Episode 87: Caretaking and Your Creative Bucket

Elizabeth Wilson and Stephanie Oswald get real about what can happen with your writing process when caretaking roles take over. The solution is remembering to find community. Inspired Writer Collective offers quarterly virtual writing retreats on Zoom. October 11 and 12, 2025 is the next retreat. You can find the form here to let us know you're coming. 

You're invited to join us for our Virtual Writing Retreat October 11 and 12 on Zoom! 

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Join our Embodied Writing Experience where you’ll get a writer’s retreat directly to your inbox on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays each week. Whether you’re working on a memoir, a novel, or journaling for yourself, this is an invitation to slow down, tune in, and write with embodied intention.

Get on the waitlist for the Memoir Master Plan cohort here.

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Transcript

Elizabeth: 1:01

Welcome back listeners. This is another episode of the Inspired Writer Collective and we are your co-host, Elizabeth and Stephanie. Um, today's gonna be a different kind of episode, so please put in the comments if you enjoy this style, but we're gonna be talking about something that I don't, I have not seen anyone talking about from a writing perspective. I even tried to. Look up some references to find some quotes, and I came up empty. So that to me says that it's even more important to talk about this because, um, yeah, we need to be having these conversations. So today's topic is all around.

Stephanie: 1:38

Yes.

Elizabeth: 1:39

Our creativity and how it gets affected, the ebbs and flows of it when there are demands on us as caretakers. So I know that the audience for this podcast is a lot of writers who are primary caretakers in their home,

Stephanie: 1:55

to talk

Elizabeth: 1:55

or who have childcare responsibilities or, or take care of other people in some form or fashion. And of course. Writers in general are naturally inclined towards caretaking roles. It borrows from some of the skill sets, the observations, the, you know, the fact that you pay attention to detail. The empathy that we tap into as a writer, we also tap into in our caretaking role, and I don't know, this may not sound revolutionary to anyone, but it certainly was to me.

Stephanie: 2:25

wrap this

Elizabeth: 2:26

my own life, when I finally had enough experiences

Stephanie: 2:31

on how

Elizabeth: 2:31

I realized that the one bucket of energy that I pull from for caretaking is also the same bucket as my creativity. Now I have other buckets of energy, like whether like physical energy, like going to work out and exercise that like are not affected by that, but for whatever reason, the way I'm wired. I have noticed that my caretaking energy and creativity come from the same pool of energy. So when I am more heavily taxed with caretaking, there is not energy left over to be creative. Um, and so I've had to adopt some strategies, and we're gonna be talking through that in this episode and just talking about this. Kind of pattern that we've noticed. Um, I know I, Stephanie, I brought this to you, and then you had a recent experience where you ex, you had experienced it for yourself.

Stephanie: 3:27

Yeah, I think you're so right because I

Elizabeth: 3:30

I.

Stephanie: 3:31

relate to what you're saying so much about the creativity pulling from the same bucket because I feel that in a way I'm wired very similarly that I found this summer I had a lot of Two events that happened where one was my shoulder surgery, which was anticipated, and I knew that was coming, and I was preparing for it, and I had kind of blocked off time, and I thought, okay, this, and I didn't think it would really impact me that much, come to find out that, It just energy-wise, recovery, of those pieces. But then about a month after my shoulder surgery, husband had an unexpected stroke. It was very traumatic and I very much, you know, shut down, but also went right into that caretaking mode, you know, where I was right there and doing all the things and, and needing to remember a lot of information and taking notes and there was just a lot in that. And, you know, he's very fortunate that he's come through it very well. And that has been such a gift. But in the, in the, uh, Month or two, I don't even know how long it's been. I feel like I've lost complete track of time. Um, but it definitely took away from my ability to come to my fiction writing and to do, to come to my characters again. found that I could do other, you know, small journaling. I wasn't journaling as much as I thought I would. Um, I was much more in my head. I had less energy to want to put pen to paper also because I was still recovering with my shoulder and I'm right handed. It was my right shoulder. Just all of those compounding, uh, pieces. And so it was, yeah, mean, I just think that I was surprised at how much it took me away from my ability to show up and write. Because I was being consistent. And if you've been listening long enough, you know that I had the goal of, you know, my, trying to get my manuscript done. And then just all of that just flooded right out the door with all of this life happening. I really had to, you know, sit down and give myself grace and say, you know what,

Elizabeth: 6:01

Okay.

