Debut Novelist Juggles Mom Life and Writing in LA —Writer Diaries
Kate Brody is a fiction writer, whose debut novel, RABBIT HOLE, is slated for January 2024 publication with Soho Crime and will be available for preorder this summer. In addition to her creative writing, Kate works as a private tutor and freelance business writer. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Chris, and their two kids—Brody, almost 4, and Henry, 9 months.
This diary represents a week of writing, reading, parenting, and all the life that happens in between.
DAY ONE: Sunday 01/15
7:00 AM – I’m feeling both tired and emotionally hungover. I was up late last night, finishing a short story called “Dream People” that imagines what it would be like if my dad came back from the dead to live with me. I cried reading it back to myself at 2 A.M., which made me feel like a real goober. Who cries at their own writing? Yeesh. I’m losing it.
9:00 AM – Henry, the baby, goes down for a morning nap, and I relent to Brody’s pancake campaign. I hate pancakes, so dense and treacly.
10:00 AM – Chris dips into our bedroom to take a call, while I entertain the kids. Last year, Chris and I taught together, full time, at a pod school for celebrity-ish families. This year, I remain employed by one of the families, as their on-staff tutor, but Chris is looking for a new job. This call is about something in the VR space, where he has experience. He’s hoping to get it, so that we can hire a nanny for the baby, and he can go back to work full-time. He’s over the stay-at-home-dad thing, and who could blame him. It’s a lot.
10:30 AM -Brody and I watch Instagram Reels of pastry chefs making elaborate desserts. Brody says he wants to go to “cooking school for big boys.” I wonder how much money pastry chefs make.
11:00 AM – I bathe Henry and prep some lunch—soy glazed chicken from Smitten Kitchen and leftover dumplings. Groceries have been so expensive lately, and I’m trying to make the most what we already have on hand.
12:30 PM – The kids are bouncing off the walls, and we need to get out of the house. We take the back roads from the Valley to Santa Monica, killing as much of their waking time as possible. We stroll along the beach and stop at a playground with a huge rope course where Brody can pretend to be Spider-Man.
3:00 PM – It starts to rain, so we leave the beach and stop at Sidecar for doughnuts. A box of six is so expensive that I feel instant buyer’s remorse, but the plain glazed is pretty tasty with a latte. I decide to call it dinner.
4:00 PM – My sister, Emma, stops by our house with her dog, Domino, a shepard mix who plays with Brody until they’re both tuckered out. Emma tells me to send her “Dream People” as well as a Modern Love submission about our mom that I drafted last week. Emma is an accountant as well as a voracious reader and my consummate hype woman.
5:00 PM – I text a writer friend, Jacquelyn Stolos, to ask if she’ll look at “Dream People,” too. Jacque and I go back to college, and I trust her taste completely. She also has a new baby, so I tell her no rush.
7:00 PM – Chris and I play man-on-man for the last hour of the night. I take Brody; he takes Henry. We get everyone fed, pajamaed, and off to bed.
7:30 PM - I text with another friend who just had a baby. As the first mom in most of my friend groups, I offer a service where I tell you you’re doing great and if anything, do less. Kara is stressed about the impending end of her maternity leave. It’s hard to know how to offer advice. For the last seven years, I’ve taught full-time and I know how hard it is to figure out the balancing act. This year, through pure luck, I am mostly part-time, while remaining at my old salary with full benefits. It’s been incredible. My book received a relatively small advance, so I’m treating my good fortune like a well-timed grant and trying not to waste the opportunity.
9:00 PM – Chris finishes reading a draft of “Dream People” and gives me his notes: change the beginning and be more deliberate about the passage of time. Smart. Chris and I met in workshop, ten years ago, and we still read everything the other person writes–in my case, mostly fiction; in Chris’s, mostly screenplays. Being married to a writer is challenging at times. I often wish Chris had a stable career that counterbalanced my creative work. I wish I didn’t have to worry about being the source of our family’s primary income and health insurance. But the positives outweigh all of that. Chris and I are engaged in a constant, running dialogue about each other’s work; we understand what it means to sacrifice leisure time, family time, and relationship time at the altar of the Big Dream; and we even work together on certain projects–most recently the adaptation of my forthcoming novel, Rabbit Hole.
