Featured Writer: Sonal Champsee
On creating space to write and writing advice.
Welcome to Women Writing!
About the author…
Sonal Champsee’s short fiction and essays have been published in anthologies and magazines such as The New Quarterly, Ricepaper, and Today’s Parent, and her as yet unpublished novel was a finalist for the 2022 HarperCollins/UBC Prize for Best New Fiction. She taught for the Sarah Selecky Writing school for over ten years, has had a play produced in Seattle, and writes the Dear Abby-style advice column Writer Therapy. Sonal has an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC, and lives in Toronto, Canada with her partner, two small kids, and two medium-sized cats.
On a writing routine …
I have a brain that abhors routine; I've proven that chestnut about 21 days to form a habit wrong countless times. I'm fortunate in that I'm not traditionally employed and so theoretically, I have all day to write. In practice, however, my brain will find dozens of other things to do, and so I struggle a lot to actually begin. I used to write best at night, but since the kids were born, I find my brain is much clearer in the mornings after they've headed off to school. These days, I worry less about having a writing routine, and instead try to track how often I've touched my creative work. As long as I'm making contact with the work somewhat regularly, things are okay.
“That you want to, that something about writing speaks to you and feeds your soul is enough. And that is all the justification you need to make time and space for it, and even prioritize it above things like family and friends and community and laundry and groceries.”
On writing spaces …
I'm not very fussy about where I write, but my back is, so I've stopped writing on the couch and now I have a desk and a decent chair in an office I share with my partner on the third floor of our house. The room is filled with light from a skylight above, and Poppy, my tuxedo cat, likes to hang out with me in here. I often listen to concentration music to help me focus. But sometimes, the pressure of sitting at my laptop or notebook is too much, and so I end up writing in a little app on my phone while my kids are at dance or swimming or gymnastics. Still, my best work is done while coworking with other writers, sometimes over zoom, sometimes in a coffee shop. We start with a little bit of chatting and then get to work. It's like having a gym buddy, but less sweaty.
On writing communities …
I'm connected to a few different loose communities of writers, which has been immensely helpful for advice, commiseration, support and accountability. In a practical sense, community has helped me find places to send my novel manuscript via referral instead of sending something straight into the slush pile, but more importantly, community helps me write. These are my co-workers, even if we are all working solo on separate things. I meet weekly with two different writers from two different communities to cowork, I chat with a writer from my MFA program every couple of weeks as an accountability check-in, and I meet with another writer from the school we taught in every month or so to check in and also talk about a shared project we're working on amid other things. My brain needs the accountability, it needs other writers to bounce ideas off of and very simply, I need the connection to community to light my brain up about writing.
On challenges …
.The biggest challenge these days in my own brain; I discovered late in life that I have ADHD. I've suspected this for over twenty years, and being diagnosed has let me drop some of the energy-sucking masking and allowed me the joy of running with it. But despite medication, my brain is still easily pulled away from writing into other projects (for example, I started writing a novel and have since pivoted to political activism) or random research or dopamine-heavy phone games, and so I'm still learning to trick myself into getting started, since task initiation is my biggest issue. Compounding this is the mental load of raising children in these villageless times, dealing with the household in general and periodic business concerns and of course, immigrant parents.
On the best writing advice …
I have to remind myself that revision is part of the process. Early in my writing life, I would try to write in such a way that I would not have to go back and revise, because that seemed like a lot of work. But that kind of pressure and perfectionism led to very little writing, and whatever did get written was stilted, and I feared changing anything. But letting things be messy, allowing for big changes and random leaps of intuition and not trying to tidy everything up too soon allows for so much more life in the writing. It's kind of terrifying to trust that it will all come together somehow, but it will all come together somehow.
On the worst writing advice …
Have a writing routine and write every day. Being a person incapable of routine, this made me feel like I was incapable of writing until I had a routine, which I could never successfully put together, and therefore, how would I ever be a writer? The first time I heard a writing teacher say that they didn't write daily and they didn't have a routine gave me so much hope. Don't get me wrong, routine is great if it works for you; I wish I had a routine since it seems like it would make the process of actually starting so much simpler. But it doesn't work for me, and so rather than fight with myself over having some arbitrary routine that writers are allegedly supposed to have, I'd rather accept who I am and remind myself that there are no supposed-tos.
On advice from personal experiences …
Most of the writers I teach are women, and most of the time, the hardest thing newer writers to accept is that they really are writers, and they really do deserve to make time and space for themselves to write. There is no arbitrary set of things you must to do be a writer; you don't need a routine or a degree or a publication. You don't even have to write. That you want to, that something about writing speaks to you and feeds your soul is enough. And that is all the justification you need to make time and space for it, and even prioritize it above things like family and friends and community and laundry and groceries. Also, trust in yourself.
On a recent publication …
My most recent publication was an essay entitled Writer Therapy, in Send My Love to Anyone, Issue 37. Writing-wise, I am currently in the very early stages of a new novel, which grew out of a short story for a collection that I'd still like to work on, plus there is this essay collection that I'm working on with a friend. But at the moment, most of my time is being used towards getting Ontario's very terrible Premier to go away.
Sonal‘s online spaces …
📚 Upcoming offerings …
Rekindle Creativity Women’s Writing Retreat: Spring Getaway
Join us for a weekend getaway at The Lodge at Pine Cove in beautiful French River, Ontario to reconnect with yourself and your writing, and make connections with a small group of fellow writers. What a wonderful way to celebrate the spring by rekindling your personal creativity and sparking your ideas. Dinah Laprairie and I can’t wait to welcome you. Learn more and register here. Please note that spaces are limited.
Happy writing!
I love hearing about all the ways writers find accountability—coworking is, I’m finding, surprisingly effective! It’s nice to see what others do to find and work with colleagues.
Oh! Especially love the permission, giving of no supposed to’s regarding a writing routine (and really, anything else!)!