Stephanie: 6:02

okay to let your writing be. You know, we are in this world where it's rush, rush, rush, and everybody's, you know, wanting to get the next thing. And I think it was a really good reminder, and we've talked about this before, about Allowing the rest time, allowing the time to dig into the caretaking role, because it really was, I mean, it is my priority, you know, my family, you know, you know, my husband, and if it were my kids, it would be the same thing, know, and so, um, and at the same time, I was really careful to, allow for self-care and the self-care while some for some of you listening maybe your writing is your self-care and that's where you turn to but with everything that was happening it wasn't where i could turn because i just needed to just be

Elizabeth: 7:02

Yeah. You know, it's that surprise that I'm hoping that ha having this conversation and others being able to listen in and, and think through their own experiences. That's what I'm hoping, like will come of this. Um, I remember feeling surprised. The first summer that I kept my daughter at home and kept, took on some other kids for childcare.'cause I had all these plans that, oh well since I'm not working, I'll have the kids running around, but I'll be able to get stuff done while they take their nap. And I learned that summer that I could not shift.

Stephanie: 7:39

Um,

Elizabeth: 7:40

my caretaking side to my creative side and back again that quickly. So that was the lesson I took away from that experience. And then a couple more summers happened. And so going into the summer, I finally had learned that, okay, because all the caretaking is required of me in the summertime because there's a higher demand there, I know that I need to schedule all of my edits to be done before that time so that my editor has the man, the manuscript during the summer. Because that's not gonna be a productive writing time for me because there is so much demand on me from a caretaking side. So I had, I had sort of learned that lesson at least when it applied to my summertime and my normal summertime schedule. Um, but it's interesting because even though I was able to give myself grace about the summer and kind of schedule around it.

Stephanie: 8:32

then come

Elizabeth: 8:33

fully expected that come fall once we were back in the routine of school, um, I would get back that writing time that you and I had kind of carved out and found. There's like an hour or 45 minutes where I'm done with my job, but I don't yet have to pick up my daughter from school.

Stephanie: 8:53

it

Elizabeth: 8:53

frankly, the only guaranteed time that I can really focus is when she's actually out of the house and not just playing quietly in her room. At least for the level of writing I'm doing now.'cause I'm not doing a, a first draft anymore. Um, I'm doing major edits and. I was really hard on myself initially at the beginning of the school year about why am I not getting back into my, my edits. Like now I have this manuscript that's been edited. I'm super motivated about getting this book out. I am excited for the feedback I got from my editor, which is largely very positive. I have not. Even read the manuscript with her edits in there yet, I literally have only managed to read her 10 or 11 page like edit letter that has the synopsis of everything. And I, I was really hard on myself, like, why am I not doing this? Why do I not feel this creative energy? What's going on? What's wrong with me?

Stephanie: 9:49

Um,

Elizabeth: 9:51

tactics. I tried. You know, my getting out in nature, which helps me tap back into my creativity. I tried my journaling, which a lot of times can be a nice gateway, like the morning pages where you like dump what's what you're currently thinking about, and then you're able to move through to your project and I just could not get there. And it felt different than the kind of like, oh, I'm not really in the mood. I'm not feeling inspired, but if I sit down for 10 minutes, I'll be able to focus. It wasn't, it didn't feel like that. It felt like. I should not be making any major creative decisions in this mental space. Like this is not the space to decide which way I want to edit this storyline, to fix this, you know, plot hole or this problem, or you know, something like that. Um, and so it took me again, a minute to recognize that my role as a paraprofessional in a toddler classroom of a preschool requires me to be a caretaker.

Stephanie: 10:51

Hmm.

Elizabeth: 10:51

my working hours of the day, all those six, six and a half hours even outside of parenting, right? I am in my caretaker role and while I eventually will get to a point during the school year where that's kind of evened out, the newness of it has, you know, worked out. We've got our routines in the classroom. The days aren't as stressful. The kids are adjusted to being in school.'cause these are all like one to two year olds and this is their, a lot of them, this is their first time in any sort of childcare. Care environment. It takes a while to get there. And I had to be really honest with myself that, oh, it's the same phenomenon that I've already accepted about the summer that I'm experiencing now in the fall, which is a bummer because I'm not getting the edits done that I wanna get done, which means I'm not gonna have it ready for the beta readers when I want. And that means I'm not gonna be publishing it when I hope to. And we have to give ourself grace for all of that because. It is really, at least for me, at the point where. I don't know what else to do other than to accept that this is the season it is and that it makes sense because this comes from the same pool of energy. And until I can either create a time where I don't have to do as much caretaking or that pressure just wears off because we've got more routines and systems and it's just a little less demanding mentally. It is what it is, and that's okay. And I have to, like find a way to be okay with that.