9:30 PM – Netflix has the Tobey Maguire Spider-man movies, so I let one run in the background while I edit. I am trying to find a version of Spider-man that meets Brody’s definition of “fierce” while also depicting minimal gun violence. I let the first film run straight into the sequel as I work. Usually, I prefer full silence for writing, but today, I know exactly what I want to change, so I can tolerate the noise.
12:30 AM – I wrap up edits on the piece and send “Dream People” to Jacque, who agreed to read. I email my former college professor and writing mentor, David Ebenbach, to see if he might take a look at it, too. I go to bed.
Day 1 writing recap: edits on “Dream People” story
DAY TWO: Monday 01/16
5:00 AM – Last week, Brody, Chris, and I were sick with painful ear infections. I was prescribed oral steroids that left me so hopped up I couldn’t sleep for days. I was awake each night until 5 or 6 a.m., working on my second novel, Heathens. Chris, on the other hand, was tranquilized by prescription strength cough medicine. Brody fell somewhere in the middle. Now, a week later, this thing seems to have come for Henry. He is up thrashing, crying, and coughing himself hoarse. Brody can’t sleep with all the noise, and by five, we all drift to the couch to watch some TV and try to doze off.
9:00 AM – Today is MLK day, so Brody doesn’t have preschool. Instead, we’re going to the Titanic exhibit with the Work Kids, who also have off. We take our time getting dressed and having breakfast.
10:00 AM – We video-call Chris’s dad—the kids’ Grandpa—to wish him a happy birthday. He thanks us for the chocolates and the Hoover biography, G-Man. Historical nonfiction is not my usual genre, but I got myself a copy and am trying to read along with him.
10:30 AM – Jacque emails me back. She’s read “Dream People.” “It’s so wonderful,” she says. “I’m crying during naptime.” More notes to follow, but for now, I’m glad that it moved her. I couldn’t tell if it was worth pursuing at all—the subject matter was too close for me to judge properly.
11:00 AM – I drive to Beverly Hills to pick up the Work Kids. I drive them to the Titanic exhibit, where we have VIP passes that let us cut the line. The exhibit is cool, but we rush through it. The kids don’t have the patience to let me read the placards. They are more interested in the interactive parts—freezing their hands on the iceberg and finding out if their assigned passenger survives or dies.
4:00 PM – Back at home, I order a sandwich with my work Postmates account. I split it with Chris, along with the last of my lemon chicken & orzo soup. David emails me back agreeing to read “Dream People.”
5:00 PM – Brody is sick again. Something new--gastrointestinal. He screams and runs to the bathroom, but doesn’t make it. Instead, he shits a straight line across the house from the living room to the toilet. It’s a disaster. Chris gags, nearly vomits. He does most of the cleaning around here, but I try to take the lead on this one, since I’m less bothered by bodily fluids.
6:00 PM – Chris runs to CVS to pick up some medicine. I get a text from a preschool mom inviting Brody to join a soccer league on Thursdays, which I readily accept. I also fill out some My Gym paperwork for his fourth birthday party next week. I feel weird doing it—my first job in high school was running birthday parties at My Gym. The idea that I’m one of the parents now makes me feel older than time.
6:30 PM – The kids go to bed early, both tired and under the weather. I read the Introduction of G-Man.
7:00 PM – I tutor one of my side clients on Zoom. She is in eighth grade, and for the last two years, I helped her work on her fantasy novel. Now, that project is finished, and she is focused on shorter things—essays and stories—that she can submit to teen competitions. I’m finding that, right now anyway, her work darkly mirrors the trajectory of my own. I wish she had more fun with her writing and that we weren’t always so focused on publication.
8:00 PM – A package arrives from my mom. As I open the gift—pajamas—I think about how awkward it will be if I place any of my essays about her now that she is newly, improbably sober after ten years of what I had begun to think of as terminal alcoholism. The Modern Love essay that I shared with Emma was about unrequited love—mine for my mom—and about writing eulogies for her while she was still alive as a way of controlling the story. I’m not sure how the pajamas fit in. My narrative is disrupted again.
8:30 PM – Jacque emails me her notes—big picture and line edits. I start to rework “Dream People,” deleting some scenes and adding new material. After four hours, I end 600 words net positive. Jacque pushed me to up the conflict in the central relationship (between the autofictional Dad and the autofictional Kate), and I think the edits are working.
