Why the Best Life Lessons Are Writing Lessons, Too

Today’s post is by author and editor-at-large of Writer’s Digest, Jessica Strawser.

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In big, defining phases of our lives, there are always little moments that stand out. The ones you can still vividly picture years later, when everything else about that time has blurred together. As writers, we recognize these as telling details—and it’s worth considering why they’re the ones with staying power.

Chances are, there’s a good reason.

For a lot of us, the spring of 2020 is the ultimate blurry memory, a tangle of the most worrisome emotions: fear, uncertainty, grief, confusion.

But the April morning that stands out to me wasn’t tangled at all. It was so simple, in fact, someone else might have laughed it off.

While the initial lockdown looked different for everybody, for me it involved homeschooling a kindergartener and second grader who found me a poor substitute for their teachers and friends. For the record, I found myself a poor substitute, too. Like most people, I tried to keep perspective that as long as we were healthy, we could roll with anything else. But suffice to say disappointment mitigation had become a paramount parenting skill.

When my kids’ spring break approached, I braced myself. Our cancelled vacation was the least of anyone’s worries, but tell that to two Lego-crazy kids who were supposed to be jetting off to Legoland. They’d been counting down for months, chattering excitedly about which mini-figures to bring and what the best rides would be. These were the days you couldn’t even cancel a reservation because all the call centers were jammed; you just assumed it wasn’t happening and hoped your account would be credited eventually.

On the day we’d been meant to leave, I went all-out with a homemade breakfast, trying to lift their spirits. The empty week stretched ahead of us without the pseudo-normalcy of virtual school. “Well, kiddos,” I began, taking my seat at the table, “I know we’re supposed to be on a flight to California…”

My 5-year-old cut in with pure exuberance: “And instead, we’re eating waffles!”

She said this with not a trace of wistful longing. Only a minute-to-minute comparison that a decadent breakfast at home was way better than being on a cross-country flight, uncomfortably buckled into a tin can in the sky.

It stopped me in my tracks. At a time when all the adults were encouraging each other to find joy, to stay present and hold our people close … well, she wasn’t telling herself anything. She was just doing it.

She was showing us how.

I shared this story with many friends who found it sweet, but interestingly, only my writer friends seemed as profoundly moved as I was. Moved to tears. Moved enough to make it a mantra. A group of us had an ongoing email thread full of angst about how on earth we’d meet our deadlines, and whether it even mattered. My daughter’s remark became our shorthand for the small triumphs, and for gratitude—that the sun came out at last, or the grocery shelves were stocked again, or we got a call from an old friend. If we actually liked what we wrote that day, even better.

Today, I ate the waffles, we’d write, the relief palpable. It evolved into a way of encouraging each other, too, to hold out a hand when someone seemed overwhelmed: One day at a time. Just make yourself some waffles, girl. You sound hungry.

Years later, I still think about it. It even worked its way into my latest novel. In Catch You Later, new this fall, the two main characters are lifelong best friends, women stuck in dead-end jobs at an isolated highway travel stop. One of them is content to make the best of things there; the other is desperate to get out. When her exit plan suffers a huge setback, they have a literal waffles moment that becomes their own shorthand, the way it did for us.

One of the novelists from that original thread was among the first to read my advance copies. She texted me instantly upon reaching that scene. Love that you put in the waffles!

Maybe we found it useful to have a mantra to ground us because we’re word people. But I wonder if it was more than that.

I wonder if all the best life lessons are writing lessons too. Or if writers are just more inclined to keep our eyes open for metaphors and hidden meaning, to see things from a different point of view.

Or maybe there’s something about this particular lesson that resonates more. Once writers enter the publishing realm, there’s inevitably a low-grade tension in much of what we do. We work and create and dream and strive in an industry that’s in a perpetual state of flux, stress, and even fear (AI, anyone?).

There are times where all we can do—where the best thing to do—is sit down at the table and focus on what’s in front of us. Blocking it all out for a moment of uncomplicated bliss with those glorious, fluffy squares.

When you’re harnessing the flow of a new draft, setting aside any worry of whether it will ever be good enough to publish.

When you’re smarting from the sting of rejection and pat yourself on the back anyway, for being brave enough to put the work out there, for being willing to try again.

When you’ve had a long day at the office and turn down a happy hour with your coworkers, because you promised yourself that tonight, you’d prioritize your writing.

When you celebrate every milestone, even the little ones. When you allow yourself to be buoyed by your glowing reviews on Goodreads and ignore the negatives.

When you finally stand at the podium of your own book launch, taking questions from the audience, and they already want to know what’s next and how fast it’s going to happen.

It’s okay—even good—to shut it all out sometimes. To savor the moment you’re in—the one you’ve worked hard to create for yourself. The one no one can take away from you.

Eat those waffles, my fellow writers.

I don’t know whether it’s the secret to being more successful. But it might just make us all a whole lot happier.