Backlash Mother! Interview with Writer Tetyana Denford

Tetyana Denford- author, writer, lover, fighter, talker, storyteller. She writes about things that make us think, make us feel, make us change our perspective about life on this weird planet. Her first novel, Motherland, was published in February 2020, she hosts a YouTube series about the craft and business of writing and publishing, and her next book is coming in March/April 2021. 

Where do you work? What does your space look like?

I work anywhere I can sit and plug in my laptop. My first book, Motherland, I mostly wrote in a coffee shop on the side of the A5 in the UK, or at my dining table. Now we’re back in NY, and before the pandemic/lockdown, I found a little coffee shop where I would sit for 5 hours each day, in the same chair with the same view. Nowadays I write at my dining table because I don’t really have a dedicated ‘office’, so that’s the only place where once the kids are at school, no one bothers me. My space always has a cup of coffee, a notepad, my phone with random notes on it, and my wireless headphones so I can listen to certain tracks that I know will bring out certain kinds of voices/scenes. 

Apart from time, what do you need consistently throughout the week in order to be creative?

My phone to be taken away from me! Recently, my husband and I made a rule to not have our phones in the bedroom. We try and put them away once we put the kids to bed, and then I watch a program for a bit (I’m obsessed with This Is Us), or a write a bit, and then I read. And the more I read, the more my brain is unlocked for my writing. It’s this magic trick that every writer knows: in order to write, you have to read. If I don’t read, I lose my momentum. I’m also lucky that we have a puppy and I take him for walks twice a day, and bring my music, and I get such great ideas when I’m out doing something in fresh air.

Is there a creative routine that you swear by?


Having 3 kids and a dog, I definitely need a routine. Every day (whether the kids are home or not), I take the dog out for an hour. I need it to clear my head and get my head into a specific space for a scene or whatever I’m writing. I come back, change out of my sweats/boots (I always have to ‘get dressed’ for my day, even if I’m not going anywhere. It gets my brain in gear), make some coffee, get my headphones, and sit in the same spot and listen to the soundtrack to This Is Us, by Siddhartha Khosla (I told you I was obsessed!). If the kids are at school, I work solidly for 4-5 hours, but if the kids are homeschooling or on a break from school, then I absolutely have no problem sitting them in front of screens if I need to work without interruption. I used to feel guilty when they were younger, but if I hadn’t gotten rid of that guilt and did it, I wouldn’t have been able to write my first novel. We have no help, and my husband runs his own company and works long hours, so I have to rely on technology. 

Do you have a mantra?

Yes, although it’s less specific to creativity and more about life in general: ‘you’re gonna be dead one day’. It sounds weird and morbid, I know. But honestly, the raging imposter syndrome that so many writers have, sometimes its debilitating. The only way I can be authentic, and write what I want to write, and tell my stories and be fearless and teach my children to be fearless is for me to remind myself that someday, none of this will exist. So, what’s my legacy? Is my legacy worrying about what people are going to think of me? Worry about what I wear, or what size I am, or how many awards I won as a writer? I just want to write books that connect to people. I want to start conversations and change how I view the world, and I want to sink my feet into the planet i’m lucky to have time on. So, this mantra reminds me to just show up, be consistent no matter what, and do what scares me. 

Imagine you have two hours to yourself. The house is a mess and there are fifty work emails to answer, errands to run etc. Are you able to focus and how?

The only thing that I would tackle in that whole scenario is taking 25 minutes to speed-tidy the house. I cannot work if there’s mess, that’s just how my brain is. I need to just throw everything into a closet, put the dishes away. Clutter makes me distracted. The work emails and the errands can be done later (normally I do my errands when I pick the kids up, I’ve always taken them with me– yes, you can imagine 3 kids in a shop, it’s ridiculous– and they hate it, but that way I don’t carve into my creative time). 

Can you tell us one surprising aspect of your work that changed after you had children?

After I had kids, I didn’t have the luxury of being so insular and navel-gazing. Suddenly I had opinions about the world because I was seeing it with fresh eyes, through my kids’ eyes, and I realized that life became much bigger than just being a mother. I chose less safe paths, I rediscovered my voice, and my writing, and there was an urgency and a passion that didn’t exist there before. I also realized that motherhood isn’t the same for so many women, especially women in marginalized, poor communities, or immigrants, or women of color who have been sidelined and misrepresented, or disabled women. It made me hungry to learn about stories that aren’t just ones like mine, and it made me want to write to connect these stories, with that ‘motherhood’ thread. I’ve seen a lot of women become writers after they had kids, and I think it’s because becoming a mother is a destabilizing shift; it explodes your life in the best way possible and then the pieces settle in a brand new way. And what do you do with those pieces? You learn about who you are and what you want, and a lot of women choose to write as a way of rediscovering themselves and occupying a new space for themselves. 

Do your children participate in your art and what form does this take? Physical action / inspiration / the subject of your art?

My kids don’t really participate, only in the periphery, or in a ‘general’ sense, when I write about motherhood and use my experiences with them as a reference point. 

Do you have a support structure to help you with your work and children?