12:30 AM – I send this new version to David. In a perfect world, I’d let changes settle longer and I’d return to the piece with clear eyes before sending it to another reader, but I’m trying to move fast and generate as much material as possible in the run-up to Rabbit Hole’s publication.
Day 2 writing recap: more edits on “Dream People” story
DAY THREE: Tuesday 01/17
??:?? – What time did the kids get up? It’s hard to say. I’m not sure they’ve ever slept. I’m not sure we’ll ever know health again. The baby is screaming. Something is bothering him. His teeth? His stomach? His ears?
8:00 AM – I get Brody dressed and fed. He’s not shitting himself or puking today. He’s COVID negative, and he doesn’t have a fever. It’s going to have to be good enough for preschool. He missed the entire month of December to various ailments, and I can’t have him home anymore. I’m at the end of my rope.
9:00 AM – Henry dozes off, and I take care of life business. I have a call with my boss’s assistant to discuss the Work Kids’ schedule for the upcoming weeks. I set a meeting with my agent, Hillary Jacobson at CAA. Hillary and I haven’t seen each other in the flesh since 2020, and I’m looking forward to getting coffee with her in LA in a week or two. Since our last in-person meeting, she has helped me sell Rabbit Hole here and in the UK. She’s brilliant.
11:00 AM – Chris and I bring Henry to Trader Joe’s, because my sister said they had cheap eggs. We still manage to spend $170, which sucks.
12:30 PM – At home, I make quesadillas with leftover chicken, and then I leave to get Brody from preschool. A good report from his teachers. No accidents today. Thank god.
1:00 PM – David sends me feedback on the story, and I spend an hour drafting a response. In the course of doing so, I have a realization about the story. David’s edits are often like that—generative rather than prescriptive. Conversations that lead to epiphanies on my end.
2:00 PM – The baby falls asleep. Chris sets an alarm for ten minutes. I join him for a cat nap on the couch while Brody plays.
2:45 PM – On the drive to work, I listen to Dirtbag, MA. I heard Isaac Fitzgerald on Zibby Owen’s podcast last week, and he came across so charming that I bought the audiobook in addition to taking the hardcover out from the library.
3:30 PM - I read with the Work Kids. So far, our favorite read-aloud of the year was Last Cuentista, followed closely by the draft manuscript of Jacque’s new middle grade book, followed, in third place, by The Westing Game. At our independent read time, Work Kid 1 tucks into Harriet the Spy, and I read The School for Good Mothers.
5:30 PM – I listen to more Dirtbag on the way home, and I stop at the library to pick up Very Cold People by Sarah Manguso.
6:00 PM – We get an invite in the mail for a wedding—one of Chris’s friends. We have a talk about how we’re going to handle weddings this year. I want us to save money so that we can travel to the East coast as a family next January, when my book comes out. Chris feels bad missing his friends’ nuptials.
6:00 PM – I make a big batch of spicy chicken chili to last us the week.
7:00 PM – I watch Jeopardy with Chris and resolve to set “Dream People” aside for a while. I need to return to edits on Heathens, my second novel. I wrote a first draft of it quickly, over the course of three months this fall, and as of last week, I was halfway through re-typing it a la Matt Bell’s Refuse to Be Done.
8:00 PM – Chris convinces me to watch The Sting, which is fun, but if I’m being honest, I probably would have preferred to spend the time reading. He made it sound like it was going to be as good as Butch Cassidy, and it was not.
11:00 PM – I open a new word document and freewrite on an essay topic that I’ve been kicking around: how having to take an author photo is causing me to spiral into a mess of disordered habits and body dysmorphia. I pour out 1700 words without thinking too hard.
Day 3 writing recap: 1700 (very rough) words of body image essay.
DAY 4: Wednesday 01/18
9:00 AM – My writing schedule this week has gotten thrown off by the fact that Monday was MLK day and today we’re expecting lunch guests. Usually, I’d drop Brody at school and then go to WeWork to write for a few hours. In the fall, when I was drafting Heathens, that was my daily routine. But today, I return home to clean. Having guests over is always the push we need to actually clean our house. The space between guests is when I let everything fall apart. Part of my writing philosophy is not to let too much domestic bullshit eat into the writing time. Since the kids take up so much time and energy, I often feel like I can pick two a day: exercise, reading, writing, or cleaning. I usually pick reading and writing.
