How to Create Art After Children Blow Up Your Life
20 filmmakers, novelists, and comic book writers from around the globe weigh in about how becoming parents impacted their creativity and careers
Parenthood is different for everyone, and this rule is the same for artists. In my case, becoming a father disintegrated the person I used to be and replaced him with someone who, for a time, seemed like a super-human version of myself. My creative juices pumped more intensely than ever before, in large part because it seemed the emotional world had opened up to me in brand new, rapidly deepening ways as a result of the love that seemed to be exploding inside me. This experience ultimately plateaued after the birth of my second son three-and-half years later, which resulted in the most prolific stretch of writing in my life including my (rather epic in page count) debut novel Psalms for the End of the World.
Then, something unexpected happened.
My children began to change, and so too did their needs. I began to question everything about myself as a parent. I felt like a failure almost every day, a terrible, secret fear that continued for almost three years. And with this change in my confidence — which, to be fair myself, was exacerbated by grief over losing both of my parents, the trauma of the pandemic, and an incredibly difficult international move — I found my writing becoming increasingly erratic. All too often, opening up Word felt like trying to run a marathon through knee-deep mud. Inspiration would suddenly arrive and linger for a while, then leave me just as abruptly. For two years, I didn’t even open Final Draft. In short, I felt creatively lost for the only time in my entire life. This only changed not quite twelve months ago, something I largely attribute to my time here on Substack, which helped me recover most of my lost writerly muscle mass. You’re probably asking yourself, what’s the point of this confession?
Well, I’ve long wondered how becoming a parent has affected other artists.
You would think I would’ve asked by now, but what I’d experienced felt so isolating that I never even bothered. I don’t mean that it never came up. Just that, on the rare occasions it did, I wasn’t typically satisfied with the responses I received. Friends always seemed to be holding back a little. So, this August, I thought I’d see if I could finally get to the bottom of it by asking twenty other artists this specific question:
When my children were still very young, I found that becoming a parent actually made me more creative. They unlocked something in me as a storyteller. But then, as they grew up, that rapidly changed along with their needs. Can you tell me how your career and/or creativity reacted to you becoming a parent or maybe how you have balanced — or failed to balance — being a parent with your work?
Below, you will find the quite often incredibly profound and moving responses I received. Several even made me tear up. In addition to the variety of mediums these artists work in, they represent a diverse range of voices and cultural backgrounds from across the globe - including the United States, United Kingdom, Spain, and Australia. Hopefully, their perspectives and experiences will be of some help to you if you’re considering or are in the middle of trying to balance your life as an artist with parenthood.
DAVID A. GOODMAN (screenwriter/executive producer, “THE ORVILLE”)
When I had children, I was completely preoccupied with providing for them financially. I was raised by a single mother who was a social worker, so growing up, money was very tight. And working in Hollywood was always very insecure, so I was always in the position of taking any and every job I was offered. I usually found personal creative output in these jobs, but the priority was always “get a job”, and then “keep the job.”
Now, my son is a very talented creative artist, sculpting, drawing, painting, writing, doing all of it from a very young age. I was always proud of his creative output and connection to his artistic voice. One day, about fourteen years ago, he and I were walking to the supermarket. He was around twelve, and he was asking me about my work, and I was talking about a difficulty I was having. He said “Dad, I really want you to do work that you like.” It was an eye-opening moment for me because I had been so focused on getting jobs, I had stopped thinking about what kind of writing I wanted to be doing.
That moment changed me. Though I’m still not a in position where I don’t have to worry about earning a living, over the last decade I’ve always made time to do work that was about the joy of writing, things that I’ve wanted to do, whether I thought they would help my career or not. I’ve written comics, three Star Trek books, and written for film and TV projects that didn’t pay very much, but that I loved doing. One of them, a streaming film called Honor Society, was the best professional experience I’ve ever had. It’s also given me perspective on the jobs that I pursue. I’m much more conscious now of finding personal connection in the work - and I owe that all to the cleared-eye wisdom of my son.
David is a U.S.-based screenwriter, author, and comic book writer. He’s also a former president of the Writers Guild of America.
MAZ EVANS (author, OVER MY DEAD BODY)
Like any parent, I would kill and die for my kids. But those incontinent little barracudas absolutely sucked the creativity from my marrow.
A cavalier approach to common sense and contraception found me with three children under three by 2010. It was a miracle if I left the house with the right shoes and/or the correct offspring. So, the notion of stitching together coherent prose on or off the page? It. Forget.
Pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding, and primary care of my infants meant that, even with the most supportive partner imaginable, our hands of parenthood poker were stacked entirely differently. He worked and had kids. I had kids and tried to work. So, for me, creativity became an act of reclamation, an aggressive defense of the parts of me that were not wife, mother, nor covered in semi-masticated Weetabix.
