If you’re familiar with the comics world at all, you’ve probably come across Lumberjanes at some point. This all-ages comic follows a group of 5 friends at a scout camp (hence “lumberjanes”), but this isn’t like your typical scout camp. The friends encounter supernatural phenomena, weird animals, and more. Lumberjanes is a female-centric story, and the creative team—from writing to artists to letterers—are all females, too. In the male-dominated comics world, this is remarkable.

This past fall, a new, stand-alone middle-grade graphic novel of Lumberjanes was published: Lumberjanes: The Infernal Compass.Following the campers on an orienteering outing, the book is a fun look into the larger world of Lumberjanes, and perfect for introducing younger readers to the series. It’s meant to be a prequel to the first volume of the comic, so even if you’ve never read the series before, you can start here.

Lilah Sturges wrote The Infernal Compass, and though she’s new to Lumberjanes, she’s certainly not new to writing novels or comics. In the middle of her busy book tour, she was able to answer some questions for me.

You just wrote a stand-alone graphic novel, The Infernal Compass, for the beloved comic series Lumberjanes. What was that like, taking characters who’ve done so much throughout the comic series, and creating your own adventure for them? How did you prepare?

It was daunting, but not too daunting, because I’ve been reading Lumberjanes for about two years. I came into the project feeling like I had a pretty good handle on the characters and the world of the series. I also had a lot of help from the editorial team at Boom!, who were incredibly supportive. To prepare, I just re-read the entire series from issue 1 forward and made notes about the girls and their behaviors, things that I wanted to explore with each of them, that kind of thing. Not all of it made it into the final product, but I did my due diligence, at least!

You write comics and you’ve also written novels. How do the processes differ, and do you like one better than the other?

I enjoy them both, although over the years, my ability to write prose has really suffered because when you’re doing comics, the only words of yours that the reader ever sees are what ends up in the captions and dialog balloons. All of the descriptions of what’s going on are just for the artist’s eyes, so I don’t worry about using clever language; I only worry about expressing myself clearly. My joke is that whenever I go back to writing prose, I whine, “Oh my God, you mean I actually have to describe everything?”

What have you done to maintain a space for yourself and your work (writing and otherwise) within motherhood?

This is such a fraught question for me. As a trans woman, my being a mom is something that’s only been acknowledged for a few years, and so I know I put too much pressure on myself to prove myself in that arena. It makes it difficult to set boundaries for myself as a person when my girls are around because a) I don’t get to see them enough as it is, being divorced, and b) when they are there I want to pay as much attention to them as humanly possible. That can be dicey when I have a deadline that forces me to focus on my own needs, in addition to theirs. And my desire to be around them gets stronger and stronger the older they get. I know they’ll be off on their own soon and so it’s hard to make choices that keep me from spending time with them.

I’m sure if you asked them, however, they’d argue that I spend more than enough time with them and could probably stand to back off a little. C’est la vie.

How do you think the creative community can support women, and mothers, especially?

There’s still this tacit assumption that in a family where there’s a mother and a father, it’s acceptable and even noble for the father to go out and make his way in the world while the mother handles the lion’s share of parenting responsibilities and her own work comes second. This is true even in the most progressive heterosexual relationships I can think of, and so much of it comes down to what we expect from women versus what we expect from men, and the guilt that’s foisted on women if they want to alter or invert that model. I know several brilliant, creative women who are currently feeling at their wits’ end because all of their creative projects are on hold while they raise babies. And to add insult to injury, they punish themselves for even wanting to work on their own projects. I think it’s going to require that men really take the lead in rejecting those roles and actively encourage their ladies to take that space for themselves, giving them that space by taking over more parenting responsibilities. I don’t think men understand how hard it can be for mothers to ask for things for themselves.

Yes, all of that. So much. I think when we talk about this issue, we often frame it in terms of what mothers can do, how mothers juggle things—and in the process, we unwittingly absolve partners of any of their responsibility in helping to make things work better.

