Writing as a parent, or how to be good at anything

If you want to be a writer, marry someone who thinks your being a writer is a good idea. And don’t have kids. Richard Ford

I’ve heard Richard Ford offer this advice more than once and I hate it. He’s pretty adamant about this nugget, but it’s clearly ridiculous and extreme (as is some of his other advice, which maybe I’ll write about separately). There are tons of great, successful writers who have kids: Michael Chabon + Ayelet Waldman - 4 kids, Emily Raboteau + Victor LaValle - 2 kids, Jhumpa Lahiri - 2 kids, Colson Whitehead - 2 kids, Karen Russell - 2 kids to name a few. These writers also have lots of talent, but still…kids. Ford’s advice is more relevant to how he became a writer, and while I’m pretty sure that he’s not wrong, it’s a truism that you’re more likely to be successful at anything if you don’t have kids. Ask any working parent about their career.

I’m focusing on the kids aspect here, but the idea that it’s better to have a spouse to support you in your ambition is pretty obvious, though I’m declaring it similarly unnecessary. Virginia Woolf had it right when she talked about needing only “a room of her own and five hundred [pounds] a year,” but the thing that rankles me is the idea that you shouldn’t have kids. I agree that anything that isn’t writing (in this example) is a roadblock, but I don’t agree that it’s an artistic death sentence.

To be a writer, you need to write. To make a career out of it, you need to write things people want to buy, which is not the same thing as writing well. If you want to write well, you can totally learn how at school and/or with a lot of practice. If you want to write fiction for a living, then good luck to you! Kids or not, there isn’t much of a chance even if you have talent. And if you don’t even have that, you could still make it big. Who’s to say what’ll sell these days? With my blank resume, it sure isn’t me!

We could say the same for anything: the more time you spend on a thing, the more proficient you’ll become. There’s only so much you can do without any guarantees - true of anything in life - but persistence definitely helps. If you can carve out time to write, or whatever it is that you want to do, then you’ll get somewhere. It might take longer than you’d like, and depending on the loftiness of your ambition, you may never reach your goal at all, but you’ll get somewhere.

The point is: chill, jeez, it’s fine. Don’t be so rigid. You do you.

Everything has value. Art, software, sports, accounting, sales, model train collecting, scientific research, cheese making, child rearing, whatever - it’s all worth doing under any circumstance if you’re willing to face the challenges each endeavor poses. Everything brings its own set of unique experience and perspective. I believe the world could use a little more cross-pollination anyway. Nobody ever said life was going to be easy, but there’s more than one way to get where you want to go.