10:30 AM – I make some snacks for everyone—coffee and avocado toast with various fixings. My aunt texts me several articles about AI taking over creative work that I politely decline to read.
11:00 AM – My lunch guests are my nanny friends. I met them out here, and we all work for high-net-worth families, as they say in the biz. Just as it’s helpful to have teacher friends with whom to talk shop, I find it helpful and necessary to have nanny friends who understand the part of my life that funds the rest of it. We chat and have fun and our babies—who are all roughly the same age—play together on the floor. One of the friends has brought a bag of hand-me-downs for Henry from her Work Kid. It’s very cute stuff.
1:30 PM – I receive a form rejection from Tin House on my fellowship application. For years, while I was working on the novel, I got to forget the sting of these smaller rejections. They still hurt!
2:45 PM – I watch Henry while Chris takes Brody to gymnastics. Henry screams if I try to put him down. After an hour, my back is hurting, and I am staring out the kitchen window for a glimpse of Chris’s car pulling into the driveway. Since I had kids, I have days where my period is so heavy and painful that I want to just lie in my bed in the dark, and today is one of them.
4:15 PM – Chris takes Henry for a walk around the neighborhood while I cook dinner with Brody. We make a veggie pizza and a flourless chocolate cake.
6:00 PM – Spider-man o’clock.
7:00 PM – I watch Jeopardy with Chris, shower, and then fall asleep on the couch, while an episode of Atlanta plays in the background. We are working our way through season one, and I’m really liking it. I like any piece of art where I can feel the sensibility of a single mind behind the work.
9:00 PM – I pay bills and answer work emails. I worry about my bad tooth and the fact that I’m avoiding the dentist for fear of a big bill.
10:00 PM – Despite saying I would put it aside for a bit, I continue to edit “Dream People.” It nags at me.
Day 4 writing recap: Two hours of edits on “Dream People” story.
DAY FIVE: Thursday 01/19
7:00 AM – I make breakfast and fill out some preschool re-enrollment paperwork. I cringe; they’re raising their rates for next year.
9:00 AM – Brody used to attend the co-op preschool in the park, which was great because it was practically free, but the truncated hours and the weekly volunteer commitment meant I couldn’t get any writing done. Now, I drop him off and go straight to a WeWork near his preschool. I have a coupon code that allows me to use the space at half off for six months. In March, it will expire, and I’ll be back home with Chris and Henry from 9-1, but for now, it’s pretty great. These four hour weekday spurts allowed me to finish a draft of Heathens in 12 weeks–the fastest I’ve ever written by far.
11:00 AM – I am making a pretty radical plot change to the back half of Heathens. It requires me to delete half of the chapter I’m working on. I add 750 words of new material, moving the story in a different direction. All the while, two men behind me talk loudly about their ongoing recovery from last week’s Grateful Dead festival in Mexico. I love to eavesdrop and write it off as part of the job. One of these guys dropped acid with three generations of his family. There’s a short story in there, but not for me. I tuck it away; maybe Chris wants it for something.
1:00 PM – I feel so tired when I get home. Chris has another call about the VR opportunity, so I hang with the kids. Brody builds a train track, and Henry goes down for a nap. I lie on the rug in the living room and shut my eyes for a few minutes, too.
3:00 PM - I drive to Beverly Hills, again listening to Dirtbag on the way. The Work Kids’ mom says they can have the day off, so instead of reading, we ride their new go-carts around the backyard and shoot Nerf guns at each other. It’s pretty fun.
6:00 PM - Insane traffic coming home. The drive takes me well over an hour.
8:00 PM - My book club is texting about next month’s pick. The group is made up of my friends from NJ, people I’ve known since kindergarten. They are not “lit people” or writers, which is how I like it. They are in medicine, education, and business, and we pick Claire Keegan’s Foster, because it’s short and that gives us the best chance of actually meeting to talk about it. The last text the group abandoned was Rebecca. The last one we discussed was Crying in H Mart.
9:00 PM – I am meant to be writing, but I’m not. I scroll Reels and do New Yorker crosswords for TWO WHOLE HOURS. Ugh. I feel like such a loser when I waste perfectly good writing time like this.
11:00 PM - I work on the body image essay that I started a few days ago, freewriting another 500 words, bringing the whole thing over 2K.
