This Week's Miscellany (10/11/23)
Planning for motherhood and career, Jo March, Alice McDermott, and family films
Hi, I’m Haley! Book midwife (editor) and author. Hello to new subscribers and welcome all to another edition of This Week’s Miscellany. TWM is full of my favorite things from around the web, typically trending literary.
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On Monday night I participated in a virtual panel discussion about flourishing in work and family life for Public Discourse with some really incredibly women. I continue to ponder the conversation and insights of the panelists, particularly about what advice we’d give to younger women who want to be mothers someday. Are there things you can do to plan ahead and set yourself up for success?
According to the journeys of the women on the panel, plans always seems to be disrupted by not only motherhood, but life in general. To obsess over rigid plans may not benefit you at all. Just do the next right thing. And yet, there are some considerations that are worth reflecting on when considering career decisions, where to live, and how to structure life, etc.
One of these is that we must acknowledge reality. Young children require a lot of care, a lot of physical presence. To ignore this is likely unhelpful. Planning for a season that requires more flexibility could be a lifesaver. Living close to grandparents, switching to a remote position, or even taking a break could be really essential during this season. Even now when my children are all school-aged and we’re no longer homeschooling like we did for a decade, dealing with simple childhood illnesses when kids need to stay home from school would have easily wiped out all our leave time if I couldn’t work from home. I cannot stress this enough: have a plan for who will care for sick children. This is going to be a major consideration.
Another topic that came up is that we have to stop believing the lie that if we step back from career for a season to focus on family life, we’ll never thrive in our career again. I didn’t work full-time for 11 years. Then I moved into full-time self-employed work. A year later, I accepted my first full-time position in 12 years. I have no regrets about the years I spent primarily at home. But my return to paid work was made possible in part by continuing to read, hone my writing craft, and connect with other people who were interested in the same topics I was during those years of only pursuing those things in the margins (before kids woke up, during naptime, etc).
And creativity was another hot topic of the conversation. When my writing career began to really thrive and I was feeling very energized by my “outside the home” work, moving to full-time was made possible by my husband cutting back on his hours for a time. Due to the ages of our children at the time (and because homeschooling was still the option that was working best for our family), having both of us working full-time just wasn’t possible. There are only so many hours in the day.
This conversation as well as some interesting articles I’ve seen circulating lately having to do with how difficult it is for writers to make a livable income has motivated me to write up a little series that will touch on the following:
How much do authors make from book sales? (not as much as you think)
How many copies does the average book sell? (not as many as you think)
Can you survive on royalties alone? (probably not)
What do authors need to do beyond writing a really good book? (a lot)
What are some ways to actually survive with a livable income as a writer? (get creative)
Is it worth it to write books? (depends on why you’re doing it)
I’ll be keeping that series for paid subscribers only since I’ll be sharing some pretty personal information as far as book sales numbers of my books and ballpark income from them to give you a feel for what an author like me makes from writing. If you’d like to tune in to this conversation then kindly…
Links
Old Books with Grace is one of my favorite podcasts. I honestly rarely listen to podcasts (should I admit that as a former podcaster?) but when I do, it’s often this one. I was delight that Dr. Grace Hamman (who has a new book out btw) interviewed my friend Dr. LuElla D’Amico about one of my all-time favorite books:
The Joy of Louisa May Alcott from
And you’ll probably want to follow that listen with this adjacent piece:
Why We All Want to Be Jo March by
Everyone from Nora Ephron to J.K. Rowling to Susan Sontag to Simone de Beauvoir has claimed the bookish and bold heroine of Louisa May Alcott’s 150+ year old classic, Little Women, as a personal inspiration. They cite Jo’s literary prowess, her independence, her adventurous spirit, and her rebellious nature as having a profound impact on their young and impressionable minds.
I just finished contemporary Catholic novelist Alice McDermott’s The Ninth Hour and after reading this beautiful piece by Katy Carl, I want to read Charming Billy!
Fiction of Faith, Fiction of Belief by
This peculiar flavor of beauty and pain arises whenever you can never really know whether the family story around which your whole life was built is the story that tracks to strictly measurable, historically verifiable reality—or whether it was simply the story you had to believe to survive, whether it was capital-T True or not. Pinned down by this, you must then wrestle with the obvious metaphysical trust-implications of such an uncertainty: If I cannot even believe what some of these people tell me about themselves, others, the world we all inhabit—how can I be so sure I should believe what they want to tell me about God?
After I asked Twitter what would be good films to show a group of Catholic high schoolers,
shared this great list of movies:Eleven Great “Family” Films by Tsh Oxenreider
And I’m delighted that Word on Fire Spark’s first board book is now out in the world!
This book was an absolute delight to work on with illustrator Eileen Ryan Ewen! You can grab your copy here.
Coming Soon!
-Mini book reviews, the Ultimate Jane Austen Film Guide, and answers to writing career questions (for paid subscribers)
2024 Pilgrimage
Our pilgrimage to Belgium and Germany in 2024 is already half full! We’re keeping it small (we just love the experience of a smaller group of pilgrims). Considering how many sign ups we already have, I would advise interested parties to register immediately:
REGISTRATION NOW LIVE: Heavenly Hops Pilgrimage with Fr. Harrison Ayre to Belgium and Germany.
Feel free to shoot me an email if you have any questions at all about the trip. Let’s go to Belgium!
Wishing you all a wonderful weekend. And a huge thank you to MKJ, Janka, Rachel, Sara, Abby, Holly, Elisa, Ellen, Leigh, Stacy, Katy, Leslie, Paige, Jacquie, Mary, Burgandy, and Sarah for upgrading to a paid subscription. This is a reader-supported newsletter so if you enjoy getting these emails, please consider supporting this Substack by upgrading to a paid subscription with the button below.
Thanks for reading!
Haley
(Editor of Word on Fire Spark, Author, Former Podcaster)
Haley’s Children’s Mystery Series about Mouse Nuns
Such much good stuff here. Yay for Grace's podcast!! It's one of my favorites!
I interviewed Grace this week about her new book and she's so lovely!! I love her even more now that I've listened to this Alcott episode! What great timing - I guess it was meant to be putting out that Jo piece when I did. Thank you for sharing!