The struggle to balance my maternity with my creativity has been violent and ceaseless as my physical and literary progeny have grown. “So, who’s looking after your children?’ I’m regularly asked on tour, even the most well-meant inquiry needling my dereliction of parental duty. (The best response to this, incidentally, is to look totally panic-stricken, then ask if anyone has a phone.)
The question as to whether I was right to pursue my creativity at the “cost” of my parenting was recently answered by my 16-year-old daughter. In a moment of angst, I apologized for my career focus, the fact I’m not always physically or mentally present and that I’m not the mum who bakes the cupcakes.
“You what?” she answered with a face like a monkey’s bum. “Firstly, thanks for proving that you don't have to give up yourself when you have kids. Secondly, we don’t want you here all the time, you’re properly annoying. And thirdly? Who the fuck would want to eat your cupcakes?”
Maz is a U.K.-based author; interestingly, of both children’s books and adult fiction, which I point out only because this isn’t common and it informs her perspectives.
MEG LeFAUVE (screenwriter, INSIDE OUT 2)
First, there is no “balance” in this writer/parent equation. Forget that. It’s more about “management” - some days the parent job will overwhelm, demand all my attention (usually on a day I really, really have to write), other days I can put a boundary up and be a full-on writer. Most days are in between - managing many spinning plates. I am also lucky to have a partner who shares the child-rearing equally and has many, many times taken on more of that job so I can write.
At first, being a parent was so clarifying for me - was this job worth being away from my babies? That’s a high bar. Then, as my kids grew and my career grew it became, “How the hell does anyone do this?!” My toddlers would stand outside my home office door tap-tapping, “Mama. Mama. Mama. Mama” - God, I felt like a horrible mother! My kids didn’t understand why I was in the house and not with them. But the truth is, I needed to write, to have that part of me away from them.
Then, when they were in grade school, I took the Pixar job for Inside Out and flew away every Monday at 6 a.m. and returned on Thursday (or Friday). For over a year. Honestly, there was relief in flying away as much as there was intense pain and guilt. I will never forget my small son’s face on the computer screen while I sat in a hotel room - and he wept and yelled, “Where you, Mama? Why you not here?” After that, my husband said, “Maybe it’s better if we don’t do these calls,” and he was right. Seeing me just triggered their awareness I was gone and made it more painful for them, and my husband’s job harder. Then, I took my kids out of school and moved them up to Oakland so I could write The Good Dinosaur. At the time, my eldest said, “I hate you guys,” and he seemed to have a hard time transitioning, but the irony is that now, as a 21-year-old, he will tell you that his year in Oakland was one of the best of his life!
You just can’t know what will be “good” or “bad” - all you can do is manage it as best you can. I made the choice to have my sons see me as a working creative mom. One morning, while I was making the commute to Pixar and leaving my son in L.A., I wept as I dropped him at his second-grade class door. He patted my hand and said, “You know what, Mama? Some day I will be a dad and I will want to go do my dream, too. Like you. And it will be okay.”
Now, my sons are twenty-one and eighteen and they have thrived and are proud of me and my work. They each have big dreams and believe it’s possible. And there are still days they want my attention and are jealous of my job. “You always are working” - and I have to listen to that, realize that my management is off, that I am escaping into work. I have to close my computer, leave those emails and projects undone, and give my kid my full attention. Know him, be present with him, and all the stress that can come with growing up. Because after all, that is where the real art lies - within those undulating, scary, beautiful, and unanswerable human moments that us and our kids are going through. (Isn’t it just wonderful the way our kids’ drama can mirror and bring up our own childhood trauma? Fun times). We are artists in our writing and our child rearing - we will face the most vulnerable moments of his human condition, we will fail and we will rise, standing in the lava of managing the impossible…
Meg is a U.S.-based screenwriter and host of the podcast The Screenwriting Life. You can read my artist-on-artist interview with her here.
PETER HO DAVIES (author, A LIE SOMEONE TOLD YOU ABOUT YOURSELF)
Of course, the most immediate effect of becoming a new parent on my and many creative lives was that it left me less time to write, but like many limitations that turned out to be a spur to creativity. I'd actually always been a bit precious about writing time - what was the point of sitting down at the desk unless I had at least three clear hours to work? - but that's not a schedule any newborn or toddler is going to respect! So, I learned to work in short increments of time, to make progress in the thirty or forty minutes of nap time. And that practical constraint had stylistic consequences. I began to work on short-shorts or build longer narratives from vignettes — a mode of construction that, perhaps inevitably I came to liken to building with Lego — that seemed at once more terse and more poetic than my previous work. And eventually, that form of writing arising out of being a parent became an organic way to write about parenting in my last novel, A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself, the short vignettes standing for the vivid snapshots in which we recall a child's infancy.
