This is the first in a series about writers who are also parents. If you’re a parent, then you know the first commodity to go is your time. Your whole sense of time changes when you have a baby. You look back wistfully at the hours you used to spend reading, writing, watching television, whatever you wanted. Your free time gets reduced to the hour after your kid goes to bed and before you pass out. If you’re a morning person, you probably gain an extra hour, but if you’re like me and sleep until that first cry drags you from sleep, then mornings aren’t really an option. In these interviews, I seek to find out how people structure their lives to accommodate both their art and their children, what supports they rely upon, and how they prioritize the competing pulls of life.
I’m so honored and thrilled to feature Nishta Mehra in today’s Mama Writer post. Nishta is an incredibly talented writer, a teacher, mother, wife, and also, an amazing cook. She blogs her recipes at Blue Jean Gourmet. Nishta’s first book, The Pomegranate King: Essays, was published in 2013, and she has a book of essays forthcoming from Picador in 2018! The book stemmed from a gorgeous essay she wrote for Guernica about her family. I can’t wait to read it. Here is Nishta on teaching, writing, and parenthood, with some great advice.
How old is your child?
Shiv turned 5 on July 17th.
I know you’re a teacher, which is a job that, more than most jobs, takes up so much emotional space. Have you found you’ve been able to balance teaching and writing? Do you write during the school year?
I do write during the school year, but my process is very different school year v. summer. In the summer, I have much more brain space available because I’m not, as you alluded, engaged on a daily basis with students, plans for class, emails, and—more than anything—a giant and seemingly continuous pile of grading/work that needs feedback. It’s harder to compartmentalize during the school year.
At the same time, I find teaching to be incredibly generative for my writing, particularly the teaching of writing. Three years ago, I moved to a position in the high school (out of an 8th grade English position), with the opportunity to develop a creative writing survey class for seniors, and it was a game-changer. That was the most productive year of writing-while-teaching I’d ever had up to that point, which I attribute 100% to the creative energy of my students. I approach my writing classes as communities—I may be the writer with the most experience in the room, but I’m still learning and growing, just as they are. It’s impossible for me to push them to take risks and then not take risks myself. When I give them a journal prompt, I sit down and journal with them; when I create a new imitation assignment, I work on it too, which is often humbling (especially when we are in our fiction unit!)
What is a typical day like?
I wake up at 5:30 or 5:45; I have to be on campus by 7:30, and I have a somewhat unpredictable commute. I’d much rather be early because I find running late in the mornings so stressful; plus, Shiv wakes up around 7:00 and I find it easier to leave in the morning if he’s still asleep. (My wife handles his morning routine, which makes it possible for me to do this. I have colleagues who do daycare/school drop-offs on their way to work and I don’t know how they manage.)
I try to meditate at least 3 mornings a week, because I find it makes me a much more patient teacher, parent, and spouse. A typical day at school—well, there’s no such thing! My schedule changes day-to-day; a smattering of classes, free periods, meetings. In addition to my teaching duties, I’m also English department chair, so often I’ll end up in an impromptu conversation with a colleague about a new text or an article we’ve all just read. Often, I’ll have students ask to meet during my free periods or lunch, either to go over an essay or just talk. I’ve made it a priority to try to always say “yes” to students and colleagues when they ask, but that often means that, by the end of the school day (4:00 pm), I’m fairly brain-fried.
Three days a week (MWF), I pick Shiv up from his school around 4:30 or 5:00 and we head home for dinner with my wife, sometimes making it to the gym first, where I can sneak in a workout while he hangs at the Kids’ Club. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, he spends his days with my wife and my mom, so I come straight home—sometimes I have an after-school meeting, and Shiv has dance class once a week, but we really prioritize family dinner. Shiv’s bedtime routine starts between 7:00-7:30, and that’s my special time with him during the school year. Since I’ve been gone all day, I relish being in bed with him and reading books. And, tbh, at least once a week or so, I end up falling asleep in there with him and my wife has to come wake me up!
Other nights, my wife and I talk or read together on the couch until somewhere around 9:30. If I haven’t been able to make it into the gym in a few days, I’ll go for a walk at night after Shiv goes to bed, and occasionally I have to stay up late to grade or do schoolwork, but I try to prioritize sleep as much as I can.
Weekends, I prioritize time with Shiv, but since I’m used to getting up early, I’ll often take advantage of that as potential writing time. If I get up at 5:30 on a Saturday or Sunday, I’ve got an hour-and-a-half to myself in a quiet house before anyone else wakes up. Also, while Shiv no longer naps, he does have “quiet time” for at least an hour on the weekends; I try to avoid the temptation to do laundry or something else household related during those times, and write instead, or read.
How do you turn off that part of your brain and turn to your own creative work? And how do you find the energy and time to make space for your own endeavors?
I don’t have the experience of my mind always being on Shiv, though it certainly was much more so the case when he was younger. Now that he’s bigger and very independent, I miss him when I’m not around him, but I don’t find it difficult to turn my brain to my creative work. The hardest thing for me is managing the schedule. Sometimes hard to prioritize writing space/time when it takes me away from Shiv, especially during the school year when I’m already not seeing him as much as I would like. So then I want to make sure that I build together time, just me and him, into the weekly schedule, and I also want to give my wife a break—she’s the work-from-home parent and an introvert, meaning she needs even more alone time than I do!—but also figure out how to spend time together the 3 of us. Then, like every family, we have complicating factors: my in-laws are both elderly and not in good health, and my wife manages their care. They live less than 2 miles from us, as does my mom, who is thankfully in good health and helps us a tremendous amount—but it’s also important for me to make sure that I’m spending time with her and not taking her proximity for granted.
