A private enterprise

As promised by pregnancy books and websites, the baby is changing the way she moves. What were once random kicks are mow more coordinated movements. She moves now like someone trying to fight their way out of a jumper, which is both alarming and endearing. Her movements make her seem ever more like a little human and I have taken to asking her what she is up to. This development is making David even more impatient to meet her. If the roles were reversed, I would find it hard not to be jealous of the time he spent with her. It is hard for him that I have a constant physical dialogue with her, a private knowledge that it is difficult to share with him.

For all that the medical aspects of giving birth might feel far from private. Carrying a baby is a private enterprise. From the outside, all may seem quiet and calm, while on the inside the baby is often dancing a cancan with only me to feel her. I wonder if I will miss these private sensations when she is born, but I suspect that the reality of her arrival will eclipse any memory of this time.

Writing a book is a similarly private enterprise. Much of the creative work that is involved in the writing of a book goes on unseen in my head. This is particularly true of the stage I am at with the writing of A New World. As the plot and characters emerge in my imagination, I am also driving to see family, or washing my hair, or hoovering.  As the weather improves, just sitting in the garden is often very productive for the book. This is one reason why I find it hard to describe the process of writing, although there is a product eventually the process of creating it sometimes looks very much like doing nothing.

Although I enjoy feeling the baby moving and a career that involves sitting about thinking, these private enterprises are not meant to stay private. The purpose of me writing books is to have them published and sold. The purpose of me carrying a baby is for us to become parents. It will not be long now, before the baby arrives. I hope that the book follows suit.

Preparation vs Inspiration

Last week I began the marathon washing of the baby’s belongings. I am washing blankets, car seat covers, pram linings, a mosquito net, and bundles of clothes. She now has far more clothes than me or David and has gorgeous dresses handed down by her cousin to last her until she is at least two years old.

If all goes as it should, we still have weeks, possibly months, until she is here. We have time to decide where the cot should go in her room so that the light from the hall doesn’t wake her. We have time to discover the difference between vests, bodysuits, rompers and sleep suits and time to decide where to put the wipes and the nappies and the creams for smooth nappy changes.

However, there can be too much preparation. Soon, we will know what needs to be within easy reach and what can be forgotten in a drawer, but for the time being there’s only so far that preparation can take us.

In writing a book, there is a similar balance between preparation and inspiration. For my first book, Wild Rose, I came up with a story one evening and began writing the first chapter the next day. None of that first chapter ended up in the finished book. The whole method of narration changed as I wrote and by the end of the first hand written draft there were characters and events that had become redundant. What I learnt helped me to write a plan for my second book, A Good Death. I started writing with the middle chapters of the book, stuck to my plan and changed little as I went along.

As I approach my third book, A New World, I currently have a paragraph summary of a story and lots of ideas in my head. I don’t feel I can just start writing, as I did for Wild Rose, until I have done a bit more preparation. But whereas I knew chapter by chapter what would happen in A Good Death, I am prepared to let inspiration do more of the work this time.

The writing of this book will need to be approached differently to either of the others. As I’ll be writing and caring for a newborn at the same time, it will be important to learn to embrace sleep-deprived mind wandering and to ensure that there are notepads by the changing table, the nursing chair and the Moses basket.

Even planning how I’m going to write when the baby is born is a little futile. In finding a balance between preparation and inspiration, our daughter is yet to have her say.

Related posts: Putting the baby to bed 

Gestation of a kangaroo

The gestation of a Virginian opossum is just twenty days, while an Indian elephant is in the womb for about twenty two months. Forty weeks of waiting and preparation seems like a fair compromise for humans.

                                                                        

Now that I have reached thirty weeks, the arrival of the baby is beginning to feel imminent. Practical preparations have accelerated and I am taking a break from writing for a week or so to get the baby’s room finished, newborn clothes assembled and hospital bags packed. All these measures beg the inevitable question of when she will actually arrive. Being ready ahead of time might turn out to be fortuitous, or we might be walking backward and forward past the hospital bag for another twelve weeks.

At times it feels as though we are running out of time to prepare for the baby, at others it feels like an age before we get to meet her. But ultimately, she will arrive at some point within a long but fairly predictable period of time.

Books, on the other hand, have a long and unpredictable gestational period. Wild Rose, has been in gestation for more than three years already. There are many different reasons for this long period of development. I wrote and edited Wild Rose in my free time while working as a teacher. Submitting to agents and waiting for feedback is a time consuming process. Getting feedback on a manuscript, editing and proofreading are also lengthy operations.

The gestation of a book is also more like a kangaroo than a human. A kangaroo’s development can be stalled. If two embryos form, one will be frozen at a particular point in its development until the other leaves the womb and enters the pouch.

The manuscript for A Good Death has been stalled. I heard back from my agent this week that the changes I’ve made to the manuscript aren’t radical enough. There are really two books within it that need to be separated – a difficult and painful process. I will need to let the feedback sit in the back of my mind for some time, while I work on A New World. Hopefully, when I come back to it there will be creative space for it to grow.

So, while the gestational period of our baby is somewhat fixed, the gestational period of a book is long and unpredictable. Having said that, there comes a day when a book is published and placed on the shelf. When our baby is born she will have a long way to go. The end of gestation for her is the beginning of what will hopefully be a long life of development.