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.