Chrysalis
A chapter-to-be from my book-to-be
Dear Friends,
Welcome to the first paid post of my Substack, one that supports the books that I have in progress. I literally cannot write these books without you. My publishers don’t give me big advances (or advances at all) even though they are lovely presses. I don’t expect that I’ll ever receive a large advance.
Ten days ago, I turned 50, and with that wisdom, I can say that publishing is vastly different from what it was thirty years ago, when I started my master’s in creative writing program. Even in a mere thirty years, the landscape is unrecognizable. And that’s okay. Really. I won’t be getting big advances.
But I do have you, a community I never had before, and I like this world better. Truly.
If you are not a paid subscriber, you’ll be able to read some of this piece and hopefully learn a lot from what you read. If you are a paid subscriber, you’ll be able to read the whole thing. (Note: You might prefer to read it online and not in your email. It’s a longform piece for sure.)
One of my works in progress is a book for writers. I’ve been teaching writing for over twenty years, and I’m currently faculty in the MFA program in writing at Drexel University. The point is, I think about writing a lot. I love reading craft books, books about the publishing industry, books about the writing life. (I still have my hardcover first edition of Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott from the year it came out. I was in college.)
My book is tentatively titled Good Enough Writer, and I hope to have it completed by the end of this year, 2026. As I go, I will share working drafts of chapters with my paid subscribers. Some of these chapters will be more philosophical. Some will be more instructional. This one is definitely on the philosophical side, but I hope you find it interesting—especially if you have ever thought to yourself, “Should I write a book?”
(The answer to that question is always “Yes.”)
Also, please provide feedback! Any comments you might have on what you liked or what could be better are more than welcome.
I’m so glad you’re here.
-Katie
Chapter Title: Chrysalis
[As I said above, this chapter is a work in progress. I’m still trying to nail down the throughline, and also I think it’s pretty depressing and I’m funnier than this. For a book on writing, having a meandering, weird essay about capitalist, patriarchal, gendered norms might not be the thing. I don’t know. What do you think?]
As writers, productivity is a constant concern. We track our word counts. We use journals to track our writing progress. Tracking writing output is just another way to measure ourselves and whether we are doing enough. Whether we are enough. And most of us fail to measure up to whatever gold standard we have in our own heads.
There’s nothing that trashes your creativity more than believing you aren’t doing enough. That pressure is how you end up in bed watching reruns of Ted Lasso. (Or The Witcher. It depends on my mood.)
Public discourse about productivity dramatically changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. In real time, we could watch it split into two main camps, which have persisted to this day. The first looks like this: “How to Make the Best Use of this Time at Home!” I call this the “productivity during hard times” genre.
The second looks like this: “Stop Worrying about Being Productive During a Crisis.” I call this the “reject productivity” genre. If I were to pick a camp, it would be the second. And yet, I cannot stop worrying about productivity.
Even now, years after the “end” of Covid, in the year 2026 as I write these words, I worry that I am not doing enough. That worry grinds at me daily, and I know I’m not the only one. How can we be creative under this onslaught of advice for what we must do in order to…be creative? Be productive? Be a successful writer?
It just isn’t possible.
***
Recently, my spouse and I were gathering up every pair of headphones the kids had scattered around the house. The kids complained that they didn’t have any for school, and so we wondered if we needed to buy more pairs. The kids use headphones a lot; we continued to homeschool once the pandemic hit, and we never stopped. Our kids (like me) are neurodivergent, and they thrive learning at home. Headphones are necessary.
But we wanted to be sure we needed more headphones before we spent the money.
For me, even with our life of relative financial security, money is a trigger for anxiety. It goes way back to childhood, and it will not let up. I’ve tried; my therapist has tried. Each session, she would ask, “Can you pay the mortgage this month? Your bills?” and I would say, “Of course.” And she would ask, “Then what are you worried about?”
There was, and there remains, no answer to that question.
During the search for the headphones, I opened a drawer and discovered a snarl of fine white cables—an innumerable number of earbuds, their tangled state the obvious explanation for why the kids weren’t using them. I sat down to untangle each pair one at a time, clean them with a little bit of Windex on a cloth, and wrap them into neat bundles.
After the fourth pair or so, and only partially through my task, I started thinking about how long it would take before the headphones were snarled again.
I turned to my spouse. “I feel like Sisyphus.”
“Which one was he again?”
“He pushed a boulder up a hill over and over, and it kept rolling back down.”
***
I’m a writer. I write books. It used to be that I wrote a lot of books, essays, and stories. Endless words, just flowing like Niagara Falls.
And then, one day, the words dried up. Around the same time, my anxiety spiked, worry took hold of my mind twenty-four-seven, and would not let go. It was mid-2020, and I just could not write anymore. My writer friends posted on social media about how they were writing so much during this time at home, and I wanted to throw my laptop into the pond with the snapping turtles across the street.
But there could be no throwing. I still had projects due. I am a writer for a living. I couldn’t stop because of the pandemic. The thing is, my body had other ideas. It just shut down.
Then, on October 1st, 2021, I awoke feeling certain that something was amiss. I sat up quickly and grabbed my phone. No messages. Looking at my calendar, it seemed like an ordinary day: overly full of responsibilities with no time for the afternoon nap I knew I would need but would have no time to take.
I could not shake the sense that something was terribly wrong.
The bad feeling kept nagging me even after I headed into my office. Did I have a doctor's appointment that I had not put on the calendar? Did one of the kids? Was the vet supposed to come and see the pets? Something was missing, something important. But it was just beyond my reach.
And then, like a too-bright camera flash, there it was. On October 1st, 2021, the final manuscript of my most recent book was due to my publisher.
Frantic, I texted everyone involved—my co-author and also my co-editor of the series of which the book was a part. I refused to believe that we had made such a huge mistake. Surely one of them would have remembered this important deadline. Surely, we couldn’t have, as a group, fucked up so royally.
Reader: Indeed, we could have.
My co-author and I had diligently worked on the book for a year. Then, once the pandemic hit, we had to stop and frantically transform our courses into high-quality online learning experiences. Then, shortly after, we started teaching. The book slipped into the shadows of our psyches. On October First, we had a woefully unfinished, unedited pile of pages.
In the urgency of pandemic teaching, we had simply forgotten the deadline.
I offered to call our editor to ask for an extension. Thankfully, our editor gave us one month to finish the book. We really needed three months, but that would have pushed the book’s production deadline beyond what the publisher could tolerate. During that one month, my co-author and I, each the primary caregiver of two children and people with full-time jobs, wrote and edited and wrote and edited until we nearly fell apart. My co-editor of the series, a single parent with a full-time job, pulled more than her weight, editing the book multiple times to help us meet the deadline.
Finally, at six a.m. on November 1st, 2021, I woke early to do one final read and then emailed the pages before my kids woke up for school. After I sent the book, I felt a wave of relief, Sisyphus finally pushing the rock over the mountain in Tartarus.
But I also felt other emotions: helplessness in the face of our mistake with the deadline. After all, we had a team, a good, thoughtful, responsible team, and all of us had dropped this ball. If we together could not manage a project, then what hope is there that I can do one alone?
I also felt exhaustion because writing that book on such a tight deadline—a deadline caused by my own negligence—had taken every bit of energy I had. I did not know how I would ever be able to do that much work again. And I wasn’t exaggerating. I meant ever.
I would like to toss aside the very concept of productivity forever. To reject the word from my vocabulary. To lie about all day and read and scribble in my notebook and worry about nothing. To play with my horses and dog and cats and kids and spouse and never, ever worry.
What a magnificent life that would be.
