I don’t know if it’s a current trend or coincidence but I seem to have seen quite a bit of chat about mothers who write recently. Some pieces have advice about finding writing time, others are just describing what it’s like and more still, ponder that it’s not the same for men. Practically all of them seem to be negative. (I’m not going to link to any, but this subject is easy to find so forgive my laziness.)
Here’s what I think:
- I only started writing fiction after I became a mum.
- I only realised that a lot of other things I did in the intervening years were writing of a kind, and that I was learning a craft and finding my voice, after I became a mum (those long hours breastfeeding give you a lot of thinking time.)
- Of course there’s not much time. In order to write with a full time job and a child I rarely watch TV, have given up my guitar playing, don’t sew as much as I used to and no longer have a gym membership.
- Five years ago, I had no child, no novel, no publication credits and was flirting with depression. That situation is now very different and much more positive.
So what happened?
E is definitely a factor here. I wouldn’t want to be as cheesy as saying having her gives me the ambition to do something more with my life, to be more meaningful, but her presence does produce some kind of drive.
The fact that I have limited time merely drives this more. If I don’t write, I feel bad. The need to have time to myself is exacerbated by having her in the house. So I make time. At the end of the day, when I’ve spent the day staring at a screen at work but there it is.
And she’s getting to the age where she understands, a bit. She asks about who wrote the books we read together, she understands the concept of an author. She understands dialogue and rhyme. In the summer I grabbed a notebook and pen and ran to the backyard where I could capture a thought before it flew away. She came out to find me, saw me scribbling and asked what I was doing. So I explained I was writing and as soon as I was finished we could do something together. She waited. (These days she is of the age where she would ask if I was done yet every two seconds but that day she didn’t.)
We didn’t get to go away for Christmas, didn’t have a week of being looked after by grandparents, didn’t get our time where she would be watched so we had more time. But I found I’ve picked up the skills I need to make this work. On a day to day basis I sit in an open plan office in a building of nearly 2,000 people and have to try and drown out noise. It’s good practice for writing in a small house (where you have no office or writing room) and share it with a small child. She had books to look at, sticker activities to complete, Lego to play with and all sorts of other things. Sometimes, just sometimes she wanted to sit on my knee and join in the typing. You deal with this bit (open her up a new document or give her a spare keyboard or a different computer) and you carry on.
There are days when this is hard and you want to crawl into a heap on the floor. But that’s where E helps too. A hug and a few moments talking about our days, or having a bath, reading a book or making something out of a cereal packet is enough to restore me and keep me going.
So don’t diss ‘the pram in the hall’ or, as I mention in the title, our version is the broken pushchair by the back door, use it as a source of strength and love. Your writing can flourish.
Susan E Barsby 