Cover Photo: Photograph by Kelly Sikkema/Unsplash
Photograph by Kelly Sikkema/Unsplash

Like Being a Good-Enough Mother, Being a Good-Enough Writer Is Enough

I love and care for my child unconditionally. Maybe I can do that for my writing too.

If you can be anything other than a writer, be that. If you can’t do anything else, write.

I’m a writer because I have to be. I’ve always known I would be a writer. If I don’t write every day, I go crazyWriting is like breathing, or like air. Write every day You’re a writer if you write.

If you can do anything else, do it.

[title of show]

enough

When you have so much less time, you’re suddenly motivated to use the time you have better.

How can I tell myself “I’m doing my best” if I can see all the ways I could be doing better?

Whatever you’re doing now is the best you can, with the resources and skills you have available. You can build your skills, change your resources. Situations change. Your best tomorrow may be different.

I made you.

Not everyone is a crafts mom, not everyone is a messy-play mom, not everyone is an adventure mom

Jaime Green is a full-time freelance writer and editor. She received her MFA in Nonfiction from Columbia, and she has taught writing at Columbia, The New School, and the Sackett Street Writers' Workshop. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Slate, BuzzFeed, The Cut, GQ.com, Popular Science, Backstage, American Theatre online, and elsewhere. She is associate editor at Future Tense and series editor for Best American Science and Nature Writing. Her book, The Possibility of Life, will be published in 2023 by Hanover Square Press.