I just spent an hour trying to find a quote or some advice on how to remain creative when your mental and emotional space is completely taxed. You know what I got? A bunch of bullshit, condescending platitudes about how there’s no such thing as being “too busy.” Real artists, they said, make the time for their art.

Time management is one thing. Mental space is a completely different beast, and you know what? Sometimes there isn’t enough mental and emotional space to be creative, so please don’t tell me to “make the time” or “power through it.” My mind is full, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not a writer.

___

“How are you feeling?”

It’s a question I get a LOT these days. Not “how are you?” or “hey, what’s up?” It’s a greeting rooted in concern and interest in my “condition.”

But, much like it’s cousin for non-pregnant pleasantry exchanges (“how are you?”), I’m not sure people want a truly honest answer. So I’m honest, but I skip any part that will lead them to believe that I am, in any way, unhappy or uncomfortable with my current condition.

“I’m good! Just a little back pain, but other than that I’ve been great.”

They smile. “Oh, that’s so good to hear.”

I don’t tell them about the fear of being an angry, impatient mom, or the selfish thoughts about losing myself between piles of dirty diapers and Daniel Tiger reruns. I don’t mention the nagging questions about money and the toll it might take on my incredibly happy marriage, or the guilt I feel knowing that my pup’s place as the center of our world is about to be upended.

But we move on regardless, pleasantries over and done with.

No one wants to hear about that stuff. They want to know, is it a boy or a girl? Have you felt them move yet? Isn’t it amazing? Have you started on the nursery?

(Boy, yup, it’s neat I guess, yup.)

___

Listen, bringing a new human into the world is scary as hell. There are just so many expectations, whether stated or not: you’ll be a great mom. You’ll move heaven and earth for your son. You’ll have the cutest baby. He’ll be the center of your world and you’ll know a love stronger and more pure than any on this earth. You’ll gladly be selfless and sacrifice everything for him.

They don’t notice when I shift uncomfortably, or when I change the subject with a joke or a gross fact about pregnancy.

I’m not supposed to have doubts about my ability to rise to the occasion of motherhood. I’ve spent 33 years trying to get to know and love myself. Learning to care for myself and to make space for myself have been some of my hardest fought lessons, and now I’ll be expected to put all that aside and become selflessly in love with someone else who I don’t even know. How am I supposed to pull that off?

Oddly, there’s not a section in any of the pregnancy websites or apps that say “How to cope with fear of being a selfish monster of a mother.” There’s only coping with what’s obvious – the nausea and heartburn, the varicose veins and back pain.

So when it comes to coping with what’s going on upstairs, I guess I’m working a lot of it out on my own. And you know what that means? It takes time and tons of energy.

___

When I started to take writing seriously again, I felt like I uncovered a piece of myself.

I found myself in words and characters and ideas. I had focus and discipline. As I became more serious in the endeavor, I created schedule and routine that was flexible enough to accommodate last minute plans and a crazy work schedule. Every day, I managed to fit a few words in.

Quick, ask me if I’ve written anything today.

Yo, Jami, you written anything today?

Nope.

This week?

Nope.

What the hell, Jami? The baby’s not even here yet! Don’t you know how much LESS time you’re going to have in a few short months?

Yes, I’m well aware.

When I first came to accept that I was going to have a baby at the end of the year, that was my first thought: I need to get this novel query-ready by November because life after December doesn’t exist.

I had eight months. More than enough time for a couple of edits and some beta feedback, right?

Then came the first trimester, comprised entirely of exhaustion, endless napping, and nausea. Then the second trimester started – yay! Energy! Eating!

…and basically the loss of my husband and partner to grad school and the onset of some of the very intense emotions I’ve outlined above.

I realized last night as I was journaling that I just don’t have the mental space and energy to beat myself up over a few unproductive months on the writing front. I’m busy emotionally preparing myself to be a mom, supporting Jeremy and keeping our home together as he works double time on his degree, sorting through paint colors and registries and childcare and birth classes, and…

There’s no time at this time. There’s no space for creative problem solving when 120 percent of my mental space is occupied.

As I wrote, I came to realize that at this time doesn’t mean that there will never be time in the future. It just means that my plate is full with really pressing things at the moment.

And when the baby is born, I’ll likely have another few months where my plate is too full to give my work the time and energy that it deserves.

And that’s okay.

It’s not permanent, none of this is. The horizon will shift and the world will keep spinning and one day the fog and exhaustion will clear and I’ll feel that need to write in my bones.

I’m starting to feel less guilty about my lack of productivity this summer, and in turn I’m letting go of the anxiety I have about letting myself slack once the baby comes. It doesn’t make me any less of a writer if I’m not able to find an hour to devote completely to my work each day. Less of a working writer? Yeah, okay. But on an existential level, not really. I will come back to it with more enthusiasm as ever as long as I work to cultivate my creative thoughts everyday.

When it comes down to it, that’s the challenge. We all go through phases where we are too mentally taxed to make any significant progress on our work, but that doesn’t mean that we have to let those creative muscles wither away.

Which brings me back to where I started: How can I keep those creative muscles flexed even if I don’t have the mental space for it?

Well, the internet was useless and infuriating. So here are the tips I came up with:

1. Use those mindless chores to think through creative problems.
   I walk my dog every morning and sometimes every evening as well. That’s a solid 30 minutes that I have to actively work through some of the creative problems that I’ve been working through. I find that talking through the roadblocks in editing not only makes the walk go quicker, but I’m about twice as likely to actually sit down and write later in the day. Even if I don’t, I’m not coming back to the page completely stumped about where I left off and why.
   
   And hardly anyone looks at me weird when I’m talking to myself, anyway.
   
2. Journal.
   I need to get better about journaling. I try to do it nightly, but sometimes I’m too tired, or I don’t want to deal with the dog trying to eat my pen as it moves across the page, but when I do set aside some time to write each evening, I feel so much better. First of all, my plate is full in part because my brain is full of all those questions and fears, so working those out on paper just feels good. Secondly, even when I have nothing to write about, I default to thinking back to those editing roadblocks I keep finding and I’m able to work through them.
   
   Plus, writing every day is central to being a writer, which no one wants to hear but that probably just means they need to hear it. Again. With feeling.
   
3. When you find a sliver of space in your cluttered noggin, own it.
   My last chapter, in particular, was a HUGE slog. It’s the middle of the novel, there was all this useless narrative that was supposed to lead up to a big revelation and I have never been so bored as when I reread it. But in the middle of work one day, I realized that it needed conflict — and I knew just what to do.
   
   I printed out the chapter and took my red pen out to a long lunch where I sketched out the edits. I finished incorporating them in a couple of weeks (basically lightning speed these days) and felt SO good about it. I extended that long lunch to include ice cream. After all, I was a literary genius (also pregnant) and literary geniuses toast to their genius with beer. I can’t have beer (see above) but I had to celebrate my genius somehow. You know why?
   
4. You have to celebrate the little wins.
   I learned this from a trainer I worked with for a while: little wins are worth their weight in gold. Seriously. Some days I feel so mentally taxed that just opening my manuscript feels like a colossal task and when I manage to do it, I pat myself on the back. When you celebrate what feels like a little win, you start to want more of those wins. You make more space, you get more wins, and before you know it, you’ve rebuilt a habit.