Writing as a new parent

a chat with McSweeney's editor Lucy Huber

Good Tuesday, my weenies.

I’m writing this from my hometown, where I’ve decamped to a friend’s couch for the day to escape my dad’s near-constant onslaught of sugar-free ice cream farts. If you know, you KNOW!!!!!!

Today, I’m continuing my month-long interview series with artists who work outside of the ideal circumstances that propelled Wordsworth, Nabokov, Tolstoy, Twain and Thoreau to stardom. (Read: No one to cook, clean, transcribe, facilitate childcare and pay the bills for us.)

If you missed last week’s interview on writing with chronic illness, you can check that out here. Next week, we’ll talk to someone juggling full-time work and full-time creativity. (I’m teaching a class on the subject in February! Gainful employment hive rise UP)

Q&A: Lucy Huber on writing with two kids under 4

This week, we’re chatting with Lucy Huber! You might know her from iconic humor pieces like We Are an Anti-Abortion Couple, and Don’t Worry, We Will Adopt Your Baby or Please Forgive Us at Blue Apron for This Week’s Meals. We’ve Been Having a Tough Time Lately.

Lucy is the assistant editor at McSweeney’s, where she works across contracts, award submissions, copy editing and customer service. She also helps edit Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, the publication’s iconic lit mag. Lucy ALSO goes viral on Twitter with a genuinely alarming frequency—hit her with a follow for a dash of very candid parenting humor!

She’s worked at McSweeney’s since 2020; when we chatted, she was working about 20 hours a week on top of full-time childcare, and she’s preparing to go full-time at McSweeney’s in January. Oh, and she has two kids: her Extremely Active Son, three-year-old Elliot, and her daughter, Winnie, who’s under a year old. Okay let’s go!!!

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Hi, Lucy! Walk me through an average day for you.

Every single day, I wake up at 5 a.m. [My son, Elliot] wakes up at six. We get everyone ready, and then Winnie goes to her nanny share. One of us takes her to the nanny at 8:30; then at nine, someone takes Elliot to school. We only have one car, so it’s a lot of crazy juggling. I get back to the house around 9:30, or I just stay out at a coffee shop depending on what my day looks like. Two days a week, I work from 9:30 until 12:30, and then I go pick up Elliot. Three days a week, I work from 9:30 to 2, and then I pick up Winnie and my mom takes Elliot in the afternoon. I try to work with Winnie in the afternoon, because she's really chill… but that's getting a little bit harder since she started crawling. There was a nice golden period for, like, two months where I could just put her on the floor next to me and work. I could never work with Elliot around. [At this point] he would literally shut my laptop and be like, no.

the vibes at Lucy’s house

We love an assertive king. Has your creative practice changed since becoming a parent?

Before I had kids, I was much better at being consistent—being like, “I'm going to wake up at six and do this.” Now I just rely on, like, “Oh, I've had a burst of inspiration. I need to just do it right now.” If I’m in the middle of work and I have an idea for a piece, I just have to do it right then—because I know there's no other time that I can do it. There's no guarantee that I'm going to be able to get back to that idea. I've learned that I have to take up other people's time. I can’t trust that I will have my own time to foster creativity. So I just have to do it when I can.

I hear a lot of parents talk about guilt—the idea that they’re always doing the wrong thing, whether they’re focusing on work or their kids. How do you deal with that?

As a new parent, I'm trying to come to terms with that feeling of never having my own time. You're never gonna get everything done. It's just literally never gonna happen. There's always dishes to do; there's always planning in the future for the kids—like, “Oh, now I have to think about what clothes they're gonna need next season.” I'm trying to learn to accept that I cannot finish a to-do list because the to-do list is infinite. So I just need to do what I can, when I can.

You’ve really popped off on Twitter since becoming a parent (Editor’s note: EAT SHIT ELON). Do you think of social media as a creative tool?

Twitter has been such a big source of inspiration for me. It's such a good medium for parents, because I actually have time to write a tweet. I can’t write an essay, but I might have time to write a tweet. And a lot of times, those tweets have turned into a humor piece or something else. Honestly, a lot of my creative work has just been tweeting, which seems crazy—but it’s the way I've been able to continue to be creative.

What’s something you wish you’d known about creative work as a new parent?

I wish people had told me that it's not normal to have success as a young parent in creative endeavors. I think about this tweet (see below)—everyone was praising that tweet. I totally get why Bess felt this way — she worked hard, and those accomplishments are incredible! — but I also want to move away from this idea that, if you just push hard enough, you'll be able to do amazing things despite the fact that you just had a baby.

I wish someone had said, “You don't need to do that. There's no need to push yourself that hard. You don't need to make a TV show. You don't need to make to write a book.” But whenever people do that—and it's great; I understand why people who do that are always praised—I wish that there was more of a narrative [emphasizing] that you will, one day, be able to find that creativity again. Taking a break to have children, or finding a different medium instead of writing essays or books is not a failure.

It's also not stunting you creatively. I don't think that I will have come out of these years being like, “Wow, I've lost five years.” I'm focusing on it in a different way. I'm finding a different voice. Before I had kids, I was doing a lot of humor stuff but I didn't have a following for anything in particular. And now I've found this voice as someone who writes about parenting in a funny way. I wouldn't have found that otherwise.

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Thanks, Lucy! Pop in next week, y’all—we’re talkin’ day jobs.

can I get a big “hell yeah” for Winnie and Elliot,

Lil