Mothers Creating in the Margins: An Interview with Katie Blackburn

"My writing today doesn’t need the same kind of resolution it did all those years ago."

Fun fact: Create Anyway wouldn’t exist without Katie. And I don’t mean that in the “she encouraged me along the way” or “she helped edit my chapters” or “she didn’t let me give up” sense (all of which are true)—but I mean honestly, undoubtedly, quite literally, this book wouldn’t exist without Katie.

Because when I got out of the shower one day, after being hit with a lightning bolt of inspiration, I immediately texted Katie pictures of the four pages of notes I had scribbled down.

Her response? “Ashlee, that’s a book.”

Over the years, this has become a defining characteristic of our friendship: we’re always each other’s first buyers.

Katie and I try to see each other once or twice a year. This is my one of my all-time favorite pictures of us from June, 2022. We were on our way to photograph a vow renewal, something neither of us had done before. The views en route to Big Sur were unreal, and when we pulled over on the highway to snap a picture, the wind was so aggressive, it nearly snapped my car door off. Our hair looks insane, but the sun is shining, and we’re nervous, and happy, on our way to do something creative—together. What a gift.

To know her is to love her. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Katie Blackburn. My sister. My best friend.

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So this series is called “Real Moms Creating in the Margins” but you, dear friend, have SIX kids, including three under three. It’s probably more accurate to say you are creating in the razor-thin margins. How in the world do you find pockets of time to create in your current season? Are you ever tempted to just … give up? How do you keep going? How do you, in the beautiful chaos of your unique life, create anyway?

My creative work looks different day to day, week to week, to be honest. Some days I’m up early and my kids sleep in past 6:00 am and I can get an hour of writing in, but those are the exceptional days, not the normal ones. While my preference has always been to get into deep work and give myself two or three hours at a time to write, I have had to learn how to use minutes. Ten here, fifteen there, maybe a half an hour during nap time. But I have found something I read a long time ago by Louis Pasteur to be so true: ideas favor the prepared mind. I am, obviously, not writing all day long. But I think about writing on and off all day. I talk about writing with friends. I’m always noting things like: Where’s the story? Could that be a metaphor? Or, I want to remember this.

I find that because I am talking about writing with my mastermind group or thinking about essays for my own work all the time, I can make the most of those pocket minutes because I’ve been mentally preparing for them for hours already. And the best part of that is, my “preparation” is really just the material from my real life; my job is simply to notice it. I think maybe that’s how a mother-artist just lives, with both her motherhood and her art taking up living space in her mind. 

You and I have both been writing about motherhood on the Internet for a full decade now (!). When you think back to new-mom Katie, compared to who you are today, how has your writing about motherhood shifted or changed in this past decade?

Welllllll to be honest, who I am today is the tiniest bit embarrassed by new-mom Katie and how she wrote about motherhood. I mean, I can certainly say I was trying, doing the best I could with what I knew then. But I was so insecure, and I was trying to write like I wasn’t insecure. I didn’t know anything but I wrote like an expert and I’m super annoyed by that now. Ten years later I have no problem writing from the raw places and admitting I have no idea how to do this work well. I have no problem confessing what is hard for me and don’t see that as the sign of a weak mother or a weak faith in God. I think I used to, because my tendency was to tie everything I wrote up in a bow. I don’t feel pressure to do that any longer. My writing today doesn’t need the same kind of resolution it did all those years ago. It’s a level deeper that way, at least I hope.

Over the past year, you’ve been learning photography, which has been such a joy (for me) to watch. What can you tell us about learning a new creative skill at age 37? 

Photography has been the best new thing I’ve done in years. There is something about capturing time and light in a meaningful way that just thrills me. And while it was hard work to learn the camera and I was definitely pretty disappointed in my first six months worth of pictures last year, the reward of seeing your own growth is so worth it. And the thing about this new creative outlet is that I see how much more I can still grow, and that is exciting to me. I am constantly inspired by what other artists are capturing and it makes me want to keep learning—and in some way, that desire to keep learning feels pretty pivotal to life, doesn’t it?

Your daughter, Harper, is one of my favorite people on the planet earth. I know she’s recently become interested in writing and photography—no doubt from watching her mom do those things. In what other ways have you seen your personal creativity influencing your children, or rubbing off on them? Do you believe modeling creativity for our kids is important? Why?

Oh yes, my little Harper is just a delight to watch grow up and find her artistic side! But you know, I never set out to influence her like or dislike of creating—I honestly don’t think we can do that to our kids. I think she just saw how much it brought me to life and found it did something similar for her. And that we can do for our kids: live in a way that sees beauty and remembers goodness and looks for truth. I think that is what’s contagious, people who are really doing something they love to do.

Last year you self-published your first book, Gluing the Cracks. For the woman reading this who has a story burning a hole in her heart, but might not be a good fit for traditional publishing for a variety of reasons, can you tell us what you gained or learned through the experience of self-publishing? Would you do it again? 

My self-publishing experience was really more than I hoped it would be. Granted, I probably had protective expectations (read: low) but still, I have nothing but good things to say about self-publishing. Gluing the Cracks was just not something I was even willing to put out there to agents or publishers for consideration. And you know, they may have said no anyway! But these stories about my son with autism, I don’t know, they just felt too tender, and not that people do not write tender things and traditionally publish them all the time, but I just felt like the heartbeat of the project might get lost for me if I tried too hard to make it “bigger” by going the traditional route. I got to keep this all in my hands, where I felt peace about everything the whole time, and I am so grateful for that. 

On the business side of this discussion, I will say this: self-publishing is really all on you and your audience. I have been writing about disability for nearly six years and I knew other special needs mamas were my people. That gave me the confidence that at least a few of them would buy the book, and gratefully, they did. Having that niche but loyal group of people was, I think, an important part of the organic sharing of the book. Now, plenty of people who do not have a child with a disability bought it and read it and have told me how much it touched them, but I don’t think I would have published this without knowing the core, target audience was there.

And yes, I would self-publish again in a heartbeat.

For the mom reading this who truly feels like she does not have an inch in her life, her house, her schedule, to be creative, what encouragement do you have for her?

If not creating is truly weighing you down, bothering you, lingering around and making you feel like you should write or paint or make something, then you’ll find the inch. Maybe not every day, but you’ll find it. My friend is a photographer whose daughter was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2020, and even though she had three other children at home and her new reality meant hundreds of drives to the hospital and thousands of hours watching her 6-year-old get chemo and recover from surgery, she still took photos. Beautiful, heartbreaking, stunning photos. Her client work, naturally, had to be put on hold for a while, but her art followed her life. She found the inch. 

Remember what I said in that first question about how the mother-artist lives, with her children and her art taking up living space in her mind? If that’s you, you’ll find the inch. And it will be amazing to watch yourself flourish when those inches add up.

Katie Blackburn lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband Alex and their six little ones, one of whom came to them through foster care. She is saved by grace and runs on cold brew coffee and quiet mornings at her desk. You can read more of her writing on faith, motherhood, special needs, and a good, good God at katiemblackburn.com or via her own Substack, Let Me Tell You.

You can read Katie’s Coffee + Crumbs essays here, and purchase her book, Gluing the Cracks, here.

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Photo by Miranda Peebles

If you enjoyed this interview, you’d probably love my new book, Create Anyway: The Joy of Pursuing Creativity in the Margins of Motherhood, available for pre-order now! ❤️