I sent my boss an invitation to “Ashley Abercrombie’s Zoom Room.” I, an intelligent person, wrote 11 books, collaborated on a few more, and edited several, to boot. I changed the calendar request and sent a message over Slack to apologize.
In the before times, people sent me a calendar request with a zoom link, and I turned up for the meeting. To be totally honest, while zoom stock raised the roof during quarantine, my account cut off at the thirty-minute mark for the three times I used it. “Anyway, this about to cut off, so let me let you go. Bye, girl!”
But Covid and publishing burnt my behind to a perfect crisp. I’m not one to cry for long in my cornflakes, so I decided to shift. The circle that raised me is the kind where you better do something if you don’t like something. Now, I’m as awkward as tenth-grade computer class, squinting at calendars, clicking buttons slow as Christmas, and sending requests to my unlimited zoom room.
My writing world is wild and rich. My career began in the fourth grade when Mrs. Nations taught us bookbinding. I wrote a book to help kids process divorce. She liked it so much that she sent it to a North Carolina state competition. My mom worked nights as a registered nurse, and my dad worked days at a textile plant, so Mama found a random lady whose daughter also entered the competition. In the 80s, it was totally normal and acceptable for a stranger to be part of the parenting village, so I climbed in the back of her Buick. She drove me an hour away to Greensboro, and I won.
That little bookbinder grew into a brooding, moody student council leader who liked to write in the basement. I’ve never met a writing teacher who didn’t tell me about my whole self. Mrs. Simmons, my high school creative writing teacher, laid down my graded C+ paper, and she’d say, “That’s somebody else’s A, Ashley, but it’s not yours.” We wrote persuasive essays on abortion, studied the Holocaust through crushing photos of torture and massive graves, and listened to each other’s words. I learned to take feedback, edit work, and write for the sheer love of it.
At UCLA extension courses, my professor wrote with red pens a combination of “ASHLEY DAMMIT THAT’S A GOOD PHRASE” and “DON’T GET PREACHY! YOUR READER IS SMART, REMEMBER?!” She’d force me to speak up and push me to share my work in class. I wrote about willow trees and created apocalyptic short stories, and researched for my first novel idea.
I got my first check writing a profile on one of my best friends between those two teachers. Then, someone asked me to write their book. I said yes to free assignments and shitty paid ones. It started with the author’s chapter idea that I teased out and finished for free.
I wanted to write. I didn’t know the rules; I’d never heard of a ghostwriter, but my appetite for learning outweighed my reason, so I kept saying yes. I freelanced while working full time. Articles on the diversity of frogs, best yoga mats for yogis, and “how-to’s” filled my laptop folders. I wrote curriculums, emails, social posts, blogs, messages, trainings, and talks. After nine books on the side of my full-time jobs, the opportunity came for me to write my own. That little girl in the back of the Buick got to live her dream of writing her first book in New York City.
While my mom watched our babies twice a week, I’d take the train to Bryant Park, walk over to the library with the lions, hike the stairs to the catalog room, and park it at my usual table. The green lamps, the scent of books, the art on the ceiling, and the silence of researchers hunting, sniffing, and expanding their minds, grounded me in my body. I wrote for the sheer love of it. I made edits while nursing my newborn baby boy. I rewrote pages with blisters on my hands from weeks of hand, foot, and mouth disease, and I thanked God that I could do it.
2020 was the unremarkable but audacious setting for my second book. My bed was the least preferred but necessary desk. With our third baby taking a toll on my physical capacity, I wrote ferociously at weekly stress tests and poured out my frustration and desire for the future. My favorite note from my excellent editor in one of the final chapters, “You sound bitter.” That’s because I am. I wrote back, but you’re right, and I think I’ll remove this one. Edited again with a sweet baby girl in my arms. Soon after, the rigamarole started with launch teams, email drafts, dancing reels like I was a teenager, prepping talks for unpaid digital events, going on interviews, and traveling for speaking engagements. Plus, people don’t like when you tell the truth about greed, pride, and racism on the internet. My brain was on tilt.
The time to tap out came at last. I still write for a living, so I didn't quit the craft, but I quit on the shenanigans.
A challenging and right choice because starting over is a holy kind of hard.
I’ve noticed that the first thing we tend to do in a hard time, or during a time of change, is to stop doing what makes us come alive. It would be easy to let the responsibilities, stress, and life transitions shut us down. But, friend, there will always be changes. To your work, your relationships, your body, your life. Security is an illusion, so come hell or high water, what are the things you must do to keep yourself honest and sane?
One of mine is clear: I feel alive when I write. Putting pen to paper helps me understand myself, interpret the times we are living in, and how we can find hope in hard places. If there is anything I am hell-bent on doing, it is this work - I am turning up after hours, at 2:20am on the east coast, for myself. I want to serve you, but I am here because I want to be. Even if no one is here reading, I will be writing. It is the thing I love to do. It is how I make sense of the world.
People who are “experts” in a medium that is twenty years old will tell you to write for everyone else, create for others, be at their beck and call, anticipate their needs, and serve them the unique content they need. I did it for years. There is a nugget of truth, but it is not the whole truth. It’s rooted in that same old lie that humans are handed from birth - that we exist to please others, earn their approval, be highly productive and useful, or have no value.
So let me ask you: Do you feel loved in your being, or only in your doing? Tell me, what do you need? What is the thing that makes you come alive? What do you do for the sheer love of it? And is it regular and ordinary in your life?
These are essential questions. Because no one is asking them. The world is better when you do the thing that fills you with joy and inspires you to give what you create to others. So few people on Earth are “living the dream.” Why should that be our goal? We have an entire life that we get to live. Roles, titles, bank accounts, relationship status, zoom skills, or any other made-up metrics to force us into a pecking order are realities we face. Still, they must be second to our passion for living and being, for loving ourselves, God, and others. Being informs the doing, not the other way around.
We are loveable; we are valuable because we exist. What truth is more accurate than this?
All my late night love,
Ashley
P.S. It’s now 3am and I wish we were discussing this over bad coffee and hashbrowns at the Waffle House.
"A challenging and right choice because starting over is a holy kind of hard."~~~~ YES!!!!...and here I go off to TN to start a new chapter and be a home owner with my love!!
"I didn’t know the rules; I’d never heard of a ghostwriter, but my appetite for learning outweighed my reason, so I kept saying yes." This feels true for me. It feels like the 20's. It gives words to trying,failing, learning, and coming of age in all it's glorious mess.