12:00 AM - I return to another essay, “Family Program,” about my sister. Hillary tried to help me place this piece in Granta’s sibling issue, but they passed, so now I need to find another home for it.
1:00 AM - I pitch LitHub on a version of the author photo/body image essay that I’m working on, and I pitch Romper a humorous piece about how I got an offer on my novel while I was in labor with Henry (some kind of exploration of the old “book baby” metaphor). I submit some completed short stories and essays to various literary magazines.
Day 5 writing recap: Net+ 750 words on Heathens novel; 500 new words on body image message; edits on “Family Program” essay; Lit Hub pitch; Romper pitch; story submissions
DAY SIX: Friday 01/20
4:00 AM – The baby is up-up, and Brody is up, too. He wet himself in his sleep, which means laundry, shower, the whole nine. There’s no going back to bed.
6:30 AM - The baby and I catch some respective z’s. Chris handles Brody and the preschool drop off.
10:00 AM – A late start means WeWork is out. I feel guilty that I’ve barely used the space this week, but it is what it is. I tell myself that we’ve been sick and this week was about getting back on our feet. Next week will be better and more productive. I hope.
11:00 AM – I read and play with the baby until it’s time to get Brody from school.
1:00 PM – When Brody and I come home, my cousin John is in the kitchen talking to Chris. He was passing through on his way to a meeting in Burbank and stopped to meet Henry for the first time.
2:00 PM – LitHub emails me back that they are interested in my pitch and want to see a draft. I immediately feel panicked, but I set a 2/6 deadline with the editor.
3:00 PM - I’m burnt out on soup, so all four of us take a drive to Uncle Paulie’s for a sandwich. With tax and tip, it’s expensive for turkey and bread, but we split it three ways, so that everyone but Henry gets a piece.
6:00 PM – Chris is running a Zoom trivia with his high school friends on the East Coast. I helped write the questions, but I can’t stay to watch them play. I’m attending a reading tonight at Skylight Books in Echo Park, and there’s traffic. I pop on to say hi to the guys, and then I head out.
7:00 PM – Allie Rowbottom reads from Aesthetica. Alissa Nutting hosts the Q&A. Usually, I can’t focus when authors read aloud from their work, but Allie keeps the selection short and compelling. Plus, I’ve already read (and loved) the novel. Afterwards, I hang out in the store and talk with Jacque, Jonathan Parks-Ramage, and Coco Mellors—all writers I admire. This part of the job feels like a great privilege. The LA writing scene is much stronger and more supportive than I would have imagined before I moved here in 2019.
Day 6 writing recap: reading; Lit Hub accepted pitch; event at Skylight; no real writing/editing
DAY SEVEN: Saturday, 01/21
8:00 AM – More fucking pancakes. The kids are acting insane.
10:00 AM – They FaceTime with their paternal grandparents while I answer emails.
11:00 AM - I drop Brody at gymnastics on my way to work. I would usually be off on Saturday, but the Work Kids’ mom is away, and I’m supposed to take them for an enrichment activity.
4:00 PM - On my way home from Griffith Park, I stop at Barnes & Noble to pick up Jonathan’s book. I enjoyed meeting him last night, and somehow Yes, Daddy escaped my radar in 2021. I start reading on the drive, at red lights. I can tell I’m going to like it.
5: 00 PM - While I get my kids’ dinner ready, I read Erika Gallion’s new essay “Dead Cats, Dear Cats” on my phone. She linked to it in her Instagram stories, which is one reason I’m grateful to be on social media for the first time in years. I miss fewer publications.
8:30 PM – Chris watches SNL. I stay in the room, but try to focus on editing. During the commercials we discuss my Modern Love essay. Chris walks me through his ideas for improvement, and I build a bullet-points outline for a new version.
10:00 PM – I had planned to work, but I am too absorbed in Jonathan’s book. I give myself the night off of writing, and I finish Yes, Daddy in one sitting.
2:00 AM – Before bed, I read the latest draft of Chris’s new pilot. He and Jacque’s husband, Andrew, have been working on it together. They have an opportunity to pitch it to a serious production company next week. We talk through my ideas on the script in bed, and then we do Wordle and pass out.
Day 7 writing recap: reading, giving notes on Chris’s pilot; no real writing/editing
