When life finds you elbows deep in a job you need to cover rent, how do you cultivate the beliefs and practices that keep the real you intact? Writer Kat Taylor is spilling her secrets about protecting herself and her writing life with a couple of small hours, explanations that keep people off your back, characters who wait patiently for your return, and someone in your corner who sees you as the glorious, complex, writerly self you are.
KAT TAYLOR
“Before that class I lied about how I was spending my time. I said I was completing nursing education requirements, and would disappear into the office in my home, lock the door. I wanted to keep it private. I was fearful people would judge me that once again I wasn’t taking life seriously, I just had a lot of internalized shame about being a creative person. And I think when you have that internalized fear and shame there comes a point where you just have to love and own who you are and be fearless about announcing it to the world.”
- Kat Taylor
Kat Taylor is a multi-genre writer formerly based in Seattle, and currently on a journey in search of sunshine, palm trees, and a new hometown. Most recently, her work was featured in PULP Magazine. Kat is passionate about queer representation in young adult literature, explores the complexities of contemporary dating culture through personal essay, and is hard at work writing her first science fiction novel. Kat shares life on the road with her partner, and a festive llama dashboard ornament named Llucy. You can follow Kat on Instagram @kat_taylor_writes and at www.kattaylorwrites.com
ASK MOLLY
QUESTION: “It's hard to be inspired when you're tired.” What to do if this is you?
Get honest and pay attention to what will really work for you. If your daily life is absolutely slammed, attempting to cultivate a daily or even a weekly writing practice may not be realistic! From micro to macro, there’s a few different ways to structure our writing lives. Retreats: What if one or two days in a row, a couple of times a year, IS how your writing happens? Would that be so bad? If finding a bit of time for yourself takes a ton of wrangling—go big! Instead of going through tons of planning and rearranging for only a few minutes of peace, plan something you can really look forward to a few times a year. Standing Writing Dates: Schedule these with the vigor you would protect a trip or a writing retreat. Know ahead of time how you will create the time, who will handle your responsibilities in your stead is the most important part of the work here. Find a date once or twice a month that you can hand over the reigns for a couple of hours and relax into your writing. Bits & Pieces: If long stretches of time away from your writing will be at odds with your need to frequently process or capture ideas—then lean all the way into writing in fits and spurts and don’t worry about arranging for long time spans! Create digital or analog systems that make it easy for you to jot down your thoughts anytime, anywhere.
DISCUSSION
LEGIBILITY
As artists and writers, we’re sometimes perceived by society at large to be complicated, irresponsible, and as Kat says, even flaky or dramatic. As adults, these childhood labels are replaced with sheer confusion about why and how we’re still artists and writers. Sometimes explaining freelance careers or creative work seems so opaque to others, you’d rather not share about yourself at all. And when freelance work or art making don’t produce the money you need to live, we sometimes find ourselves in job roles that make us more palatable to others. At first, this is a welcome reprieve. It’s a gift to say your job title and have the questions stop! But if we replace what we share about ourselves entirely with our new easy answers, it sometimes doesn’t feel so good. If I only share with others a career role that’s a tiny corner of what’s important to me, who am I? It’s easy to lose sight of yourself when your tender and precious identities get overshadowed by more legible ones.
“REAL ME TIME”
So how do we get by? Well in Kat’s case, she found a way through by stealing away for just a couple of hours a week. She this time helped her to hold on to her creative self. Under the guise of doing work or taking continuing education courses for her career, she was listening to the characters that called to her, translating the literal dreams she had had about a world she didn’t recognize. This imagined and created-by-Kat world on the page, and the practice of creating it kept her grounded when her surroundings didn’t meet her needs.
Next, she used a cross-country move as a fresh start to commit to her writing, and came out into the open with her fiction. In a new city, Kat told herself, “If not now, when?” and enrolled in several classes at a community writing center—this would be the first time she entered a community of writers. She says the first class she walked into was the moment her writing life changed, what had been a closeted time for “The Real Me,” became something legible, something others could see and took interest in, something others could share about themselves with her.
RESOURCES & NEXT STEPS
Read Kat’s Essay: “Silence in the Age of Enthusiastic Consent” in Pulp Mag (CW: description and discussion of sexual assault)
WRITING PROMPT | Try this Story Starter from Kat: The night was too cold for a hike and the brightest star was laughing at her. Of that she was absolutely certain…