A Kitchen of One’s Own

by Melissa Corliss DeLorenzo

Carving out a writing life, piecing my time together into some sort of quilted whole, amidst the busyness of my small children, the care of my home, a part-time job, this blog and my creative writing work, is challenging on the most productive days and (most) other days entirely overwhelming. Consuming. Think treading water, my face a tiny circle in an enormous waving pool.

I rarely leave my kitchen for very long. That’s okay – everything I need is here. As I type this, I stand on the cool, lovely ceramic tile my husband installed two years ago. I stand here at the counter and I prepare food for my family. I clean, I fold laundry, I make appointments with doctors, I answer emails. And I write. I have all my tools at hand: laptop and notes and notepads fanned out, my pots and big bamboo wooden spoon at the stove, my cutting board and favorite knife, my big old silver bowl of compostables. My ever-chattering radio. I begin each morning with great vigor and ambition and then, in the end, I do the best I can. I write in fits and starts. Scraps of paper, scrawled ideas, thoughts, lines, beginnings of chapters pepper my counter, flutter around my computer in the breeze from the double window above the sink.

My domestic moments are miles removed from the writerly life I once imagined: a room of my own, money and opportunity flowing, big fat publishing contract, hours of stimulating conversation with other writers. Unfettered time. An endless stream of it. But, even in my most frustrated moments, I am sure that’s not what I really want now that real life has found me. (Well, maybe some of it in small doses might be okay…) I’m a mom, a part-time Office Manager, a homemaker, a writer, a reader, a woman who wants to meaningfully exchange and intersect with other women writers. This life I have now and the life I once imagined have blurred lines, not strong delineated borders. It’s not compartmentalized, not self-standing boxes, but tendrils weaving up and out with connections of all shapes. This is what I have learned.

When I received the email granting me a summer internship with Her Circle Ezine to help coordinate The Writer’s Life blog, I was in my kitchen (where else?) making a morning snack for my kids. In those moments of domesticity, it can be difficult to connect with that universe of words and stories that occupied my mind and spirit with such a stronghold and singularity before the children came to fill my mind and heart and hands with all their needs. I told my children the good news and we jumped around the kitchen.

Then I began the work of figuring out the balance of the demands of the blog responsibilities and the needs of my family and the persistent call of my creative writing work (not to mention the part-time job). At first I was daunted and then a rhythm emerged and then the enjoyment bloomed. Then I received the email asking me to consider accepting the Blog Coordinator position with the eventuality of being its main writer. And again we danced around the kitchen, and now I begin the work of finding the balance and the patience of awaiting for the rhythm to once again emerge. It will.

I am grateful and excited for this journey with The Writer’s Life on which I am about to embark. One of its gifts is the flurry of urgency and busyness, the sharpening of focus and discipline and its reaching affects into my creative work. It makes me work when it might be easier to clean something or worry about clutter when a little clutter doesn’t matter but only serves as a means of distraction from the hard work of creativity. The work matters. And when you are working regularly, it is easier, more joyful to return to the work day after day.

Stories and words have been a lifelong infatuation of mine. I am an ardent reader of women’s literature. I admire the ability of women to evoke a visceral response to emotional content. The urgency of our words to be written and voiced and shared creates a passion and a tension that is exhilarating to experience. My own work centers around women traversing their space and landscape: unadorned yet intricate.

My vision for this blog is only beginning to come into focus – the edges still soft and blurry. I wasn’t going to admit that at first. I feared I needed to have it all mapped out in order to do it well and be taken “seriously” as a “real” writer. But I have decided this is going to be an endeavor in fearlessness. An exploration in writing deliberately but not self-consciously. Of being genuine and authentic, abandoning the worry of revealing some essence of myself that I think I should conceal or beautify in some false way. This is the point from which I begin.

This harried mom is embracing the opportunity to find balance. This writer is taking on the challenge of writing where I can and when I can and doing it with abandon and doing it joyfully! I want to write the way I want to write, and say the things I want to say with no fear. The core of it: do the work of your spirit and your heart, wherever you find yourself, and it will be good.

Melissa Corliss DeLorenzo is a writer, reader, yogini (when she can squeeze it in), mom, part-time Office Manager, a homemaker and the Coordinator and Writer for The Writer’s Life blog. She loves to cook and take long walks with her kids and is a woman who wants to meaningfully exchange and intersect with other women writers. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature from the University of Massachusetts and a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. Currently she works at a web development company (because part-time Office Manager buys more groceries than Struggling Writer). She is at work on a novel and a short story collection. Melissa lives in North Central Massachusetts with her family.

Want to write for The Writer’s Life blog? Drop us an email at books@hercircleezine.com.

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