Saturday, November 25, 2017

Paris Review

Maybe, as a female writer, you don’t kill yourself, or abandon your children. But you abandon something, some nurturing part of yourself. When you finish a book, what lies littered on the ground are small broken things: broken dates, broken promises, broken engagements. Also other, more important forgettings and failures: children’s homework left unchecked, parents left untelephoned, spousal sex unhad. Those things have to get broken for the book to get written.
Maya sent me this. Amazing.

Addendum: Just posted this on Facebook in response to others:

In talking to Adam just now what I realized is that what I quoted above is bullshit, for me at least. Having just finished a book, I can tell you NOTHING lies on the ground broken. My kid only knows what it is like to have a mother who has passion, ambition, and something beyond him and his needs. 

I'll tell you who has shut me down the most (or tried to, at least) for daring to have a life's ambition outside of simply reproducing: other women. And I'll say it: other women who were other MOTHERS, primarily stay-at-home mothers, and primarily people who had ambitions and goals and dropped them to be mothers full-time. And good on you if you want to do that, but then don't turn around and tell me that what I'm doing is fucking up my kid, because it sure the hell is not.
Think there's some feeling behind this? 

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