What does your “space” look like, physically, emotionally? Home, bar, coffee shop?
One thing I’ve realized in the last couple of years while working on this book project is that I can write from all kinds of places. When I had more time and flexibility in my life, I had sort of a precious idea about needing a certain space in order to be productive, but now I often don’t have any choice; I edited my book proposal while lying in bed next to Shiv, who was sick and watching Anastasia on my work laptop. This makes the opportunities when I can go to a coffee shop to work feel downright luxurious, and I enjoy them thoroughly!, some conditions are more conducive than others, but if I only have an hour and I’m in my messy house in my pajamas, then so be it.
When I had more time and flexibility in my life, I had sort of a precious idea about needing a certain space in order to be productive, but now I often don’t have any choice; I edited my book proposal while lying in bed next to Shiv, who was sick and watching Anastasia on my work laptop.
What kind of supports do you have that make it possible for you to write?
I am really, really lucky to have all kinds of supports in place, and I’m very aware that my process and productivity are dependent on those supports. The first is, of course, my wife, Jill, who is my first reader, enthusiastic cheerleader, ass-kicking coach, and tremendous co-parent. She is the first one to remind me that I am a business as well as an artist, and that I have to take myself seriously. The second is my mom, who retired and moved to Houston right after Shiv was born. She is the world’s most amazing grandmother, mom, and mother-in-law; Jill and I often remark that our life wouldn’t work without her. Also, my job—while it is demanding and often draining, I truly love it. Feeling good about my work allows me, I think, to have energy left over for creative endeavors. Also, the teaching schedule is huge; summer is invaluable for me as a writer (and as a parent.)
You have a book coming out! Tell us about it.
The working title is Making Space: On Parenthood, Family, & (Not) Passing. On the one hand, my family is very typical—two parents, one child, bedtime stories, pizza nights—but on the other hand, we occupy a bunch of different experiences that don’t normally go together in people’s minds—two moms, three colors, adoption, gender non-conforming child. So my book is a collection of essays about our experiences of moving through the world as a family.
I work really well on a deadline; it’s just something I know about myself, and I try to use it to my advantage. Jill, my mom, and I worked together to designate times that I could use for writing—we have family calendar meetings once a month as it is, to keep track of everything—and it helped me tremendously to have those times set aside. After the first semester, I realized that I wasn’t getting enough time in, so we sat down and created a new plan. I had about 2-3 hours set aside to work, twice a week; so, I had to “bring it” during those times.
What are you reading now?
My book club is reading The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson—I suggested it after hearing her interviewed on the OnBeing podcast. It’s a huge, beautifully written account of the Great Migration, told through 3 individual stories. Wilkerson did an unbelievable amount of research for this book, and I’m learning so much from it, particularly just how skewed my knowledge of American history is. I’ve also got Janet Mock’s memoir, Redefining Realness, on my bedside table, and—true confessions time—I’ve been re-reading the Harry Potterseries this summer as a guilty pleasure and I’m currently on Book 5. (This was also podcast-inspired—a friend got me hooked on Harry Potter & the Sacred Text.)
What’s the funniest/cutest/weirdest thing your kid has ever done?
Oh man, I could go on and on but I’ll give you just one anecdote; about a year or so ago, we’d gone out to dinner as a family and we were loading up in Jill’s truck to head home. Shiv was in a goofy mood—he’s an extrovert, so he feeds off of the energy in crowded restaurants—and as Jill started the truck, he said to her, in this super-sassy voice, “Play some music, BABY!” I think Jill cried she laughed so hard.
Any advice you think you could offer writers in terms of process, schedule, creativity? Anything that’s really worked for you?
This may sound incredibly generic, but I honestly think the key is knowing yourself well. Play to your strengths and know your weaknesses/tendencies, then try to create new habits to interrupt those. As I said earlier, I work really well on a deadline; well, when I signed my contract, there was just one deadline—the final one. I knew that I would need to make lots of discreet deadlines for myself in between, so I created a system and had a friend hold me accountable. I’d tell her, “I’m going to send you a new essay by X day/time and if you don’t get it, text me.” And because I didn’t ever want her to have to text me and say I hadn’t followed through, it worked.
In terms of weaknesses, I am definitely someone who has the tendency to overcommit, to try and do too much. So I asked my wife to help me look at my calendar and think about things I could cut out or say “no” to. It was incredibly hard to break my habit of automatically saying “yes,” but it was worth it. The more I practiced it, the easier it got.
Decide what causes/commitments matter most, and resist giving your time elsewhere.
The last thing is also cliché but is advice I’ve been given from other women who juggle a lot: prioritize. Decide what causes/commitments matter most, and resist giving your time elsewhere. Again, this often means saying “No,” which I am personally not good at—I definitely fight against the desire to be likeable, which I also think is gendered—but I’ve found that, when I can articulate to someone why I’m saying no, they tend to respect where I’m coming from (instead of taking the “no” personally) and they stop asking me to do things. Of course, this means missing out on a lot of stuff; the thing about saying “no” is that it’s not so bad to say “no” to stuff you didn’t really want to do in the first place, but saying “no” to something that sounds fun is much harder. It’s sort of like budgeting, but with time. If you’ve ever had to be frugal with money, you’re applying the same set of principles and it requires a similar kind of discipline. For example, I don’t watch TV. We don’t have cable, or Netflix, or Hulu. I am completely useless during those “Have you seen?” conversations at work—not because I have anything against TV, but rather because I know myself all too well. I would get addicted to the same shows my friends are into, and while I can put a book down (ahem, Harry Potter) and walk away when it’s time to write, that’s much harder for me to do when it comes to television. So I simply took it off the table as an option.
Thank you, Nishta! I’m so glad you said “yes” to speaking with me.