Annie Dillard wrote, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

On the first of each month, Catching Days hosts a guest writer in the series, “How We Spend Our Days.”

Today, please welcome writer

DEBORAH JACKSON TAFFA

Anyone wishing to publish a book must learn the following lesson: each writing day begins the night before. Writing is a form of manual labor. It’s the author with her posture erect at sunrise, pen in hand, fingers on keyboard, before the to-do list settles in. This is a message for me. A brutal scolding as I drag myself out of bed at 9:30am. How did this happen? A holiday morning when I didn’t have to rush to campus, wasted.

My partner, Simone, stands on one side of the bed while I stand on the other. Together, we pull up the sheets and comforter. We smooth and tuck and return the three decorative pillows to their place on top. We wash our faces and take our beta glucan. Then, after a few, quick sun salutations, he will head into the kitchen to grind coffee for our pour-over cups. I will let him go and join him when he calls. Together we will set the table and eat while listening to The Daily or the Corriere Della Sera on Spotify.

It’s been like this lately. Unable to watch the news, we listen to it instead. Somber, exhausted, hopeful, mad, we tell ourselves it is our duty to stay up on the genocide, famine, climate crisis, rise of fascism, and failing social safety net. If I had risen early to write, this train wreck (from which we can’t look away) would be encountered three hours into my day, rather than mere moments after opening my eyes.

Listening to the news in Italian is a recent development in our lives. I want to believe that Simone’s native language will soften the blow, that the sonorous clarity of vowels without diphthongs will prevent the news from sliding into the creative portion of my day. It’s magical thinking, this reliance on keeping vowel sounds apart. Like all grieving people, white knuckled discipline and magical thinking are all we have. I try to believe my small daily activities matter.

I stand at the sliding glass door and gaze out at the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. I hear the coffee grinder as I watch for our roadrunner. Sometimes I see him tightrope across the adobe wall fence, but he and his long tail are nowhere to be seen. Instead, the robin who built her nest on our light fixture flits from the piñon juniper tree to the patio’s one twisted beam. Not a single baby robin has poked its beak out of the nest this year. The soil in 2025 remains fallow, though I’d like to believe that leaving our creative ground unturned will restore fertility in the future.

Simone calls, and I move into the kitchen for our daily podcast and my standard breakfast of mixed yogurt and cottage cheese topped with chia, mango, maple syrup, and spirulina. Simone does the dishes as I head into our bedroom to unpack the luggage from Ghost Ranch, Georgia O’Keeffe’s old haunt, where I taught a memoir workshop over the weekend. When he finishes the dishes, and I finish the unpacking, we ramble for two miles through the desert on one of our favorite trails. Three jack rabbits, five ravens, two lightning beetles, and couple of dogs leading their owners cross our path. Simone says he saw a hummingbird, but I missed it. When he’s alone, the coyotes love him.

Fifty percent of writing happens away from my desk, and it’s on our morning hike that I hear my opening line: “Each writing day begins the night before.” When I get back, I will be ready to sit at my desk, where I have an Avis Charley painting of a powwow dancer putting on lipstick—along with my National Book Award citation and finalist medal—hanging over my head. I’m always tempted to take the latter two hangings down, worried that these tokens of confidence reveal limiting insecurities. John Berryman famously advised writers to cultivate extreme indifference to both praise and blame: “because praise will lead you to vanity and blame will lead you to self-pity, and both are bad for writers.”

Each writing day begins the night before, and lately my “nights before” have been out of control. Late to bed, late to rise. Last week it was three evening talks: a keynote for the New Mexico Book Association, a film panel discussion for an environmental group, a reading with Southwest Seminars. Then there was the memoir workshop at Ghost Ranch. And on Sunday, when I arrived home, I joined members of the Santa Fe community to welcome participants of the Indigenous Mycelium Gathering, described in the invitation as “a powerful convening of Indigenous leaders from Aotearoa/New Zealand and Southwest Turtle Island.”

The solution to my lack of productivity rests in saying no. No to Simone when he wants to attend an art opening, see a movie, play pickleball at the community college, or waste an entire weekend on the slopes at Ski Santa Fe. Also, no to the writers I call my friends. Last night it was a skateboard-cruising, novel-writing buddy who came over with a fancy bottle of Brunello di Montalcino. We stayed up late, resulting in the rather barren day I’m having today.

For decades, I have felt that my writing isn’t as good when I get up late. Early mornings decry the pressure of email responses and social media notifications. The goal is immense. To stretch toward the immortal, to write during the bruja hours of predawn light, to believe that our words can outlive us. It’s the hope that we can make a human who is not yet born laugh out loud after we are dead and gone. The speaking gigs, festival talks, university lectures are not the magic of the job. Some may say I’m too attached to the world before sunrise, and yet…

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THOSE SAME 3 NEW QUESTIONS…

1. What one word best describes your writing life?

• Indispensable. 

2. Is there a book you’ve read over and over again?

• It has to be a kid’s book. The Seven Silly Eaters by Mary Ann Hoberman comes to mind. 

3. What is your strangest obsession or habit?

• I can’t sit on the couch and watch TV like a normal person. I have to erg or walk on a treadmill to allow myself the time.

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By DEBORAH JACKSON TAFFA

National Book Award Finalist

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—Other Writers in the Series—