Stephanie: 12:20

you for watching.

Elizabeth: 12:20

Um, I'm really curious if anyone's experienced this though. So please, like, put, put your experience in the comments, or if you're listening through one of the apps, you can send us a text. I, I really wanna know if other people have struggled with this and if you've found a way to work yourself out of it, other than just letting the season ride.

Stephanie: 12:40

Well, yeah, no, I'm, I'm curious about that too because, you know, I try to read things or listen to things to, you know, get ideas and then I feel overwhelmed because, you know, I'm trying to figure out how to do it. I listen to what other people are doing and I think, Ah, I'm not doing enough and they're

Elizabeth: 12:56

mm.

Stephanie: 12:57

so much. And, and then, you know, again, it's that, it's that vicious cycle. I think many of us have as writers where we're really hard on ourselves and then we ease up and then we're really hard on ourselves. And I just have really been reminding myself during this time to nicer things to myself about, know, what's going really well and what I'm recognizing each day that is something to celebrate, even if it's not about my writing, because I think when, least I know for myself, that when I get really in a place where I get frustrated or I feel like I'm not moving forward the way I want to, that it just stops me even more and I know I wrote this morning in our email about how I've finally, I've given myself this challenge of a thousand words a day. And it's actually been, I don't know. It's like it turned on something in my brain of like, okay, I'm going to do this. And I've noticed, it's, and I'm not, You know, it's not a thousand words towards my, towards my manuscript per se, or it's just a thousand words, you know, a combination of my morning pages plus some more and here and there and whatever it is, but just to get my writing muscle back because I really was not exercising it per se over the summer with everything that was going on. And, and I think, you know, writing is a practice and to allow for figuring out. what works and two like you said elizabeth in different seasons different things work for us you know last week's podcast guest uh jared glenn you know he wrote his first manuscript one way and then figured out another way That when he came to the next one, it was something completely different. So we know that sometimes we also can't get ourselves so stuck in a routine and say like, this is the only way. I think that that's one of the challenges as writers is there's so many crash books out there. And, you know, we have this podcast and we talk about, you know, what works for us and what we've found. But again, listener, there's, What have you found? You know, what are you doing? What, you know, join in this conversation Elizabeth invited you, and I'm inviting you too, to respond to us. You know, get on our email list and send us an email. We read every one of them. We respond. We love to hear from you. Um, we, because we really believe too in the value of community because In navigating all of this, it's so helpful that Elizabeth and I have each other. But there's also a sense, you know, we do have some listeners and podcast guests who have really stayed close to us. And it feels like a community. It feels like they're people we could, you know, DM on social media and be like, What do I do? Um, and feel like we'd get an honest response and, you know, and get support because you don't have to do it alone. And that's why we have a virtual retreat coming up in about a week and a half now, 11th and 12th. you know, we'd love to have you join us for that virtual retreat. Um,

Elizabeth: 16:30

I'm really looking forward to that. Stephanie, you know, it's, it's interesting because I so easily forget that fall is also a not really heavy riding time for me. Like if I look back at the past couple of fall. It's really, I really don't start to like crank back up on like a certain designated creative project until about like November. And then I know historically like that springtime January, February, March, you know, like I'm usually can be really like,

Stephanie: 17:02

Um,

Elizabeth: 17:03

to the grindstone, like I can really get after projects. And so I'm, I'm staying hopeful that.

Stephanie: 17:09

a fifth

Elizabeth: 17:10

just may naturally be my cycle, but I'm also really thrilled that we have the writer's retreat coming up because the beauty of it is we can bring whatever writing we want to it. Like there's not gonna be prompts, you're not gonna be asked to write certain things.

Stephanie: 17:25

guys next

Elizabeth: 17:25

You know, you bring whatever it is that you wanna work on. It can be writing adjacent, like it can be some social media prompts that you're working on, or a Pinterest mood board for a character or. Um, a Spotify playlist. I mean, it can literally be anything we won't know. We're not gonna ask you. I mean, we might ask, but you're not required to share, right? So, um, I haven't decided exactly what I want to work on in those times, but I'm really glad that we've got two days, a Saturday and a Sunday. And we picked these dates because these are the ones I don't have my kid at home. And so it, for me, I'll be able to let go of that caretaking piece for those two days. We've got a morning session and an afternoon session each day, so there's plenty of time for me to go and take a walking break and try to dig into that stuff that I know helps me creatively tap in.

