Author: Jackie Pick

Jackie Pick is a former teacher and current writer living in the Chicago area. She is a contributing author to multiple anthologies, including Multiples Illuminated, So Glad They Told Me: Women Get Real about Motherhood, Here in the Middle, as well as the and the literary magazines The Sun and Selfish. She received Honorable Mention from the Mark Twain House and Museum for her entry in the Royal Nonesuch Humor Writing Competition. Jackie is a contributing writer at Humor Outcasts, and her essays have been featured on various online sites including McSweeney's, Belladonna Comedy, Mamalode, The HerStories Project, and Scary Mommy. A graduate of the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, Jackie is co-creator and co-writer of the award-winning short film Fixed Up, and a proud member of the 2017 Chicago cast of Listen To Your Mother.

Second Verse. Day 29 of 100 Days of Writing

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There are only so many times I can tell you I’m drafting before someone’s going to demand to see something.

Over an hour ago, I started writing something sloppily sentimental about my husband, which has turned into something actually rather funny, because I am not a sloppily sentimental person by nature.
The piece is something I’m proud of. Something worth crafting.

It’s going to be tricky this week because Hubs is out of town (which is, naturally, the genesis of the aforementioned piece)…and I’m putting in 14-18 hour days nonstop, but the quiet at 7 or 8 or 9 at night is something I’m exploring. I don’t choose to write at this time, but I do choose to write every day and this is what is going to work this week.

I now have about ten distinct drafts in various stages of readiness and which hold for me various levels of interest. Whatever piece pulls me at night will get my attention and hopefully get some light of day (or screen) soon.

I’ve written for an hour today. Abut seven hours less than I’d like, but those seven hours (plus more) were well-spent. I actually was, for the most part, the type of mom I strive to be. Patient. Humorous. Dropping everything for them. They are nervous without their daddy here. They are young. They are unable to get themselves milk. They ask about God and death and my middle name. I hugged a lot and kept to routines and was present.

So today, most of my writing was of the heart-inscription variety.

And that is that for today. I’m off to have my dinner, three hours after the kids have eaten. And that dinner shall be ice cream, because I’m a goddamned adult.