How to GiveYourself Permission to Write

It was 4 am on a cold spring morning in the spring of 2021. I was huddled on the sofa breastfeeding a baby who was still too young to sleep through the night.

To keep myself awake, I was listening to Big Magic on audiobook.

Melissa Gilbert said something — don’t ask me exactly what, it was 4 am and I didn’t have a free hand to take notes — but it struck a chord so deep that I made a decision that would set the tone for the next two years of my writing life.

If you ask my older son to introduce himself, he’ll tell you his name, announce that he is four-and-a-half years old (emphasis on the and-a-half), and that he is a maker.

He knows all about makers. Makers are inventors in a super cool workshops who create fantastic things: a unicorn that farts glitter, Lego vacuums, squirrel obstacle courses, homemade ceiling fans.

Being a maker has a tech-gadget vibe that thrills him. So does the idea of the capacity for inventions to solve problems.

Being four (and-a-half) means that most of his maker inventions involve Duplo, modular building tubes, masking tape, a pitcher, a whole tangle of USB chords, and the occasional use of breakfast cereal for pretend batteries.

I love his wild and imaginative inventions, and I think he’s a maker in the deepest sense of the word. I think it makes him human in the deepest sense of the word.

I am a maker, too — though I have never made a unicorn that farts glitter.

I am a writer, a maker of fantasy stories.

I’m also a mom to two young kids who need me now more than I’ve ever been needed in my whole life.

It doesn’t seem like the right time to dedicate one whole hour every day to my writing.

But on that 4 am morning back in 2021, that’s exactly what I did.

Rewind to the summer of 2020, I was pregnant with our second son, locked in the guest room (back when we had a guest room) gluing photographs into a journal. The markers, pens, stickers, and glue on my desk were all part of a course that accompanies Brené Brown’s book, The Gifts of Imperfection.

I’m a writer and musician, but not an artist. The journaling course asked me to do all the things I’m not good at: gluing, drawing, painting…more gluing. The idea was to drop the need for perfection, and explore creativity in a new ways.

I discovered that creativity showed up in my life in many forms. Cooking, for example. Raising kids, for another. Preparing special decorations for a holiday.

To create means “to make” in Latin. Creativity is the energy, the passion, we put into the things we make.

It was during the Gifts of Imperfection course that I first came across the idea that bottled up creativity is harmful to our health.

What happens to the energy that fuels our drive to make things when we stop making things?

I’m not sure that I’d say my imaginative energy turns into rage or shame, but it most definitely fuels my enormous capacity for worry, and unchecked worry, as all good worriers know, leads to anxiety.

Being a mom of two tiny kids means there are a lot of things I’d like to do, but can’t — at least, not right now.

Sometimes I have the urge to learn to make a new dish, plan a project, take a course, learn a new ukulele chord, but there’s just no time. I feel a visceral stress there, a tension that builds like a spring.

That urge comes out in other ways. I sang (and still sing) to both my boys nonstop. I doodle little water drops on the family calendar for swim lesson days. I turn toddler art into birthday cards for grandparents. I play make-believe with my kids.

These little outlets drain away that coiled tension.

Except, it’s not enough to replace writing. Yes, it’s fun to pretend to be Oscar the Grouch, but it doesn’t come close to satisfying the passion I have for making stories.

This is where Melissa Gilbert and Big Magic came in, that spring morning the dark hours before the dawn.

Her plea to create, whether it brings fame, fortune, or neither, reminded me of the Brené Brown quote, especially that word, metastasize. Unused creativity, creativity denied, isn’t just a loss, it’s an unexpressed energy that twists something inside, that settles in like a sickness, a cancer.

The decision I made that spring morning, with my tiny son nursing in my arms, was that I would write. Every day. No matter what.

I write on Christmas. I write on my birthday. I write when I’m sick. I write when the power goes out. I am a maker of stories, so I write.

I consider it one of the core things I need to do to stay healthy. I have a body, I have to exercise. I have an imagination, I need to write.

I might not get to wash my hair, or get enough sleep, I might have no other time to read than while brushing my teeth, but every day I open up my computer, put my fingers to the keys, and see what problems I get into…

…and then take the joyful ride into discovering how I‘ll solve them.

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