Melissa Scholes Young

I am finding it very difficult to register for the Melissa Sholes Young live chat on 24 February. Does one simply "jump on" tomorrow?

Looking forward to the live chat today! Hope you'll join us to discuss Melissa's recent essay, A Residency of One's Own, and the challenges of creating space to write as a woman and a mother. Read the essay at the link above, log in, and join the chat at at 12 EST. 

It’s a cold, rainy day in D.C. not a sunny one of solitude in the south of France, but I’m happy to be here chatting residencies and the writing life. Thanks, Poets & Writers, for bringing us together!

Melissa, As a fellow writer and mother, I enjoyed reading your piece about the Bread Loaf residency in Cassis, France. I love how you discussed Virginia Woolf's writing life in relation to your own. The distinction between writing in isolation versus writing in a community among other artists was especially salient. I look forward to seeing where your writing career takes you next.

I've long admired your ability to write both fiction and nonfiction. I notice that you take more risks with form in your nonfiction. Can you comment on that? 

I'm so grateful you read it, CG Martinez, and pleased it resonated. It's an essay I've been trying to write for a very long time as I've navigated writing, teaching, mothering, and life. To your question about drafting, especially those first pages, I don't ever know unless I keep going. I find it's more a process of writing my way into meaning. Mark Twain says that once you've reached the end of your novel, you're ready to begin writing it. That helped me let go a little in residency. I had the time and space to trust the process more. 

Thanks, wendybeselhahn. I've been writing about Woolf in one way or another in most of my work. Or maybe I'm looking to her for answers, yes? Your question about form and fiction vs. nonfiction is so thoughtful. Perhaps in nonfiction I already know what happened so I'm focusing on the larger task of meaning, of sorting, of impact. I love playing with form, and I certainly don't mind the mistakes on the page. I learn from them, too. 

Hi Melissa,

I'm about to be a mom (yay!) and have been writing for quite some time, although mostly without being published. Do you think it's still possible to seek publication during the first two years of parenting, especially if one hasn't been established already? Or is it best to let the public part of writing take the back seat for a while, and just keep up my regular personal practice (as I say this, I hear how hard it will be to do even that...)

Thank you!
Emily. 

No, I don't. I am working in Scrivener and am pretty aware of where the holes are, and am heading up there to simply fill as many of them as I can! I would love to hear about any planning you did or advice you have at tackling things. I am beside myself with excitement at this opportunity for undivided concentration. 

Publication and writing are such different paths, emikra. They're both a lot like mothering, though. Sometimes you just hold on for the ride. White knuckles and all. To your question about those first two years, I did a lot of writing then. I actually wrote my first short story after the birth of my first daughter. Becoming a mother unlocked a part of my creativity I hadn't accessed before. Or maybe it was the sleep deprivation. I did an MFA after the birth of my second child when I realized I needed more training and a real writing community. I thought it was better to be a bit older, a bit more seasoned, especially in workshop. What I know now is that it all fuels my writing. My roles aren't quite as delineated as before. I suspect you'll be writing and publishing along side your mothering. There are so many great literary magazines seeking work from mothers, especially.  Congrats to you and yours! 

I used Scrivener for the fifth draft of my novel, htownjenny, and it helped me map plot, but next time I'll use it for new work rather than revisions. I used Blake Snyder's Save the Cat! structure to get myself back into revisions after a pause in the draft while I was waiting on agent feedback. It helped me see things visually so I could, like you, find and fill those holes. Good luck! 

Just to add to Melissa's comment about literary magazines looking for work by mothers, Literary Mama (www.literarymama.com) is a terrific journal. There's also Brain, Child (www.brainchildmag.com). Does anyone know of other good magazines or websites looking for work by mothers? 

What a gift, mlakers. It's a lot like going into a story and trusting the process without trying to control the ending, at least in the drafting phase. Trusting my writing, like trusting my parenting and my partner's ways of doing it differenting, isn't easy, but I think it's worth it to learn. I wrote more in residency in one month than I had the entire previous year. And I wrote deeper and took more risk with prose without the time constraints. 

Becky Tuch at The Review, Review had a great piece on magazines specifically looking for women's experiences http://www.thereviewreview.net/publishin.... 

Great question, johnrwalshj. Plenty of my writing doesn't have to do with motherhood or parenting at all. I've never had a problem finding material, but I've always struggled to carve out space for the writing. It requires such a solitude that caregiving and daily life isn't always conducive to. I think that's why a residency is such a gift and a challenge. Most of the other fellows I was in residency with weren't parents, but their life responsibilities and roles were just as consuming as mine. 

Mother writers do get asked questions, though, that father writers don't like "What about the kids?" I think that's on us to see the writer and the person and not just the mother. 

I love this list at Electric Lit that has recommended reading for parents, htownjenny. Some great reads! http://electricliterature.com/11-novels-...
-read-instead-of-parenting-books/