Julie Falatko: Taking Silly Work Seriously

Did you think of yourself as a creative kid? What does creativity look like for your these days?

Yes, definitely. I had a lot of freedom to build imaginary worlds outside, to write and draw, to put hats on my cats and invite them to tea. I read books for hours every day. I hauled out my mom’s old typewriter to write stories.

Creativity is essentially exactly the same for me now. A lot of my creating comes from walking around outside and thinking about how I can put things together in new ways. The only difference is now I have a dog to put hats on instead of cats.

How much time do you get to work on creative projects?

When my kids were younger, I would write in every spare minute I could get. Sometimes I could barely fit in five minutes to write. But it taught me to be able to drop into that creative brain space quickly. Now that they’re older, I can get anywhere from twenty minutes to an entire hour uninterrupted. Sometimes more. They gave me a sign to put on the steps leading up to the attic where I write that says I AM VERY BUSY. If that sign is on the stairs, it means I’m deep into a story and they’re not allowed to interrupt me.

How did motherhood change your creative practice?

Motherhood really pushed me to ask, “Who are you? Who do you want to be? Do you want to be a writer or not?”

When I first became a mom, I felt really unmoored at what a mind-bogglingly confusing thing parenting is. The extreme sleep deprivation made the simplest task an adventure in surrealist absurdism. We had four kids in seven years, and it wasn’t until the fourth that we got one who slept, and that was probably because we were so tired that we didn’t have it in us to do complex sleep routines. It was more like, “Here you go, here’s your crib, good night.”  

Those early childhood years were a time when it was very, very hard to be creative. At a certain point, when my youngest was maybe 2 years old, I really felt like I had lost my identity. It was like I could see me, far off, across the fog. I couldn’t remember who I was anymore. I knew I’d been interesting, once. I’d been funny, once. This is probably something a lot of mothers go through, creative or not. Or maybe some mothers really step into their identities as moms when they have kids. I don’t know. I only know how it worked for me, which is that, after many years, I wanted to walk across that fog and get back to myself. And part of that was recommitting to creative time. So I started carrying notebooks with me everywhere. I wrote phrases and sentences while stopped at stoplights, in the middle of making dinner, whenever I could. I signed my youngest up for a ballet class and a gymnastics class at the Y, and I wrote during those 45-minute chunks at a table in the lobby.

One last thing that happened, that certainly wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t had kids, was realizing authors are real people. My oldest, Henry, was in preschool, and I found out that one of the people who ran the preschool was the son of Ellen Conford, who had been one of my favorite authors when I was a kid. I had known, theoretically, that authors were real people, but I hadn’t realized they were people like me. I thought they were all rich and fancy people. That was a huge shift for me, to realize that this thing I’d always wanted to be, was something real I could do. 

When do you feel most creative?

First thing in the morning, no question. I am such a morning person. It’s painful for me to try to be creative after 1 pm.

What helps you make time and space for being creative? How do you avoid burn out?

There is a large, beautiful cemetery near my house, where I walk my dog nearly every day. One thing I think about when I’m there is how many women are there who maybe didn’t get a chance to pursue their creative dreams. Maybe because of society, or having to do laundry with a mangler and spend all day canning peas, I don’t know, but I’m sure there are women buried there who wanted to paint, to write, to dance, and couldn’t. I’m lucky to live in a time when I can be a writer. When society isn’t going to look down on me because I’m not darning my kids’ socks or waxing the baseboards or whatever. And when I walk in the cemetery, I feel the weight of that. It feels like it would be obnoxious of me to squander this opportunity. I have a lot of books in me still. The cemetery, and the pandemic in general, reminded me that death can come at any time. So I’d better make time and space to be creative, now, while I’m still here.

You can preorder Julie’s new picture book, Yours in Books, through Bookshop. I’m so excited for this one!

What’s inspiring you outside of your own genre?

In an effort to strengthen my long-form attention muscles, I’ve been listening to albums all the way through, either when I’m walking or making dinner. I love thinking about the stories in the songs, and the way an entire album can tell a story of all the songs linked together, mostly in the mood it evokes. I’ve been thinking of how to transfer that to books. How can I make a book feel dreamy? How can a book be a dance party? How can a book be perfect for Sunday afternoon? How can a book be soothing when you’re broken hearted?

What would you bring to a favorites party?

Well, first I had to google what a favorites party is. Ok. Did that. So here’s what I would bring: I would bring journals from Cognitive Surplus, because I am completely obsessed with them. The covers are gorgeous. The paper is a joy to write on. Then I would also bring candles from Standard Wax. I always light a candle at the beginning of my writing session. I get candles from all over, but the ones from Standard Wax are my favorites.

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Julie Falatko is the author of silly picture books and a chapter book series about dogs who go to school. She lives in Maine with her husband and their four kids, who are 17, 15, 13, and 11. You can find Julie at juliefalatko.com, on Twitter, and on Instagram. (Her Stories are a delight!)

This interview was originally published in 2021.

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Hi! I’m Heidi. Writer. Editor. Mother. I’m interviewing 100 creative mothers, because I believe the more we see other mothers making beauty and meaning in small moments, the more we will be inspired to make our own kind of art, whatever that may look like during this intense season of life. Support the project by sharing with a friend.