a beautiful, unique collection of short essays about new motherhood. I feel like these snippets, these micro memoirs, capture the reality of our existence so well. In the end, isn’t life really just little pieces of memory put together and called a whole?