In the UK we didn’t have help, apart from my husband’s parents occasionally helping, or my best friend staying with my two kids whilst I picked up the third. So, no consistent help that we could rely on, and my husband travelled 11 months out of the year for his job for the last 10 years, so it was me, three kids, a lot of coffee and late nights writing. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, writing my first book, but I’m glad I pushed myself to do it, because the story was important to me, and I knew it would resonate with people, but also, it was important for me to do something scary all on my own. We moved back to NY two years ago, and we occasionally have help from my parents  who live close by, but otherwise, I have to figure out how to be very specific and focused with the hours I have to write. 

How do your children articulate what you do and what do they think of your work/art?

My kids think I ‘don’t actually do work’ because I don’t have an office like their father does, but they know I write books, and they get inspired and write little stories themselves. My littlest is 7, and the other day I saw her write two pages of a ‘book’, inspired by the Narnia stories, so that was fun to see it manifest in her.

Is there a little voice inside your head that endeavours to knock your confidence as an artist and a mother? How do you silence it?

Oh yes. Every day I battle the ‘Lizard Brain’, as Seth Godin describes it. Some days its easier to fight than others. Some days I can just put my bum in the chair and just write and not judge what comes out, just show up and write. And then some days I can’t silence it, and I just have to acknowledge that it’s going to be a day where I feel useless and scared, and that nothing I’ll ever write will amount to much, and that people will look at me like some kind of ridiculous person. And on those low days, I basically have to allow those feelings to flurry in my head, and I have to distract myself by cleaning, or cooking, or reading, and then I remind myself that the next day usually feels lighter and more clear-headed and more productive (it always happens that way– the lowest days are followed by the lightest days). 

Explain a situation, related to your work, where you’ve had to combat misogyny.  Did your work change from this experience?

I’ve been lucky to be connected to lots of women within this industry who are hugely supportive and honest and they keep pushing me to be the best version of myself that I can be. The men I’ve met when I worked at magazines in NY, or doing temp jobs at media companies, a lot of them have been shamelessly inappropriate, misogynist, entitled, aggressive, and it’s just a conditioning that most men were used to up until the #metoo movement. My mother actually approached the board of directors at the global hospital that she was working at in NYC in the 70s and reported sexual harrassment and they silenced and fired her, and she always taught me to have a big mouth when necessary. Which I always have, so my voice on my social media and in the things i write… that voice is as opinionated and loud as it is in my real life. I don’t suffer fools gladly, let’s just put it that way, and although men and women find me ‘too much’, I’d rather be that, than be meek and silent.

Name one self-imposed distraction that leads to procrastination and tell us how you handle it.

I don’t ever watch regular television so I love watching a little bit of a true crime documentary, or watching programs that have exquisite writing (Normal People was incredible, as was True Detective, or Unbelievable). But I have to stop after one episode, otherwise I’ll fall into a rabbit hole and start researching the characters, who they were based on, who the writers are, etc. I also give myself  ‘rewards’, so that if i write a certain amount of words, or pages, then I’ll let myself watch another episode.

What is the best advice you’ve ever been given?

It’s a combination of my husband and my writing mentors giving me random advice over the years, but it’s:  ‘when you feel it and think it, you live it, and others believe it’. I guess someone could call this a type of ‘manifestation’ (although I hate that word now, because it’s been bastardized a bit by social media)… but I seriously believe that changing your mindset makes a huge difference with how you approach your writing and how you present yourself and your work. You have to believe it yourself, not frame it within how others will believe it. I’m not saying if you do this, you’ll get rich and famous and successful, but surely that’s not why you write. You don’t write books to win awards and get free stuff and movie deals and get put in magazines and on televisions. You write because you can’t imagine doing anything else and you just have to write down the story.

At what stage did you begin to take your work seriously?

I’d been writing off and on for years, and once my youngest was a year old, I’d started writing more consistently, and then in 2015, my husband and I were sitting at dinner and I was telling him about an epic family secret that had been uncovered. He said to me, ‘what do you want to do with your life?’ and at first, I was taken aback. I got a bit annoyed, so I played it safe and said, ‘why don’t I just keep having babies? I love having babies’ and he replied, ‘no. you are so much more than that, and that’s why I married you. you have to write the stories that are waiting for you, sitting right in front of you.’ And that’s what propelled me to start writing my first book. I dug deep and realized that I can’t be defined by motherhood. That’s not ultimately who I am, I remembered the ‘me’ in all of this suddenly and if there’s no ‘me’, then there’s no ‘us’, and the ‘us’ is who I write the stories for.

How could your community help you grow as an artist?

I think the community on social media is an amazing tool to help share stories but it sometimes gets bogged down with how much we’re sold to, or how the algorithm operates for monetization rather than sharing creativity and inspiration. The more we realize how we can filter out the noise, the drama, the gossip, the things that make us feel less than, and lacking, and envious, the more we’ll be able to spend time listening, learning, supporting creatives in developing their art. Sometimes I think it’s easy to imagine that there’s one path to creating something, one path to making money, but there really isn’t. There are so many ways now to connect to people and publish books, and get inspired to see the world differently. I think we just need to focus less on the ‘likes’ and the validation, and more on the consistency of creativity. You have to show up, every day, and work. Create. Without worrying about ‘being seen’ (even though it’s a valid desire). We have to just create and share and engage and be willing to give to others, not just take. 

LINKS:
www.tetyanadenford.comhttps://www.instagram.com/tetyanawrites
https://twitter.com/TetyanaWriteshttps://www.thecraftandbusinessofbooks.com
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8NBxf5zjR6kVe0ZevZCtuw/

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