there is no separation between mother and writer, nor can I tease apart the time I spend tending to my child from the time I spend thinking about my writing, or actually doing it.

Finding Literary Spaces Amid the Intensity of New Motherhood 🔖📚💬

Don’t think of fantasy as mere entertainment, then, but as a way to train for reality. It always has been, after all.

• N.K. Jemisin on the Timeless Power of Fantasy 💬📚

💬🔖 “What did I learn today about how to live this life?” This question applies to a lot more than writing.

Catapult | On Writing (with a Day Job) | Richard Mirabella catapult.co

💬📚 “Harrow would be tripping over herself for her whole existence, a frictionless hoop of totally f-cking up.” - Tamsyn Muir, HARROW THE NINTH #relatable

💬📚 “Why have I surrendered so much of my present self to an abstract future self that may never exist? Why have I made my present happiness contingent on my future happiness?” Joseph P. Fisher in SUCCEEDING OUTSIDE THE ACADEMY

💬📚 “If you cannot bear our pain, you are not fit to carry our strength.” WONDER WOMAN: WARBRINGER, Leigh Bardugo

💬📺 “No one likes having a curse, but if you take the right steps, it’s manageable.” - Eda the Owl Lady, The Owl House Season 1 Episode 4, “The Intruder”

💬📚 “The graduate program… hinges on a level of detachment from the corporeal, on a laser focus and dedication to one’s intellectual development.” - Rachel Leventhal-Weiner in Succeeding Outside of the Academy

The postpartum experience isn’t just expensive; it can also be one of psychic trauma and creative crisis. Someone who was a person becomes a mother. “You’re not a person. You don’t have a name,” says Zambreno. This feeling of erasure is a current that runs through her work, reaching peak intensity in “To Write as if Already Dead.” “I need to restore myself after being made into a ghost,” Zambreno says. “I always feel like writing the most when I’m being made invisible.”

Kate Zambreno on her new book "To Write as if Already Dead" - Los Angeles Times latimes.com

📚💬 “We learn to wring magic from the ordinary… When the world owed you nothing, you demanded something of it anyway.” Crooked Kingdom, Leigh Bardugo, p. 460