A Very Small Writing Practice

By Carmella de los Angeles Guiol






These days, when people ask me how my writing is going, I try my best not to roll my eyes and bite their heads off. I have a two-year-old and a one-year-old, both of whom were born during the pandemic. How do you think it’s going?



But the other day it dawned on me: I do have a writing practice. A very small one, but a writing practice, nonetheless.



When I got pregnant in the fall of 2019, some friends put together a care package and sent it to me. I was delighted to find in the box: a belly band, Dear Girls by Ali Wong, nausea gummies, shea butter to slather on my growing belly, and a “Line a Day” journal. And ever since that day, I have faithfully scrawled a line into that journal.



And that, my friends, has been a large extent of my writing practice for the past three years.



At first, I felt embarrassed by this fact, but now I feel something close to pride. Yes, my life has been hectic, and no, I haven’t made much headway on my many writing projects. But the truth is, I have been writing. A line a day.



At first, it was barely a line. Postpartum days and nights blend into each other. Maybe I got a word down, or a short phrase, or a cluster of exclamation points. But as my children grow more independent, my entries have also grown. Sometimes, they cannot be contained by the drawn lines provided. I scribble in the margins. My yearning for words becomes stronger day by day, line by line.



One line in the daily diary about my baby nursing around the clock might blossom into an essay about the (sometimes brutal) physicality of motherhood. A quick quip about a disagreement with my aunt could, one day, become a novel exploring the unforgiving demands placed on mothers and daughters. A few words about my sons horsing around before bed may catapult into a children’s book celebrating siblings. 



Eventually, I will break out of the Line a Day journal, and the words will flow freely on the page. Maybe one day, I’ll finish the memoir that I started when I was pregnant with my first baby. Maybe one day, I’ll rewrite that young adult novel that’s been gathering dust on my hard drive. Maybe one day, I’ll finish that book proposal that I’ve been stopping and starting for the past decade.



But for now, a line a day. It keeps me writing, putting pen to paper. Bite-sized morsels, but still, words on the page. Unbeknownst to me when I glibly wrote my first entry back in 2019, this Line A Day journal has been a little connection to my former self, the memoirist in me who is still in there, somewhere. Sleep deprived and bedraggled, but still alive.



And what better gift for a memoirist that a Line A Day journal??  It has amounted to a daily record of my life, little reminders of the tiny insignificant moments that brought me joy amidst the bewildering chaos of a pandemic and parenthood. On any given day, I can see what I’ve written on that day in previous years. Now that my second son is a toddler, I can revisit my entries from when his older brother was a newborn – my first foray into motherhood.



In the past three years, I haven’t submitted anything, edited drafts or crafted a new essay. I’ve been busy using my creativity for another creative endeavor: motherhood. And when I’m ready to return to the page and mine the past to create something meaningful, the Line A Day journal will be there, faithfully at the ready.



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Carmella de los Angeles Guiol is a writer and digital health educator living in Durham, NC. She is the creator of  Scroll Sanity , a newsletter and podcast exploring how to stay sane in a digital world.