Being a trans woman has given me an unusual perspective on parenting. When I was perceived as male there were so few expectations placed on me as a parent; I regularly got credit for doing the bare minimum. If I took my girls to the park, I’d get compliments from strangers. Since transitioning, though, I feel the “mom” expectations more keenly than I would have imagined, and I feel that sense of inadequacy pressing down on me that haunts so many women. My feelings about my kids haven’t changed—although we are much closer now than we used to be—but I definitely feel more pressure to be the best parent I can possibly be, and to deny myself in the process.

What are you struggling with, as a parent and as a writer, right now?

My girls are teenagers now, and that means they want things like cars and college degrees, which are both very expensive these days. In order to keep up, I’ve had to take a day job in addition to my writing work, which gives me even less free time than I already had. And because my free time is in ever-shorter supply, it’s harder to have that unstructured time with my girls that we all really enjoy. It’s sharpened my focus but it makes me feel like I’m doing a bunch of things, and none as well as I’d like. In some ways it’s tempting to give my kids short shrift in the short-term, spending less time with them so I can make more money for their future. But the idea of not spending as much time with them as possible is really hard to take. Although, again, I am certain that neither of them sees this as anywhere near the problem that I do. They’re teenagers; I am not their highest priority.

Thank you for talking about this. That’s another issue often sidestepped: the financial part, and taking second jobs because creative jobs like writing aren’t often enough. But then it cuts into parenting time, so parents/mothers often feel like we’re lacking on both sides, both parenting and working. I think in order to talk frankly about writing and parenting, the finances (and thus, privilege) need to be talked about honestly, too. But people are often reticent to do so, which makes balancing work and parenting seem a lot easier than it is.

It becomes this maddening problem of resource allocation, right? And it’s bad enough when there aren’t quite enough financial resources (or emotional resources, or time) to cover everyone’s needs, but then you add in all the emotions surrounding how to apportion those resources and it gets really complicated. Gendered expectations still play into this so much. And again, men aren’t subjected to the same pressures that women are, so it creates an inherent imbalance in heterosexual relationships that seems to be challenging for even the most progressive couples to completely overcome.

What books inspire you, and what are you reading right now?

Who has time to read?

I joke, but I can’t remember the last time I actually sat down and read a book purely for pleasure. And when my life is hectic, I tend to read things that don’t require a lot of mental effort, like Stephen King or Michael Connelly. That said, I read Pride and Prejudice for the first time recently and loved it. I think I may go on an Austen kick for a while.

The kind of books that inspire me lately are people who are writing the kind of books I want to be writing, and doing it well. Specifically, that means YA or middle reader books with LGBTQ+ themes, like Lumberjanes and Jen Wang’s The Prince and the Dressmaker.

In today’s social and political climate, do you think artists and writers have an obligation of sorts with their art? What about as a parent?

I believe that as artists our primary obligation is to our values, and that our art should be an embodiment of our values, as expressed in the point of view of our work. I see parenting the same way; I know I can’t tell my kids how to live their lives, but I can enact my values in my presence with them, and what they take away from that I know will be genuine and deeply connected to me as a person. I think that being an artist and being a parent share this quality: that we have an interest in sharing something vital of ourselves with someone, in the hope that this sharing will be good for both of us.

What advice would you give to a writer trying to juggle parenthood and writing?

I don’t feel qualified handing out advice, since I’m not sure I do a very good job of it myself, but I will say that I deeply empathize with the struggle. You’re not alone in feeling like you’re barely keeping your head above water! But there’s something powerful in the effort. It means something. It would be easy not to try, to leave your manuscript buried under discarded homework papers and the trash from the fast food you guiltily fed them. But the fact that you’re doing it—that you’re saying to yourself: hey, my voice matters—is powerful and good and worth doing even if not well, or not always, or not entirely awake.

What’s next on the horizon for you?

I keep saying yes to more writing projects that I don’t have time for, so there are more books coming, although I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to get it all done. I think I just have to have a little faith in myself and believe that I’m going to figure it all out somehow. And if I don’t, at least I’ll flame out doing what I loved!