Creative Hesitations, Homemade Tomato Sauce and the Start of Something New — Writer Diary
Erin Cecilia Thomas is from upstate New York. She graduated from Berklee College of Music and received her MFA in fiction from Lesley University. Her work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Arts & Letters, and Redivider Journal, among others, and in 2021, she was the recipient of the Beacon Street Prize in Fiction. Her debut short story collection, I Watched You From The Ocean Floor, is out now from Modern Artist Press.
This week, Erin prepares to teach a workshop on natural settings at The Porch, while navigating post-launch book promo, an editorial letter for her novel, and the early sparks of a brand-new writing project. In between morning tea, long walks, and evening podcasts, she’s doing what she can to stay connected to her creative self—even if she hasn’t yet started the revisions she swears she’ll begin tomorrow.
Sunday, July 13
7:00 AM: Get up, walk Frankie. She’s on trazodone and some other meds for her recent cataract surgery right now so we’re walking slower than usual, and our 20-minute walks have turned into 45 minutes. Luckily it’s lovely outside this morning.
8:00 AM: Breakfast– yogurt and a homemade chocolate-beet muffin. Tea.
9:00 AM: Reading (just started The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich) and cuddling with the pup on the couch. Nap.
12:00 PM: Husband gets home from golfing and I make us lunch- scrambled eggs and home fries. We give Frankie her eye drops. Justin goes to lay down and rest and I decide if I should do some actual work, or more reading. It’s difficult for me to motivate myself over the weekends. I find that I don’t get enough sleep during the week and I really cherish resting on the weekends. I know I should be writing. But a summer thunderstorm rolls in and I sit on the porch with my oolong tea and watch it instead.
3:00 PM: After the storm passes, I take my dog out again. My sunglasses fog up when I step outside.
4:00 PM: Grocery shopping. I get the majority of what I need from my CSA and the farmers market, so I just need a few things to round out the recipes I plan to make this week. Some yogurt, mozzarella, milk. Tuna to mix the dog’s meds in. A dark chocolate bar.
7:00 PM: I look through some books for some more examples for the workshop I’m giving on natural settings on Thursday. I’m sure I already have more than enough examples for a one-hour workshop, but I’m always nervous about running out of material to cover and having a room of writers staring at me waiting for me to teach them something else. So I copy 2 extra passages, one about the desert and one about the ocean.
9:00 PM: I get in bed and scroll Instagram for about 15 minutes before I catch myself and close the app. I’m anticipating taking a social media break soon, but I’ve been active recently, mostly posting about the book launch and reposting nice reviews and messages from friends and people who are reading the book. But once I go back into revision mode on my novel, I’ll probably delete the app for a few weeks. I open the kindle app instead and read an essay from A Darker Wilderness.
Monday, July 14
7:00 AM: Get up, feed dog, make tea.
7:30 AM: Start work. I work a remote day job as a Senior Buyer for a luxury hotel brand. Mondays are usually packed with emails and purchase orders, so I won’t have much free time during the day.
4:00 PM: Log off work for the day. I feel like having some fresh bread with dinner later so I throw together some dough and leave it to rise. I do a little cleaning and laundry, and reply to an email about Thursday’s workshop. I email my husband the document with all my reading examples and ask him to print copies at work and bring them home for me. I check flight prices to DC for an event I am doing there in September, a reading salon for an independent bookstore. Prices have dropped a bit since I last checked, so I buy a ticket.
9:00 PM: The Mighty Red until I fall asleep.
Tuesday, July 15
7:00 AM: Get up, feed dog, make tea.
7:30 AM: Start work. During breaks today I manage to look over my plans for Thursday’s workshop and make notes on my copy of the reading handout, so I remember to point out the things I love most about the passages I’ve chosen. I’m doing a short reading from my own book after the workshop so I flip through the story I plan to read from (“A Rapture Coming”) and try to choose where I’ll start. I tentatively settle on the scene where the narrator is sitting by the ocean, reflecting on how the ocean’s turbulence seems to mirror her own inner turmoil. I think this will pair nicely with what we’ll discuss in the rest of the workshop.
4:00 PM: I run to the store to buy paperclips to hold the sheets of the reading handouts together. I know printed pages aren’t very green of me, but I love having something to take notes on and like being able to go through class without once looking at a screen. While I’m at the store I pass through the greeting cards section and choose three for upcoming occasions— dad’s birthday, husband’s birthday, wedding anniversary. All cards are cute.
7:00 PM: After dinner I pull up the editorial letter from the editor of my novel manuscript. I think I might do some work, but just end up re-reading only the kind things he’s said about what I’ve done right so far. The suggestions he’s made on what to revise are brilliant and I have no doubt the changes will help the novel publish, but I’m too in my head about the workshop on Thursday and can’t make myself focus. I will start revisions after Thursday. I WILL!
10:00 PM: Read until I fall asleep.
Wednesday, July 16
7:00 AM: Get up, feed dog, make tea. (notice the pattern!)
7:30 AM: Start work.
