From mommy blogger to literary non-fiction writer
From mommy blogger to literary non-fiction writer
On childhood dreams & discovering your voice with Laura Ann Klein
In the early 2000s it felt like everyone had a blog—and I happily jumped onto the trend with my (invite-only!) Livejournal, Xanga, and deviantART accounts. I lamented about calculus and crushes. Shared stories about a toxic relationship. Practiced my hand at longer-form writing through FanFiction and RPG games.
And deleted it all in 2011, afraid that a prospective employer was going to read it and send my job application to the reject pile.
Sometimes I wish I made a backup. (Even before Marie Kondo, I had minimalist tendencies). So when I heard that
used the archives of a blog to build a collection of literary non-fiction essays, I invited her to join me on The Write-Life Balance. In addition to her upcoming book, we also discuss:The epic War and Peace meets Little House on the Prairie novel she wrote as a teenager during a summer at her family’s lake house, which she describes as “completely awful.”
Coming out at 19; and the rollercoaster family dynamics that followed as she dated women and eventually settled down with a male partner.
Her struggle with postpartum depression and how schedules, single parenthood, and writing made her a better mother.
On Childhood Dreams & Discovering Your Voice with Laura Ann Klein
WRITE 👩💻 (5:03, 14:56, 18:05)
Even forty years later, Laura still struggles with calling herself a writer—even though she’s been writing stories since she was five or six years old. She wrote a blog when her children were teenagers, and learned that having a schedule was key to staying on top of domestic duties—including thirty minutes devoted to journaling, writing, or crafting.
After losing one of her blogs, Laura went through her Word document archives and discovered the writing wasn’t “half bad” (Her words, not mine!). While vacationing in Mexico, she spent four hours a day writing. Afterwards, she reached out to editor Lisa Rose for help in putting together what they thought was a memoir, but eventually became a collection of literary non-fiction essays.
LIFE 🏡 (1:10)
Laura’s been a nurse most of her life, (and as of a few weeks ago, officially graduated college! 👩🎓) She’s also a mother to two adult children, and lives in Northern Colorado with her partner, 36 cows, and a Great Pyrenees guard dog, and a barn cat named Juliet.
BALANCE 🧘♀️(33:54)
Laura describes herself as coming to parenthood reluctantly, because of her mother and sister’s mental illness and her queer identity—later leading to her family’s rejection. But reflecting on her thirties, she feels her depression would have been lessened if she had a vocation other than being a stay-at-home mom to two then-little boys.
It wasn’t until she divorced her husband and went back to work full time that she came into her element, feeling she was a much better mother as a single parent.
PARTING ADVICE 💭 (45:30)
Laura recommends making a writing schedule for yourself, even if you have no intention of showing the work to anyone, and it’s a 30-minute brain dump on your phone where all you’re doing is observing something in your world and writing it down. She describes the memory of driving down a street in suburban Denver and seeing a petite blonde woman in yellow Playtex rubber gloves holding a sign that read, “Wishing for chicken”, which is how her blog started.
There is so much beauty in the mundaneness of our lives [so] find the poetry in your everyday life. Look for those things that inspire awe or magic.
READING 📚
Laura says House of Sticks by Ly Tran is on the docket next week—she’s super excited about this memoir!
STREAMING ⏯️
Rage watching the first season of The L Word.
“One didn't age well and the same stuff that annoyed me twenty years ago
is annoying me even more so this go round.”
COOKING 👩🍳
A spring vegetable stir fry, paired with grilled pork loin chops.
To learn about Laura, you can:
Hope you enjoyed this episode,
Sophia :)
P.S. If you’ve ever suffered from writer’s block, make sure to check out my interview with spiritual consultant
.
Good post! I like Laura Ann Klein's advice about writing every day. And I also wrote a blog way back, 2010, andd found it recently, and think it's not half bad. Looking forward to your essay on your VN-Am identity.
Thanks for sharing! Really liked how you structured the article. :)