Welcome. In case you’re new here, I’m Caitlin, a writer of all sorts of things—fiction, life, the occasional poem—but lately here on The Time Given I’ve been sharing how I’m spending my days amidst grief, infertility, and midlife. Sometimes it’s slow stories inspired by my daily life, other times it’s prayers & poetry. This season I find myself exploring garden spaces, and the tension of joy & grief that it holds. Thank you for reading along.
Last week, I stumbled down the rabbit hole of my past writing thanks to a single link on my Facebook memories.
I’m been blogging since August of 2007, halfway through my college years, or so my very first Blogger website1 reminds me.
It reminds me of a lot of things, actually. Firstly that my writing was atrocious. But when you’re twenty is anything you do supposed to be good? Secondly, I have always been a emotional, over-sharer when it comes to my words. And thirdly, writing was as much of my refuge then as it is now.
I think this beautiful blog thing might just be the refuge I am looking for. I'm not sure what words will end up pouring out of my fingertips into the bright abyss of my computer screen, but I feel already, that they will.
- from my first ever blog post, circa 2007
Currently, my Safari reading list holds the links to the six blogs I have accumulated over the years, because yes, once I found that first one I went down the deep, dark web to uncover my others. The list doesn’t include the microblogging I’ve done on Instagram and the two blogs I created on my website which currently exist in untraceable, unpublished webpages.2 While I haven’t combed through the full archives just yet, I am curious to reread many of those posts, even though I know they hold hard things I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready to revisit.
Discovering them last week had me thinking about how so many writers my age have been writing on the internet for over a decade. Many aren’t quiet about that fact even as they’ve migrated to Substack and started “over.”
The more I consume these publications, one author leading me to the next, the more I realize I, too, fit into this realm. Except, my spaces have been frazzled and fleeting as I flit from one hobby to the next, trying to find my niche or brand or the thing that makes me stand out only to start over again with the newest passion.
And while many of these writers have turned or are turning their blogs and writing into book deals, my heart aches with the question, what do you have?
There is no single space of archives, a testimony of my {writing} life.
No published books gathering these stories into a tightly knitted memoir.
No giant lists of subscribers who have faithfully followed me from one blog to the next that I’ve somehow turned into a community via courses or Patreon or a podcast.3
Only rejection after rejection for a catalog of short stories and a manuscript that I so desperately want young readers to fall in love with, two other books shelved and nearly forgotten about, and notebooks full of half finished essays and story bones than I know what to do with.
A writing life that feels…behind.
In the last few weeks, my writing brain has been turning over something different. Again. Without meaning to, I’ve stepped away from writing fiction this summer, taking a breath from my stories, and drawing myself more into writing nonfiction. There’s a deep part of me that has wanted to write a memoir since my first creative nonfiction workshop in college, and while I have some significant moments that I could potentially write about, I’ve never felt any of them were deep enough to span a book let alone garner a deal.4
Until recently.
I’ve been jotting down notes and letting my brain do the wonderful work of knitting the beginnings of an idea together. For the first time, I feel as if I have the bones of a book length memoir, structured around a particular subject matter that I think will resonate with readers.
Until a Substack dropped in my inbox yesterday, announcing the writer’s debut book— a memoir coming this fall that is almost exactly the idea I’ve been circling around.
The writing world would tell me there’s space for your story because after all, in 2024, originality is waning. The writing world would also go on to say, the world needs your story and you are the only one who can write it.
But I’m beginning to wonder if maybe I can’t.
The state of publishing these days is in turmoil. It’s inundated with ideas, but if we look at the fiction market, particularly children’s and specifically middle grade, the state is frightening. Between book bans and Barnes & Noble drastically cutting their middle grade, not to mention young readers favoring screens over stories, sales are down which means demand is down which means who really wants to keep publishing new stories by new authors that might not actually sell?
And isn’t everyone writing a book these days anyway?
It feels disheartening to have poured so much of myself into the pages of my manuscripts only to feel like they will never see the light of a bookshelf.
And yet when I change gears, trying a new genre or form, it seems that I’m too far behind the trend. One step away from where I should have been—now—in order to break into the writing world.
Dear me, I’ve traveled into the realm of navel gazing, or what the scholars of nonfiction define as the activity of spending too much time considering your own thoughts, feelings, or problems.
But is that not the plight of a writer, particularly one who takes her life and pours it out into the world to not only make sense of these ordinary moments but to hope those words might somehow make a small imprint in the universe?
It’s a delicate balance, this writing thing. And while the dream of publishing is still there, I wonder what it looks like if I stepped back from it. To write here, in the now, in small increments. To hit send on something that would not necessarily make the literary cut, but is laced with honesty and heart.
For just yesterday I found myself wishing for a life full of gardening, flowers blooming up and over the fences while vegetables are freshly plucked for dinner when I realized this —a garden space— is my here and now. I may not have the cottage garden of my dreams, roses creeping up the brick walls, alliums bouncing along the pathway, and tomatoes growing up the archway that leads to the fire pit we curl up at every cool evening.
But I do have a spread of wild bergamot calling to the bees, green cherry tomatoes that will soon turn golden and sweet, and a small garden I stroll every morning and every evening as I tend it, a fireplace at the center waiting for fall.
Is it Instagram worthy?
Will I write a book about it?
Do either of those things matter?
Or shall I measure my life out in coffee spoons and bumblebees and weekly essays, each ordinary moment adding up to a lifetime of God’s goodness, here and now.
My own little garden of words.
I’m Caitlin, a writer, hobbyist, and creative who believes in the power of story, and that things like nature, wonder, faith, grief, hope, and art are worth our time and attention. I write stories for young readers centered around the themes of grief, belonging, loss, hope, and found families, while also exploring them in my own life, here on The Time Given. I also write a monthly newsletter and occasionally share snippets of fiction at Lost in Story. My writing here will always be free to read, but it does take time and heart space to write. Please consider supporting the work I do by giving a one-time or monthly donation, or by subscribing to my weekly writing.
Oof this dates me, but wouldn’t you know, the internet never dies.
Who am I kidding. Once you put something online, it lives there forever. See footnote above.
Though I recognize many of you have. So thank you.
Not to mention that in publishing nowadays, you need a certain number of “followers” on some sort of platform before you can even land a nonfiction deal.
"Or shall I measure my life out in coffee spoons and bumblebees and weekly essays, each ordinary moment adding up to a lifetime of God’s goodness, here and now.
My own little garden of words."
Absolutely, profoundly, beautiful...and if we let it be, with God's grace, enough!