By Eliza Jabore

I started writing as a kid, knowing there were only two things that I wanted for my future: to write and to travel. I wanted to combine these two passions. To be like Kerouac furiously typing away in the backseat of a car. So, when I graduated at seventeen, I bought a laptop, packed plenty of notebooks, and set off.  But I was about to learn that some experiences are meant to be lived before they can be written, and that the geography of my head was more important than that of my feet.

I flew overseas. My dreams were coming true! Except for one problem. I couldn’t write. I had too much to do and too much to take in to spend any extra time jotting it all down. I had to keep my attention trained on my surroundings. I couldn’t peel my eyes away from the window for a second, afraid that I’d miss out on some sight, some smell, some interesting person. I reasoned that this was normal. Healthy, even. How could I write about my experiences if I wasn’t, you know, experiencing them? 

Over the next decade, I devoted myself to travel. I started keeping diligent journals when I was overseas, but my creative writing fell by the wayside. I tried, but the stories wouldn’t flow. I chastised and berated myself, but no amount of self-flagellation proved fruitful.

Despair started to seep in. A horrifying thought crept into my mind that I couldn’t shake: what if the magic had left me, if I was no longer a writer? Had I become someone who could only say, “I used to write?” 

It wasn’t until my husband and I resettled in the US that I finally turned the page. That’s when I was able to open my laptop without dread and began my first serious novel. But I panicked when I got pregnant. I’d have no time to write once my daughter was born and I was terrified of losing this part of myself that I’d only just rediscovered. I had to finish my novel. It was now or never! This sense of urgency ignited a fire and I achieved my goal. I finished before she was born.

Then came the most surprising twist. That fire didn’t go out. Despite having far less free time as a mother, I started writing more than ever before. I wrote during naps and evenings. I’d skip breakfast to rush to my computer on those rare mornings she slept in. I harvested every spare moment, using my time to the absolute fullest. For some reason, I couldn’t write hunched in the backseat of a car like Kerouac, but I could when I was cuddling a sleeping newborn on my sofa. Being carefree and traveling didn’t fuel my creative fires, but being a time-strapped mother did.

Five years and another baby later, this still hasn’t changed. I wrote this essay amid family chaos, under conditions a younger version of me could never have fathomed. Some combination of the stability that comes from finally having planted roots and the pandemonium that comes from raising two small children, from no longer having an endless amount of free time stretched before me like the open road, has reignited my creative drive. Perhaps the immense freedom I felt when traveling was too easy to squander, and I needed this pressure to motivate me.

But I realize now that what I also needed was time to process it all. I needed to live the experiences first, to let the stories lie dormant under the soil until they were ready to bloom. No matter how much I wanted it to be different, my head simply wasn’t ready to write about my travels straightaway. But those experiences were being stored, not wasted. Now from a place of chaotic joy and familial stability, I’m able to reflect and use them how I’d always hoped. My debut novel, Backstabbers, is the book of my dreams, infused with so many of my travel stories, the project that finally combines my two passions. It didn’t come to me when I wanted but arrived exactly when I was ready for it.