Introducing Keep Working

An origin story, a plot twist, and a path forward.

Hi, I’m Nicholl—a nonfiction writer by nature, brand storyteller by trade. In 2016, I stepped away from the career I’d established in the fashion industry in New York to pursue a graduate degree in creative writing in a coastal North Carolina town. I had no expectations of what that experience would bring, only optimism and ambition and the conviction to heed what always felt like a calling. To say that those four years I spent earning an MFA—three in the program and another continuing work on my thesis before delivering it for defense in April 2020—changed my life would be an understatement, but it remains true all the same. I’ve always been a writer, but that stretch of time surrounded by generous mentors and talented peers (many of whom I remain close with today) taught me more than I could have anticipated about the craft of writing, the hard, disarming work it involves, and the personal evolution it incites—particularly as it relates to the types of stories I was working on and working through. It was a formal degree, but first and foremost it was a process of discovery: of voice and style, of writing routines, of community, of self.

But since reentering the real world, I’ve found myself struggling to continue my writing practice at the clip I established in grad school while working full-time and tending to all of life’s other responsibilities. I assumed there was a flaw in my formula, that I simply needed to try harder in every regard. For a period of time, I even felt ashamed of this struggle, as if it was possible to fit a few days of work into 24 hours, to exercise and care for yourself and even have room for socializing, and I was just failing to make it happen. It was only once I began talking about this conflict with other writers that I realized what I was experiencing wasn’t just hard because I was attempting it incorrectly—it is hard. And it was only once I started opening up to my peers that I learned I wasn’t alone.

For all that workshops and books on craft offer us about the art of writing, they leave out just as much about the art of doing it all: writing while working, raising a family, cultivating romantic relationships and friendships, caring for your body, your spirit, and mind. We’re taught to idolize images of Joan Didion cracking open a can of Diet Coke at dawn as she makes her way to her desk, slips on her sunglasses and summons the muse, tap-tap-tapping away until the words run out, somehow entirely—and enviably—untethered from an economic reality. We’re given mandates to write every day, to read widely, and remain an active literary citizen. We’re given permission to embrace our art, to carry our creative projects as far as we can possibly take them—to keep working. But it is rarely shared how. Not just how to compose a story or the arc of a novel, but how to find the time to sit down and do just that in the face of so much else.

Ursula K. Le Guin’s ideal writing routine, 1988.

During my last year in grad school, I took a nonfiction workshop with acclaimed poet and prose writer Camille Dungy. In a candid Q&A with our class one afternoon, Camille described the way she found time to work on her most recent book, Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History, while caring for her infant daughter: in twenty-minute spurts, often with Callie napping in a carrier on her back. I marveled at this image, at her superhuman strength and determination, but it also seemed extreme to me then, shaped by the particulars of her experience as a new mother, surely at odds with how my own writing routine after school would look. Mine would be just that: a routine, a practice. Steady and measured effort, regular blocks of uninterrupted time, deep, sweeping dives into my own interiority and the inner workings of a piece. Fast-forward a few years and I can only laugh at that idealized vision. On the best days, my writing life now feels most akin to Camille’s example—sans baby—as I continue learning how to create while bearing the weight of my own world.

I tried dozens of so-called routines before arriving at this approach, tried writing into the night after stressful days of work, tried writing and squeezing in exercise before my morning meetings, tried to frantically make space for it all. Not only was I unable to generate any momentum, but also none of it felt good. It was only once I accepted the barriers of my own human and daily limitations, and surrendered to the long game writing truly is, that I was able to see how Camille’s strategy is the most sustainable and productive route for me. I was no longer waiting for luxurious swathes of time to land in my lap; I was utilizing whatever time I had and making more of it appear whenever possible.

“Have you ever thought about using your vacation time to write?” my ex-boyfriend, a screenwriter, asked me sometime last spring. In addition to smaller pockets of time I found throughout the week, I had already started dedicating my Saturdays to writing and reading, keeping the energy of the workweek going a little while longer as I turned my attention toward work of my own. But his question was valid and well-timed—I hadn’t considered it. So that May, I took a full week off work and did just that. I hosted a mini retreat of my own, disappeared from text messages and social media, woke each morning and read, spent hours on end writing and transcribing overdue notes, dined by candlelight, then decompressed with long walks around my neighborhood’s hilly streets. It was heaven. A taste of the idealized writing routine I’d implement if life’s work didn’t need to get done too. That solo writing time reacquainted me with aspects of my book I’d almost forgotten, and it also reminded me of how much work I had already done. How all I had to do now was keep going, keep working, whenever I could.

It was around that time that the concept for this newsletter was born. Keep Working as in keep writing, keep tending to the work of your soul while juggling the job(s) that earn you a living, the roles and responsibilities that make up your day. It is never easy, but it is certainly possible, and I hope this space will be both a boon of encouragement and a resource for practical tips that can show you how. Gone are the days of publishing one story in a lauded magazine or a single novel and gaining financial security for life. The world is more expensive than ever; the economy more fragile than it’s been in some time. So much so, in fact, that many of today’s most celebrated writers also rely on several streams of income to get by. But art remains necessary even in a time of great economic and social collapse, and in many ways, perhaps most urgently, because of it.

Like most good stories, this one contains a twist. After months of mapping out plans for this newsletter, collaborating with a close friend on logos and branding, collecting and curating a host of images to give it a visual language, I was unexpectedly laid off from my job last week. (The irony of launching a platform about writing while working at a time when I’m currently unemployed is not lost on me.) For a moment, I considered delaying the start of this letter altogether, forgoing the social media channel I debuted alongside it, filing away all the work I’d already done for a later date when I land my next full-time role, when the plotline snaps back into place and the arc of my story turns skyward. But this is the real story, the one that feels most worth telling. And for now, I would rather start from a place of transparency and honor all the ways in which we keep working on this most important work, even while grappling with adversity.

I’m so grateful to those in my network who have already started helping me arrange meetings for potential opportunities, just as I’m forever grateful for the partners in crime in my writing workshop, the peers and faculty from grad school I remain in touch with, and the literary community at large. This much I know to be true: none of this can be accomplished alone. And with Keep Working, I hope to cultivate a space that extends a similar type of support through candid interviews with writers across genres, roundups of helpful resources—books, podcasts, newsletters—that offer actionable tips and tools, artist date ideas (iykyk) across the country and recaps of my own, personal accounts of how I’ve found my rhythm, summaries of summer conference experiences, literary magazine recommendations, and so much more. But most of all, I hope it will serve as a weekly reminder that your work is worth returning to, however you can. Part inspiration, part practical advice—all from a fellow writer learning how to navigate the same predicament. A fellow writer who is in your corner, nudging you forward on your creative path as I continue along my own, repeating the mantra that has brought me this far, the same one I now offer to you: keep working, keep working, keep working.