Creativity and Motherhood

A discussion on time, justification, and rejecting "the images the world would put on us", with Aimee Guest

[Aimee Guest and I seem to have parallel lives, and sometimes the things she writes feel like they come from my own brain. She describes herself as a “maker, mother, wife, theater teacher, kayaker, bike rider, beauty seeker”, and her newsletter Good and Beautiful Things reflects all that.
I shared the following quote on Notes awhile back and it sparked a conversation with Aimee that we decided to draw out through our newsletters, and we welcome you to join in.]

---

“It was more difficult for me to justify time to write when my children were little than it was to find time to write. And that was false guilt. I felt it because my work was not being published. I had five books published and then this long hiatus. I felt that my time at the typewriter was not justifiable. I think I was wrong. I think that was totally false guilt, because I was a writer because I was writing. But we tend to accept the images the world would put on us. And if you're not a published writer, you’re not supposed to be a writer. Well, I know now that’s not true.”

~L’Engle, from a Wheaton College Writers’ Workshop

Woman Writing on a Table by Thomas Pollock Anshutz,1905

Dear Aimee,

How did you justify your time spent creating when your kids were young, and is it any different/easier now that they are grown? You are a visual artist as well as a writer. Is one harder to justify than the other? 

This is the point from the quote that started you and I on this conversation. My short answer is that writing publicly, homeschooling, and a letter from my husband all gave me justifications for spending my time writing, but I still struggled with guilt.

In 2012 I started a blog at 5 a.m. I wrote a lot of nonsense which nobody read at first, thank God. I cringe at the word “blog”, but that website gave place for many of the words I’d been scratching out in the dark, the poems I was afraid to let anyone see, and the questions and frustrations I was wrestling with. It gave me a place to learn what I really thought, and then it made a way for me to change my mind. The discipline of writing that developed from putting words on the internet, and the people I connected with and learned from because of blogging, gave me some sense of accountability. I wanted to write and think well, and having a public place to do that felt like some measure of justifiability. People subscribed to blogs and expected value and consistency. 

Teaching my children gave me lots of justification for reading and writing, and I leaned hard into that. I learned as much or more than they did, and I became a better writer because of homeschooling. If teaching our children hadn’t been my full time job I’m not sure what kind of job I would have been working, but it would probably not have fed my mind or my desire to learn like learning alongside my kids did. I’ve never really thought about what else I would have done, I guess. I never wanted a different vocation. I had everything.

You commented that “At least L’Engle had published books!” and I feel the same way. There’s a legitimacy to her time that I’ve never had. The issue wasn’t that my writing had to produce something, it was that I had to put other things off in order to give time to writing. My husband (somewhat) solved that mental load of guilt I carried by encouraging me to prioritize my writing. He bought me a new laptop and wrote me a letter about how unimportant housework was in the scheme of things. I have it framed.

In God’s economy, the writers of the Bible did not have something better to do with their time and ability than to be artistic to the glory of God.

—Leyland Ryken, “Thinking Christianly About Literature”

This quote¹ has been an anchor for me when I start to feel the need to be pragmatic again. I’m not writing scripture but I do believe in carefully chosen words, in beautiful language that is to the glory of God. And I believe that making something as beautiful as possible is to the glory of God, even if it doesn’t include an altar call. Time spent glorifying God doesn’t need to be justified, right? But again, I’m not writing Scripture. Much of my writing begins as work I do just for myself. Ryken’s quote helps me remember that the writers of the Bible could have been doing a dozen other “more practical” things with their time and ability, but God valued the art of the message they were writing as much as the message itself. Delivery matters. Scripture could have been one long tome of didactic commands written in cardboard-prose, but we get a living Word full of poetry, metaphor, parables, symbols; deep dives into human nature and soaring views of creation.

If there was one thing I could have wished for myself, in hindsight, it would have been a college education and an MFA in creative writing. If I could have chosen two lives, it would have been mother and student, together. But I was having babies when my peers were sitting in lectures and I really do mean that I had everything: I absolutely do not regret my choices in regards to marriage and family. I didn’t even know what an MFA was back then. I didn’t know I was a writer until I became a mother. So, while I don’t have respected credentials or connections in the writing world, I have crafted my own Homeschool MFA alongside five children who are now some of the very best people I know. Those children who used to “interrupt” my writing time are now adults who read my work and cheer me on. I wouldn’t change a thing, except for the way I think about what it means to be a legitimate writer. Still working on that.

Is it hard for you to call yourself a writer or an artist?

I struggle with the whole idea that “I am a writer because I write”. I think there is something to be said for writing well, writing consistently, and enjoying your own writing, and a person can write without any of those things. I cook dinner almost every day and most of the time I do a pretty good job at it, but I don’t always enjoy cooking and I definitely do not call myself a chef. It’s just something that has to be done. Being a chef comes with a passion for the craft, and I mostly just have a passion for eating food everyday. 

I have a passion for paying attention to how the world is more beautiful than necessary, and writing about it. Necessary things are food and oxygen and clothing and shelter from the elements, but there is so much more, such extra. God is prodigal and the world is full of profligate excesses². I want to write about those things.

Maybe that’s what Madeleine actually meant when she talked about being a writer? That’s what I mean, anyways. I am a writer because I have something to write.³

---

[Your turn. I’ll link to Aimee’s response when it is posted, and in the meantime, readers—I know many of you are writers and creators. Whether you have kids or not, I think the need to justify how we spend our time is universal. Thoughts?]

1. From the phenomenal anthology edited by Ryken, The Christian Imagination.

2. Jonathan Rogers read an excellent essay he wrote about these ideas on his most recent episode of The Habit. 10/10

3. Several dear people in my life have given me loving correction recently about my self-deprecating lack of confidence. “I am a writer because I have something to write,” feels very bold to say, so I write it in obedience to the upward calling they’ve given me.