Writing Against the Odds, Part I

My first session at the Festival of Faith and Writing was tailor-made for Wrestling the Angel. The panel addressed "Writing Against the Odds -- Some of us have to carve out time and energy for writing amid demanding jobs, busy families, abundant noise, and lack of space. How do we overcome the practical and intangible obstacles to the writing task?" Each of the three authors described the obstacles, costs, and advantages of writing aginst the odds.

The first speaker was Debra Rienstra, professor at Calvin College, and mother of three. Rienstra wrote her first book, Great with Child, during the months before and after her third child's birth:

This book was written mostly in a corner of my bedroom in snatches of time, mostly between ten and eleven at night, over the course of three years. Many nights all I could do was slump over the keyboard for fifteen minutes after the kids were in bed and tap out a few sentence fragments. What you read in this book is all true, but please realize there has been lots of revision. The original drafts were truly horrible.

There were a few blessed twenty-four-hour periods here and there when I did actually go away and write at my parents -in-law's great little house on the lake. And in the last stages of revision, especially during the last month of the process, I was able to work full days in my office or in the library.

But even with those more consolidated periods, this is a book rescued from fragments--fragments of time, energy, and space that mothers of young children stitch together to accomplish anything. As T. S. Eliot said, "These fragments I have shored against my ruins." He was speaking of vast cultural movements. I'm just thinking of sleep deprivation. Anyway, if this book wound up with any coherence at all, it is a miracle.

Obstacles

Rienstra described her first obstacle as lack of silence, both literal and figurative. She once read Jane Kenyon's poetry book Otherwise in one sitting (a practice she recommends for poetry) and was left with the impression that here was a woman who had silence. And Rienstra was jealous! She described the noise in her house and head, of students, work, children, husband.

Her solution was to make the most of whatever silence she got. No warm-up, just sit down and write. Books written in fragments this way are different, she said, but not inferior.

The second obstacle was having no steady work pattern. Each day is different. She tries to tell her writing classes that the best practice is to write every day at the same time ... but she can't finish the sentence without laughing at her own foolishness.

So in response to an evolving schedule, Rienstra continues to adapt. As she mentioned, Great with Child was written between 10 and 11 at night. She described the writing of this period as very raw and precious, partly because there was no editor in her head--the editor had gone to sleep! I could certainly relate to this experience with my 5 am writing sessions.

She also said that she doesn't do any household chores while her kids are at school. Dishes go unwashed, the house remains untidy, while she gets down to work.

Costs

The first cost Rienstra listed was a phantom one. She said that time away from her kids might seem to be a cost, but not for her. She spends quite a bit of time with them, and her husband does much of the child care, so she doesn't feel guilty when she's writing.

The cost she does pay is in frustration when she's not writing, but has to do other things. And her only reponse is to cry and get crabby! But she finds it a good engine for motivating her to work. She never gets tired of writing because she never gets enough of it.

She also counts the cost of thinking that she could create better work if she only had more time.

Advantages

So what could possibly be good about facing such challenges to find writing time? Rienstra appreciates not having to put all of the value of her life on writing. If things aren't going well, she can comfort herself that at least she's a mom, and has a job. There is less pressure for success on her writing.

And finally, she has a rich life. She has three major endeavours (family, job, and writing) that enrich each other. What would she write about without these things in her life?

So whatever eccentricities, blatant inconsistencies, contradictions, errors, and foolishness you find here, let them stand as the appropriate literary representation of a state of mind a little frayed around the edges. What literary style best captures the life of an expectant or new mother? Until recently, no one has known. New mothers, especially, have rarely written. They still don't do it very often. It's just too hard. One must be really quite nutty or desperate to try it.

In my case, I would probably have gotten nuttier if I hadn't. There was an element here of avoiding ruin. I went to the writing place--in my mind, I mean, as the actual physical location varied--because I desperately needed a place of retreat. While writing is definitely work, it is also release, and that leads to a kind of peace.

I was sorry to learn that Great with Child is out of print, but you can find excerpts at her website. (Luckily my sister happened to have a copy!) And you can check out the Rienstra family exploits at their blog, RONdezvous.