Claire Taylor

Did you know you can preorder my book? You should go preorder my book. "An intimate year-in-poems capturing the joy and dread of getting older, growing a family, the world’s news … and the miracles—no bigger than a child’s hand—that keep us going." www.publishinggenius.com/catalog/apri...

Get two cats, they said. They'll keep each other occupied, they said. They'll cause twice as much destruction, they thought but chose not to tell you.

It’s very important to let your preschooler help you make dinner to ensure it’s the most stressful cooking experience possible.

Writing is just the process of oscillating between god this is good, am I the best writer ever?! and god this is awful, am I the worst writer ever?! Anyway you should read my book in which every poem is the best and worst thing I’ve ever written. www.publishinggenius.com/catalog/apri...

Good news: I wrote 2000 words today. Bad news: They all suck.

Book recommendation request! What’s a book that you really enjoyed and that taught you something new? I don‘t want to feel called to action or to have to grapple with the past or the future. Just like, wow I didn’t know anything about this and now I do and it was fun learning it…

Had someone submit to my lit mag but they never replied to my acceptance email to confirm their piece was available for publication. I've reached out 3 times, provided a must-confirm-by date, tried to contact via social media. No luck. So now I have to cut them from the issue & it's a bummer but 🤷

Man it really would be swell if one of these fake book clubs that wanted to feature my book was a real book club that wanted to feature my book.

Anyone who thinks pasta shape doesn’t matter has not spent enough time with a three-year-old.

Novel writing is…kind of lonely? Poetry & flash gave me more pieces to submit, more publications to share and that brought more interactions with fellow contributors. But now it’s just me alone with this one story for as long as it takes to finish this draft.

Fun to wait an hour for the pharmacy to fill a prescription that your child will refuse to take.

To celebrate our local roots: In addition to work from writers anywhere in the world, we will include a special Maryland Writers section in our fall issue. Accepting submissions for this during September.

Trying to get my 9yo to do things himself while simultaneously trying to convince my 3yo that he cannot do everything himself.

Second draft of this novel is going really well which is such a shame because it means I can’t just give up on it.

A thing about writing that has become very clear to me in working on the 2nd draft of my novel is how many of the problems in a piece can be easily resolve by deleting an entire paragraph and replacing with a single more clarifying sentence.

“It’s like they’re both on cocaine.” - @grandcards.bsky.social, about our children’s particular intensity today. Counting down the days until school starts.

My 9yo: Mom, what’s bitcoin? Me: world‘s deepest sigh

Hot flashes are so weird because the word flash suggests a quick burst of heat but I’m finding I gradually get hotter & hotter until I’m like oh my god why am I so uncomfortable and sweaty?!

Intermittent fasting but it's just me forgetting to eat all day and then at 4pm devouring all the junk food in the house in a Tasmanian Devil-esque rush before I crash out. Follow me for more great health tips.

A thing bumming me out: though sub guidelines for my kidlit mag clearly state no AI, it's becoming increasingly hard for me to confidently assess if a submission from a kid writer was actually written by a kid. I hate having to second guess myself & stress over it. It's tedious & depressing.

Listen to this man with good taste and a great beard!

Ah August, that beautiful time of year as a poet when everyone shares the huge stacks of poetry books they’ll be reading all month and none of them include your book.

The sound of my children eating popsicles is my villain origin story.

The hardest thing about writing as a parent is not finding time to write but that most of the mental effort of writing happens in periods where you're not physically writing & that space is so overwhelmed by noise & your children's needs that your mind feels constantly chaotic & overstimulated.

how does one get some of that good rip van winkle sleep?

Since spam invitations from fellow writers are filling my inbox daily, I just want you all to know that I would never cordially invite you to do anything. If you ever think, oh wow, how nice, Claire wants me to join her for a party…no she does not. She definitely, absolutely does not.

What a great day to be alive.

Self-serving but I think every time your writing gets interrupted by your kids and you manage not to act like a total bitch about it, you should get a little reward.

This version of me just has to write the novel. A different version of me can figure out how to make the novel make sense.

Fully 90% of what my children say to me daily is shouted from at least two rooms away, and 95% of that comes 15 seconds after I’ve just left the room that they were in.

Trying to make tuna salad with two hungry cats in the house feels like living inside an episode of I Love Lucy.

This is just a sailboat account now I guess. Here’s Ecuador sailing in earlier this afternoon. Crew standing on the masts, music blaring!

Don’t mind me, just committing rage-induced arson because my printer won’t do the only job it’s designed to do.

A great source of conflict in my house right now is that if I work for 15 minutes my kids think that time feels like 2 and a half hours and I think it feels like 2 and a half seconds.

Happy Father’s Day to the best in the game, @grandcards.bsky.social

It’s only day 2 of summer break and I cannot bear to throw any more balls, or draw any more cars, or dance around to the same three songs any more, or lose another Mario Kart race.

"Sexual Orientation • Heterosexual • Homosexual • Okay, so it’s 1999 and The Mummy is in theaters and everyone is falling in love with men and women and eyeliner as thick as the lid of a sarcophagus..." today from Frances Klein! https://www.havehashad.com/lk1uf

I need you to love me better than this (I said to my cat)

If you’re terrible at crafts and have zero artistic talent but love to disappoint people, I highly recommend having children.

I went pretty much a full year without submitting any writing anywhere and just recently started sending stuff out again and boy, not doing the whole submission waiting game was way better for my mental health. I really gotta figure out a way to send it then completely forget it.

"A dated reference can break the spell a book casts on readers....it can pull young readers out of the story." This completely ignores that kids are constantly reading words & character names they have never encountered before & they just keep on reading, no problem. Let's trust kids more.

so much for the soccer ball drenched with rain water left outside the back door

Perhaps in a world increasingly obsessed with efficiency, hacks, and outsourcing all human effort to AI, the most radical thing you can do is take forever to finish writing your novel.

It is time. Send Thirty West your books thirtywestph.com/submit

I fixed it! #blackoutpoetry #poem #writingcommunity #writersky

Should I keep all my old writing notebooks so that someday when I’m dead, my children can find them and realize how pathetically few synonyms I knew for extremely common words?

I’ve drafted 12 new poems this month and they are all for a project that I started just for the fun of doing it, so take what you want from that about writing and motivation.

I am so fucking tired of having to hear about AI

Every time you‘re like, “it’s too damn hot,” someone’s gotta be like “at least it’s not cold!” as if that’s the only other option.

Sometimes when I’m sitting in my yard in the middle of the day, a bird will swoop past me so fast and so low that I’ll think it’s a bat and I have to remind myself that not everything in this world is rabid.