Mountain Mama :: Emily Freeman
I met with Emily at her home to find out how she got into writing and where she finds the time to express herself with the demands of full time mothering. We talked for quite a while at her dining room table. Laptop perched at the end in a makeshift office, toddler potty near the base of her chair. I couldn't help but recognize the juggle she must face on a daily basis.
Here are some of her responses: This note came to me early one morning... the freshest hours of her day.
I'm not sure I'd consider myself a serious freelance writer, as most of what I've done and am interested in doing is more "creative writing." I do write book reviews for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, though, and occasionally take on a gig for some specialized publication (food, bridal, legal).
I did my MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota. I'd gone there thinking I'd write fiction, and was halfway through a huge sprawling novel when I took a required out-of-genre class in nonfiction. I discovered memoir, which I hadn't really known about, and totally switched gears. A lot of my peers in the program were writing about their lives in really interesting, compelling, carefully crafted ways, and they just had these more-or-less ordinary lives. The realization that you didn't have to be some important or famous person or have gone through an appalling trauma in order to be "allowed" to write about it was kind of revelatory for me. I think it's why I love teaching memoir, which is mostly what I teach in Missoula, because often it's news to the students that they, too, have lives worth documenting on paper.
After grad school, I was gaining a lot of traction with my work, publishing pieces different places, having agents/editors contacting me after reading my stuff to see if I had a book they could sell, etc. And then I got pregnant and motherhood hijacked the whole thing. It was a little while before I could make peace with that fact and just be okay with putting myself primarily into this project of mothering small kids, and letting the writing stuff lay fallow for a bit. We moved here in the spring of 2012, heavily pregnant with Isaac, and only in the last year have I started to re-engage my writing/teaching brain.
I'm in the midst of slowly putting together a book, and am joining a nonfiction writing group. I had this thought the other day: three years ago this summer I had a baby without any drugs, which was something I never could've imagined I'd accomplish. This summer, I'll be running the marathon, which is something that on certain days I still can't imagine I'll be able to accomplish. Maybe I'm on a three-year plan, and three years from now I'll publish a book. It seems like a reasonable timeframe for someone who's also working at being a mother, no?
You can find a little more about Emily, here: www.emilyhfreeman.com
Here are some of her responses: This note came to me early one morning... the freshest hours of her day.
I'm not sure I'd consider myself a serious freelance writer, as most of what I've done and am interested in doing is more "creative writing." I do write book reviews for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, though, and occasionally take on a gig for some specialized publication (food, bridal, legal).
I did my MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota. I'd gone there thinking I'd write fiction, and was halfway through a huge sprawling novel when I took a required out-of-genre class in nonfiction. I discovered memoir, which I hadn't really known about, and totally switched gears. A lot of my peers in the program were writing about their lives in really interesting, compelling, carefully crafted ways, and they just had these more-or-less ordinary lives. The realization that you didn't have to be some important or famous person or have gone through an appalling trauma in order to be "allowed" to write about it was kind of revelatory for me. I think it's why I love teaching memoir, which is mostly what I teach in Missoula, because often it's news to the students that they, too, have lives worth documenting on paper.
After grad school, I was gaining a lot of traction with my work, publishing pieces different places, having agents/editors contacting me after reading my stuff to see if I had a book they could sell, etc. And then I got pregnant and motherhood hijacked the whole thing. It was a little while before I could make peace with that fact and just be okay with putting myself primarily into this project of mothering small kids, and letting the writing stuff lay fallow for a bit. We moved here in the spring of 2012, heavily pregnant with Isaac, and only in the last year have I started to re-engage my writing/teaching brain.
I'm in the midst of slowly putting together a book, and am joining a nonfiction writing group. I had this thought the other day: three years ago this summer I had a baby without any drugs, which was something I never could've imagined I'd accomplish. This summer, I'll be running the marathon, which is something that on certain days I still can't imagine I'll be able to accomplish. Maybe I'm on a three-year plan, and three years from now I'll publish a book. It seems like a reasonable timeframe for someone who's also working at being a mother, no?
You can find a little more about Emily, here: www.emilyhfreeman.com