Naturally, there have been plenty more of modifications over the years — parenting is nothing if not a moving target — including in later years learning to make the most of those "golden" weeks between the end of my own college teaching semester (in April) and my son's school term (in July) to knock out big, rough chunks of projects. But, fast forward twenty years, my son's now in college himself, and I'm thinking about writing in the empty nest — one that seems all the emptier, perhaps after the enforced closeness of the pandemic — and it's newly hard, surprisingly so. I have more time, but it lies heavy on my hands. The old urgency is missing in the absence of the old constraints. But, it’s more than a matter of time maybe. More than missing him, I'm missing...some part of myself. Whatever it is, I haven't quite figured out this new phase yet, though I hope to and soon, before a different temporal constraint — mortality! — starts to assert itself…
Peter is a U.S.-based author and creative writing professor at University of Michigan. He also played a mentorship role in my life for a time. You can read my artist-on-artist conversation with him here.
MATT FRACTION (comic book creator, SEX CRIMINALS)
100%. 1000%. Objectively, subjectively, both on the page and off.
Some kind of provider-switch got flipped in me [when I had kids] I hadn’t really known before, and a lot of time-eating preciousness went away. I’ve taken things they’ve said and put them in books; I’ve written things for them, crafted to appeal to whatever their interests were at the time; I’ve made them characters in ways I’ve recognized at the time or much later realized, learned things by watching the same goddamn movies or shows 11,000 times with them. Subconsciously, or unconsciously more like, I am aware in retrospect that there were phases in my career that I wrote about imminent parenthood, new parenthood, parents and children, and on and on; things I had certainly written about before but had, until I experienced it myself, never really written - if that makes sense. Parenthood gave me new kinds and depth of experience and the ability to draw from that. Maybe it’s not a more creative kind of thing, but a more richly creative kind of thing? I hope?
Alternately, I’ve not taken jobs because of how parenthood changed me - because it no longer interested me, or because I knew I couldn’t execute well because of whatever it was we were/I was going through at that moment. Usually, it was due to the proximity to certain anxieties and dramas these things would’ve required of me to at least fake that made the proposition of the gig psychically untenable, a couple of distinctive times, that was to my deep and as of yet unending regret creatively and financially. There’s been stuff I’ve walked away from, too, for whatever reasons — practical, moral, whatever — because it stood between me and the kind of person/parent I want to be. It felt important to model the power of no to them both, I wanted them to see that any kind of principal we’re willing to sacrifice is no kind of principal at all; to show that, look, it’s okay to walk away, even when it means that some doors close or some opportunities go away. As creative people working in a commercial field, no is the only power any of us ultimately have and it's important sometimes to use it; as much as walking away might suck, nothing sucks more than not being able to look at yourself in the mirror. I’d rather work at a coffee shop than make a million dollars writing commercials for vape pens or whatever. And, when I’ve done that, as scary and uncertain and nerve-wracking and oh-god-did-I-just-fuck-my-career-forever it feels, I’ve known it was the right call to make... and that I maybe wouldn’t have done it were it not for them. Like, on some level, I worry that I’m only pretending to be a person of principle sometimes, you know? I know that, as shitty as not being able to look at yourself in the mirror may be, if the check’s big enough, one can build quite a lovely and large house without any mirrors at all that may trouble the conscience - but nothing could be worse than my own kids not wanting to look me in the eye because of the choices I’ve made. So, sometimes my kids have made me stop pretending, or at least just hoping, that I have principles and start acting on them because I don’t want to let them down. Little shits.
Matt is a U.S.-based comic book writer and screenwriter. You can read my artist-on-artist conversation with him here.
KIT DE WAAL (author, WITHOUT WARNING & ONLY SOMETIMES)
I adopted both of my children, and they came with their histories and their needs. Nothing is more important to me than them, so I often find myself putting aside my work to pay attention to what they’re doing or being there if they need me. I don’t think my work suffers because of it except in the sense of a deadline. I suppose I had to fight to get them, harder than I had to fight to become a writer, so I don’t see the negatives. That’s not to say that parenthood isn’t demanding. It is after all the hardest job in the world. Just as you think you’re proficient, that you’ve got your head around some behavior or problem, it morphs into something else, the child changes, grows up, finds another way to get under your skin. I’ve learned much from my two. I’ve learned how to let go and I’ve learned how to describe love. I didn’t know that before.
Kit is a U.K.-based author. You can read my artist-on-artist conversation with her here.