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.

Cheerleaders

Our families are understandably excited about the arrival of the baby. Her grandparents, great uncles, great aunts, uncles and aunts ask after her regularly. There is little to tell them except for the direction and force of her kicks or squirms, but their interest seems only natural to us as her parents. Even her little cousins are somewhat aware of her impending arrival and Percy was suggested by one of them as an appropriate name by the other day.

Almost two thousand babies are born in the UK each day, but to our families and friends this baby will be special. The generously loaned (and happily offloaded) baby clothes and equipment are a small part of the support that they are to us. At the simplest level, their interest in our baby and their desire for her to be healthy and happy is a great encouragement to us.

Cheerleaders are similarly necessary for books. Each year hundreds of thousands of new books are published in the UK. My manuscripts are yet to even reach that stage. If and when they do, they will be one of thousands of others. Just as with our baby, the support and encouragement of my family and friends, partial though they might be, is incredibly important to me.

Some of the support they give is very practical. It would be one thing for my heroic husband to work to support me while I’m at home looking after our baby. It’s quite another for him to work to support me while I’m at home writing a book. If either Wild Rose or A Good Death is published, a good measure of that achievement will be his for giving me the time and mental energy to work on them.

Other support they give is motivational. My family and friends’ excitement and congratulations at each stage of the process so far has spurred me on. Though I may have moments of doubt about the future of my manuscripts, they are ever hopeful. When they read my manuscripts, their enjoyment of my writing, though it might be biased, gives me confidence as I write.  

I have written before of the value of an expert opinion. A professional opinion is ultimately of the most financial value. However, the excitement and appreciation of family and friends is invaluable.

Unravelling

My mum and one of my sisters have been proof-reading A Good Death this week and giving valuable encouragement. They asked me how I went about writing a book; they are lovingly incredulous. They could see where I had drawn on my own experiences: an incident involving binoculars on a family holiday in the Pyrenees for example. But where, they wanted to know, did the rest come from?

I found it very hard to explain where the story, the characters and the settings come from. The simplest explanation is that they are made up, like a story we might have been asked to write at school. They come from my imagination. But that doesn’t satisfy me. It may sound absurd, but very quickly in the process of writing a book, it doesn’t seem made up anymore.

A friend recently sent me a link to a lecture given by Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love.  She talks about the need for a psychological device to distance a writer from the creative process, so that it doesn’t drive them mad. Gilbert suggests consideration of the Ancient Greek ‘daemons’ or Roman ‘genius’, spirits that communicate creativity. I can relate to this idea to an extent. There are times when I read my manuscript back and I’m surprised by what I’ve written. I wonder where it came from. But there are also times when I am painfully conscious of the process of making up the story.

Although there are parts of the process of writing a book that I can describe, I can no more explain how it happens that I can explain the making of our baby. I am aware of how her conception came about. But from that point on, my conscious involvement in her growth has been limited to trying to eat the right food, take appropriate vitamins and avoid harmful substances. I might be able to describe some of the biological and chemical processes involved, but as a whole her formation remains mysterious and wonderful.

In both cases, the best I can say is that they start from something very small. The baby started from a once-in-history combination of DNA. A Good Death started from a family looking glum in a burger restaurant. From each of those beginnings everything else has seemed to unravel of its own accord.

Some things you have to learn to love

I used to avoid reading through school and university essays before I handed them in. I’d worked hard on them and writing the final paragraph meant I could get on with something else. I also found it painful to read back through my own words – a bit like hearing my voice on a tape recorder. The experience of being a teacher changed that. I learnt the frustration of reading a badly proof-read essay. Spelling mistakes, missed words and awkward grammar are very distracting. I also learnt how simple it could be to improve the clarity of the ideas being expressed.

Last year, when studying for my Masters, I found that I was much more willing to see my first attempt as a draft. With my writing this has become an absolute necessity.

At the moment I am proof-reading A Good Death, having finished the re-writes. I find something to change on almost every page: typos, missed words, awkward phrasing that I don’t like any more, details that have become inaccurate as I’ve changed other parts of the manuscript. It can be an excruciating process, particularly when it comes to transferring the changes from paper to my laptop. However, I’ve also come to appreciate the opportunity to read through the whole manuscript and get a wider view. There is also less creative pressure when I’m working on text I’m otherwise basically happy with.

Coming to enjoy the different stages of pregnancy has been similarly challenging. As I’ve moved through the trimesters each has had its challenges. In the first, I felt almost constantly unwell and couldn’t tell anyone why. But I was very excited about being pregnant and it was a happy secret between me and David. In the second, there was little evidence of actually being pregnant and it felt very unreal, but I was beginning to feel better and we discovered that we were having a girl. Now, on the edge of the third trimester, I am beginning to feel sick again, I am very tired and I’m making the classic ‘oof’ noise when I try to get out of bed, or a car, or off the sofa. The next twelve to fourteen weeks stretch out endlessly ahead. However, it’s wonderful to feel our daughter wriggling around and to be getting her room ready.

I’d love to be at the stage of holding my completed book or baby in my hands, but can’t accelerate the process, I just have to learn to love the stage I’m at.

Related posts: Putting the baby to bed 

Strength in numbers

Something that appeals to me about making writing my career is working on my own. Though I have an agent and I have consulted others for their advice, it is a solitary occupation. I enjoy being able to work at my own pace, without distractions or demands. I am savouring this peace and quiet while it lasts. The arrival of our baby will change the environment I’m working in and the time that I find to write. But even then, when I open my notebook or sit down to type I will be working alone.

There are downsides, though, to working alone. I miss many of my colleagues from teaching, with whom I felt a great camaraderie. Those like minded people with whom I would share two minutes in the corridor on the way to another lesson were a great support. There were always people that I could call on for help, advice and encouragement. There were also moments of great fun and amusement that could be shared.

Writing a book does not just mean working alone, it means that I have to be my own colleagues. I have to make sure that I am at my desk and getting through the word count and that I stay motivated through weeks and weeks of working without feedback. There is some encouragement in the experiences of other writers – I was reading the other day that Malorie Blackman, a very successful children’s author, spent two years trying to get published, receiving eighty two rejection letters along the way. But ultimately, everyone’s experience is different and that she eventually got published is no guarantee that I will.

They say when you’re trying to become pregnant you see pregnant women everywhere. And since I’ve become pregnant, it seems that lots of my friends and family are also having babies this year. As well as my sister and a former colleague, I found out this week that an old school friend is also expecting. It’s great to be able to share being pregnant with others who are going through similar experiences. We also hope to meet other parents in our area when our baby arrives, seeing how supportive these friendships have been for others we know.

While I enjoy the time I spend alone writing, it is good to know that when it comes to having the baby we are certainly not alone.