Mantras for Motherhood and Revision

I am strong. I am kind. I am loved. These are the mantras I speak to my daughter each morning. She is three months old. She bears a wobbly head, chunky thighs, and a start to a smile. Those first few weeks with her, I watch too much television. I watch a show in which the mother says, Kids move through you, not for you. This resonates for me. I am her guide now. I am becoming someone new. I say these mantras to her and also to my new self as a way to ground us.

This new self is still essentially the writer I have always been. While at home, I begin to focus on revision. My writing process starts with a voice or an image, a glimpse into a world of fiction asking for full creation. I lift the story up, wobbly and unsteady onto a new page. I search for its strength. Through revision, the narrative becomes clear. The more I revise, the more I too am guiding someone else. I am guiding a character onto the page. I am guiding the reader to see this character. The story moves through me and onto the page. 

I learn that revision, like mothering, is tedious, hard work. I hear from another writer about a revision process that involves rewriting stories from beginning to end, creating many different versions of a single story. At first this sounds like madness to me. How can someone rewrite a story from beginning to end? How could I have time for this, between two-hour feedings and my own brief naps? I wonder how it could possibly work. And then I find a stretch of an afternoon available. While the baby sleeps, I review my story draft. Once I try rewriting it, I realize it is freeing. I am free to make a new version each time. I see how each new version creates a stronger story. 

When I am ready to revise, I read the story over several times. I search for the driving emotional question behind the story, the question that creates tension and gives a reason to read on. For example, will my character Marlo forgive her mother? Or in another story, will Marlo let her sister leave their hometown? Once I think I have found this core question, then I revise the story to ensure there is a buildup of tension around it. For this part of the process, I give in to my intuition. I write a new version of the story from beginning to end. This allows me to enter back into the flow of the language and the beat of each scene. I can feel the story’s movement. I can embody the characters as I strengthen their presence on the page. I do this by feeling each character’s emotions as I write down their individual experience. I settle myself into their details, the specifics of this particular character and their unique situation. I know that Marlo will hate the way her room looks as she returns home that first summer from college. She’ll resent it as she describes it to the reader. It’s this description and the emotions evoked by it that bring a character to life. Taking time to write these details is an act of grounding, like mantras, anchoring me to the present. 

It takes time for me to learn any new process, including the art of mothering. It takes time for me to trust my instincts with the babe as I watch her develop and strengthen. Once I am past the fog of sleepless nights, I learn to enjoy this part of the process. I watch her grow. One week, she is rolling over. A couple of months later, she is holding herself up on all fours. Her personality begins to show as she starts to babble and squeal in joy. She is different as she changes, one version of herself built onto another, coming into her being. Like my characters, she too takes time to become herself. She too requires my patience and guidance, and my ability to trust this process.                    

In the next phase of my revision process, I embrace a little kindness. The story is ready to share but it is not yet ready for publication. I share it with my writing group first, a group that meets virtually on Zoom. This step can be harder than it sounds. Despite years of writing practice, there is still a little fear in revealing the story to that first reader. It is an act of kindness toward myself to share. With this phase I start to create a distance. I allow myself to see the story for what it is. I remove the writer and focus on the words. By sharing the story, I allow someone else to guide me. This can be a release, a way to let go of the pressure I place on myself to aim for perfection. I am able to invite support into the process of creation. I am reminded that I am not on my own. It takes a village to raise a child, and a story too. 

Kindness must be a daily act. For me, it begins in the morning. Before life with the baby, I woke earlier and with ease. I took my time to care for the dogs, feed them their breakfast, and then to make my own breakfast—all before beginning my writing. Now, I have a new reality to adjust to. I rush to my screen, squeezing in thirty minutes of writing before my daughter wakes. Some mornings I may not write, but that’s okay. I welcome each day’s energy and commit to writing when I can. I have to be patient and kind to myself as the new mother writer now. I will not set unrealistic expectations. I will find a way to merge the mother self and the writer self, for they are one and the same. When I finish my thirty minutes of writing, I find my baby girl sitting up in her crib, eyes wide and staring up at me. 

After receiving and incorporating feedback, I take a break. I turn to the blank page and write something new. This is a needed change. I find joy in knowing I can start the writing process all over again. There are times, however, where I cannot see past those “shitty first drafts,” as Anne Lamott calls them. I am afraid the pages are not good enough. This fear turns inward to tell me that I am the one not good enough. Fear slips in and stays from rejection to rejection. I try to celebrate the rare kind words written in an email from an editor. I try to hold onto my good mood after being with my writing group. I cherish this connection to language, but I struggle with the part of publishing that feels like acceptance. I sit in the silence of waiting for an answer, instead of singing with each release. I am still learning to love the process, with or without an audience. 

As a new mother, there are days when I am exhausted and alone. I count down the minutes in our last hour together, playing with the babe after dinner. As the evening reaches seven, I take her upstairs to bed. I have used all my energy on her. I no longer have her by my side to watch over, to play with, to love on. Even as she sleeps, I feel both an intense urge to be alone, and an intense urge to still be by her side. There is no one at the end of that long day to reward me for my hard work. I have to endure the love, the work, the exhaustion, the joy, the entire process of mothering with or without the baby’s appreciation, and with or without any formal acceptance. I fear her rejection will arrive at some point, perhaps soon, as a toddler pushing me away. I am sure this will come, just as I am sure of a rejection from an editor. 

Each month my little girl keeps growing. She takes on new forms of her own. Each new skill she learns is a thrill to me. She can eat her first bites of food. She begins to talk, to mumble something close to “mama.” She is full of energy, shifting her body from side to side, in position to move. After months of effort, she finally crawls. I get down on the ground and join her. I crawl alongside her, feeling the excitement of this newfound independence she is discovering. She looks up and smiles at me. Then I stand back up and let her wander across the gray kitchen tile. I wait on the other side of the room, watching as she crawls away from her mother. I know I must now let go.

This is the mantra I do not speak out loud yet. This is the one I must come to know the most. At some point, we must trust in the entire process, from beginning to end, and let our work venture out into the world. Like mothering, I have done the work. I have taken my time. I have done the best I can do. Now, it’s time to say to myself: You have done your job, dear writer. You have finished your writing process from beginning to end. You have mastered the tedious and time-consuming work of revision. In this new phase of life, you have found strength, kindness, and love for yourself along the way. You are yet to learn the hardest of it all. You will learn to trust that your writing will find its place in the world. You will let your writing go. You will learn to stand on your own.