I don't usually do threads. But this is gonna be a thread.

I started working on THE FOREVER SEA when my partner was pregnant with our daughter. I had just finished 6 weeks at Odyssey and was in my second year of an MFA.

I started asking parent writers for advice. https://twitter.com/MonicaHesse/status/1385715349027491843

Over and over, I heard that it was impossible to write with kids. That you couldn't get the space--physical, emotional, mental. Gone were the precious times of working late into the night at a desk lit only by your brass candelabra or whatever. Your writing was on pause.

Those writers would shake their heads at me sadly, eyes going a little glassy, as they talked about their work stalling out, barely having time to read a book in a month.

Those writers? All men. Every one of them. Loudly lamenting as if something had been stolen.

One of my MFA mentors, though, gave different advice. She (because of course it was a she) shrugged and said "you figure it out." Did you have less time to write as a parent? Sure. Did you sometimes have to prioritize getting groceries over another hour of writing? Yeah.

But you figured it out, she said. You muddled through. And you got more efficient with your time. You spent the time rocking your baby to sleep also thinking about what the next chapter needed. You cleaned up puke and whispered dialogue to yourself or thought through plot point.

I finished the first draft of THE FOREVER SEA almost exclusively between the hours of 11pm and 3am in the months after my daughter was born. @farahnazrishi can vouch--I would send the day's work over once I hit my goals, and it would often be emails closer to dawn than dusk.

I revised that book using Scrivener on my phone while my daughter napped on my chest. I would bounce her on my lap and talk about why chapter 2 absolutely sucked butt. I would change her diapers and awe her with tales of what my ending might do on this next revision.

We have all these dumb, romanticized ideas about what an author should look like and act like and live like, and so many of them are used by cishet white dudes to elbow everyone and everything out of their life for the sake of their precious fucking writing.

But here's what I believe: having a rich, full, kind, generous life isn't antithetical to writing or artistry or whatever. For me, that stuff is *necessary* for good art. It's an ingredient in making that final thing. It's not a distraction--it's longed-for addition.