Stephanie: 18:19

freedom of

Elizabeth: 18:19

Um, and I would like to think that that is when I will really knuckle down and force myself to read through all the edits. So I hopefully will feel some inspiration in seeing the story in a fresh set of eyes. I,

Stephanie: 18:33

And I thought it was a really

Elizabeth: 18:34

do think there's sort of a blessing in all of this that I have taken a significant time away from my manuscript. I haven't looked at it since. Basically the end of June.

Stephanie: 18:43

Um,

Elizabeth: 18:45

these last three plus months, I haven't really been digging into it. And I'll get to see it with fresh eyes, which I know is so valuable when you go into the editing stage. So that's what I hope to use the time for, but who knows? I may get there and decide what I really need is some journaling and I actually need to use the time to read some stuff or. You know, whatever else. But the beauty of it is I know that that time is already set aside for us. We've already created that. We've already put out the invites. Um, this includes to all of you listeners. Um, if you're not already on our email list, uh, hop on our email list. That's how you'll get the links. There is a special page of our website where you can sign up as well and get more details about the specific times for your time zone. Um, and you don't have to attend all of'em, you know, I mean, I will and Stephanie will, but like, you don't, you, you can jump in for just the morning ones or just the Saturday ones or whatever it is. Um, and yeah, that's one of the ways I hope to sort of tap back into

Stephanie: 19:51

Okay.

Elizabeth: 19:52

trying to show myself a lot of grace and know that. Everything that I'm doing in the meantime is making me a better writer. The things I read, leading the memoir program right now with a group of three other women, like they're inspiring me all the time, and they also challenge me. Like the other week we were talking about. The question came up about how to write the hardest parts of your story. And so we went into a deep dive of like what techniques I've used, what I think is, you know, most helpful and all of the self care that goes around that. Because again, you know, caretaking, we gotta take care of ourselves too. And even in that situation where you have to really do a lot of self care, I warned them that like. That may be the only thing you write all week if you're writing a really hard section of your memoir, because then that self-care piece takes up a lot of that creative energy for the next couple of days as you restore. Um, so I'm, I'm getting all kinds of. Um, as my editor referred to it as a writer, compost right ingredients to put into that writer compost that slowly breaks down and adds nutrients that you can draw from once you actually sit down with your particular writing project. But who knows what is important at this point to feed into that. I just trust that I'm, I'm gaining a lot of that now and I'm, you know, feeling inspired by. The ways that my life experiences are unfolding, but also the things I read, the things I see, the people I talk to, and the conversations I get to have.

Stephanie: 21:34

Well, and I, I agree with you. I was thinking about this, about how much, you know, life can feed into writing, and of course, obviously, with memoir, and, you know, my fiction writing is very much pulled from my life experience. And. You know, there was so much from the summer that has really informed some of the direction that I'm going, with what I'm writing. It really helped me land on An overarching theme for my romance novels around second chances. And, cause, you know, this summer was very much about second chances. So many second chances. it really felt like, an important place to focus my energy. I think coming to that focal point, I don't know that it would have happened if I hadn't taken time to rest and think and reflect and really look at, know, how life is informing what I'm doing. again, you know, as writers, we pull so much from life as it is anyways. and yeah, I mean, I'm looking forward to the retreat too. Again, I don't. I don't know if I'm going to work on my manuscript or if I'm going to be working on something else. It's always hard to know exactly where I am. I am picking up momentum with my current manuscript. I have two projects going at the same time. It's helping my ADHD. balance its brain balance itself out. Um, mostly because also my characters are part of the same world, just different things are happening to them. So that's really helpful. And yeah, I, I think As we've talked, you know, these places of rest and the-care that's so important that we so often forget about, especially as caretakers, it's so common to just give, give and pour everything out and forget that you have to pour back into yourself as well. Thank

Elizabeth: 23:51

Yeah, that's a, that's a beautiful way to say that, Stephanie. Um, and I think that's a great place to sort of wrap up our conversation for today. I know this was really different guys in the sense that like. We're just kind of talking about life and the struggle of it, and we don't have a solution for you to this problem. I don't even know if you have this problem. I don't know if this is a universal thing or just something that the two of us.

Stephanie: 24:12

and

Elizabeth: 24:12

Um, have found to be a pattern in our writing world. Um, so let us know, uh, even if this is not your experience at all, I would love to hear that too. I'd love to hear that other perspective. Um, and once again, we invite you to join us for our writer's retreat. Again, that's October 11th and 12th, and you can find more information on our website inspired writer collective.com,

Stephanie: 24:35

them.

Elizabeth: 24:36

and hop on our email list to get those Zoom links and we look forward to writing with you.