12:00 PM: During lunch I practice reading from my story for tomorrow’s event. I love doing readings. As anxious as I get around crowds, I’m able to read slowly and project my voice, possibly from my years of studying music and singing in choirs. But maybe also as a result of attending other writers’ readings and seeing them rush through/read too fast due to nerves. I feel like the listener can’t catch on to what the reader is actually saying, and is only focused on the fact that they’re reading too fast. Anyway, I always remind myself to keep it slow and clear and loud. Despite being highly introverted, I love the sound of my voice carrying one of my stories through a room.
4:30 PM: Take Frankie to a follow-up appointment for her cataract surgery. They tell us we can lessen her daily eyedrops, THANK GOD. She hates getting them and it’s something I can delete from my daily list.
6:00 PM: Make tomato basil pasta sauce from scratch tonight with the load of tomatoes I got from this past weekend’s CSA. I’ve been getting into cooking and making things from scratch a lot more recently, probably because 1) I love to do things myself and am a control freak 2) I love to eat, and 3) it involves working with my hands, which is something I miss about working in retail and the food industry. My remote corporate job is the best situation for me right now, but I do have trouble sitting still and typing emails all day. And it makes it more difficult to motivate myself to stay sitting and typing to work on a manuscript after work. So I make the pasta sauce and do some yoga instead.
9:00 PM: Feeling jittery about tomorrow’s workshop/reading so I get into bed and listen to my favorite podcast (The Dollop with Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds) until I eventually fall asleep.
Thursday, July 17
6:00 AM: Get up, feed dog, make tea. I am up early today so I have time for a longer walk with Frankie, before it’s abhorrently hot outside.
7:30 AM: Start work.
12:00 PM: Clip the pages of my workshop reading handouts together, go over my own notes one more time, collect the stack of books I’m taking to potentially sign/sell, and get everything together in my bag. I know this afternoon my day job will be a bit hectic and I don’t want to be rushing after I clock out to get everything together and take Frankie out before I have to leave. I want to leave early to make sure I don’t get stuck in Nashville 5pm traffic.
4:45 PM: Head to the Porch House for the workshop! Arrive very early, put on some music (Sable, Fable by Bon Iver), do some deep breathing and sit quietly.
6:00 PM: Workshop begins!
7:00 PM: Reading and Q&A begins!
8:00 PM: Final comments/questions, and then sign the copies of my books that the participants are interested in buying.
9:00 PM: Get home, quick dinner, The Great British Baking Show, fall into bed, exhausted and happy.
Friday, July 18
7:00 AM: Get up, feed dog, make tea.
7:30 AM: I spend the morning in between emails reflecting on yesterday’s workshop and texting my mom to let her know how it went. I had a wonderful group of women writers, some who were brand-new to the Porch (yay!) and one who generously drove from two counties away just for the event! I felt like we had a comfortable atmosphere and by the end of the workshop the quieter participants were beginning to speak up. I’m only sorry we had an hour instead of three to go through the material, I felt like I could have kept talking for hours. The reading and Q&A were equally successful, and I was thrilled that every participant was eager to take a copy of my book home to read. Evenings like yesterday leave me feeling so grateful for the literary community in Nashville and the support the Porch has shown me since I was a student at my very first class there 7 years ago.
5:00 PM: Instead of opening my novel revisions, I open to a blank notebook page and start writing something new. I finish some bullet-pointed ideas, a list of character names, and the first two pages of a new story? Novel? Collection of interconnected novellas? Whatever it will be, it feels so SO good to do something completely new. To not think about what it will ultimately become, to be in the very first idea stages, to have a wide blank space open in front of me.
9:00 PM: I have a double whiskey and we watch the new episode of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. TGIF.
Saturday, July 19
7:00 AM: Get up, make toast out of the rest of my bread before it goes moldy. Oolong tea with honey today. Walk the dog.
8:00 AM: Get back into bed, my favorite Saturday routine. I spend most of the day sleeping, reading a long essay about Audre Lorde and listening to Bon Iver.
12:00 PM: Frankie and I time our second walk to get caught in a brief downpour, or at least that’s what it seems like, and I’m glad. We arrive back at our door soaked through, finally feeling refreshed by being outside in this Nashville summer, and ready to dry off and get back in bed.
2:00 PM: I keep reading about Audre Lorde and listening to Bon Iver. I come up with a few new ideas for my new interconnected stories. I jot down some thoughts and fall back asleep.
5:00 PM: Frankie and I finally get out of bed for the rest of the day. I do some yoga.
6:30 PM: Husband gets home and we go out to dinner to celebrate. We’re maybe celebrating some of his jiu jitsu students winning at today’s competition, or celebrating my successful event on Thursday. I’m not totally sure. It kind of just feels like I’m celebrating surviving a week in which I actually spent some time feeling like a writer but didn’t actually write much. But tomorrow I’ll go to The Bookshop in East Nashville to sign their new copies of my book, and I’ll probably end up buying some books, and then I swear, I SWEAR I will come home and work on the first revisions for my novel. Or maybe I will just keep working on my new thing. Either way, I will get some words on the page.
