Interview: Annabel Lyon

Your back of the book bio:

Annabel Lyon is the author of Oxygen (stories), The Best Thing For You (novellas), All-Season Edie (juvenile novel), and The Golden Mean (novel). She teaches fiction writing on-line through UBC's creative writing department.

Your playground bio:

Mother of Sophie, four, and Caleb, two. Sophie says Daddy is the king, she is the queen, Caleb is the prince, and Mummy is the cleaner.

Do you identify yourself as first a writer and then a mother, the other way around, or something else? Why do you think this is?

Mother. My kids are worth more to me than my work.

Did you always want to be a writer? A mother? How does the reality differ from the fantasy?

Both, I think. Both are harder than I ever thought they'd be.

What are your measurements of success as a mother? As a writer? Have these evolved and, if so, can you talk about in what way and why do you think this is?

I really, really want the kids to turn out happy and kind. That hasn't changed since before I got pregnant; what I didn't realize was how hard it would be for me to stay happy and kind as a mother. That was a hugely distressing realization. I want each book to be a bit better than the last, and I don't want to repeat myself. I don't think that's changed.

What's your writing schedule like? What was its journey to get to where it is now?

My writing schedule is still pretty haphazard; I'm hoping it will settle down as the kids get older and start school. I write in the afternoons once my partner is up (he works nights), an hour or two, until he leaves for work. I usually have one day a week that's a bit longer than that. Into that time I also have to fit e-mail, showering, cooking, etc., so it's not a lot of creative time. I used to work completely alone, in absolute silence, six to eight hours a day. It's been an adjustment.

Has becoming a mother changed how you write? What your write? If so, in what ways?

I think my teaching has changed as a result of becoming a mother, more than my writing has. I've become much more patient and generous with my students.

How aware are your children of your writing?

Not very; they're little, still. Sophie knows mummy works on the computer and writes books, but not the kind of books she likes, so her interest is pretty limited. She doesn't like it when my work takes me out of the house without her.

Virginia Woolf famously wrote, "…a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write…." She never had children. Is a room to yourself enough for a writing-mama? What do you need?

I need to know the kids are happy and settled and not needing me. I need enough sleep. I need tea.

If you could go back, what would you tell your pre-children self?

It'll be okay.

What do you think your pre-children self would tell you?

You need to start running again.

In terms of this topic (motherhood and writing), do you have any regrets? Guilt? Envy?

I yell too much, especially when work is frustrating me. Big, big guilt there. I hate myself for that.

The early years of motherhood have been described by various writers as a haze or as an incredibly creative time. How would you describe it? Are you still in it? When did you leave?

It was both, especially after my son was born, when I went through a pretty bad post-partum depression. Having the novel to turn to helped me through it; so did having fantastic family around me. Sleep deprivation was a major contributing factor, I think; there's a reason why it's used as a torture technique. It really does turn your brain to pudding. I think I'm just coming out of that time: novel finished, kids sleeping through the night, the sun breaking through most days.

Birthing a book is like birthing a baby. Way off or right on?

Way off. There's just no coherent parallel for me.

I wanted to do this project because I found so few satisfying examples of the writing-mother. It was either the mythology of Alice Munro writing while her children played at her feet, the writer who resented and neglected her children because she was so consumed with her art, or someone like Sylvia Plath who ended up with her head in the oven. Which writing-mothers do you admire and why?

All the ones I know: Anne Michaels,Caroline Adderson, Zsuzsi Gartner, Marina Endicott, Anakana Schofield, Laisha Rosnau, Sara O'Leary, Anne Fleming, Linda Svendsen, yourself.... It's so tough to do both, and so hard to talk about why it's so tough. Both writing and motherhood come with the built-in potential for anxiety and depression, so when you do both it's a double-whammy, isn't it? I have the greatest respect and admiration for all writing mothers, published or unpublished. They're all hugely brave.

What She Said: Mavis Gallant

For now, suffice to say that she's never wanted to remarry after a brief wartime union ended in divorce. “I didn't want that life. I wouldn't have been able to write.” Nor did she long for children. “You don't miss what you've never had. ... I would have made a good grandmother but I don't think I would have made a good mother.” She chuckles. “I might have run away!”

From an interview with the Globe and Mail, posted on their blog in April, 2009.

Interview: Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang

Your back of the book bio:

I write under both Sarah Tsiang and Yi-Mei Tsiang, and I have two books forthcoming. A children’s picture book called “Flock of Shoes” with Annick Press, and a chapbook of poetry with Leaf Press called “The Mermaid and Other Fairy Tales”. I’ve been widely published in Canadian journals and I’m currently completing an MFA in the opt-res program of UBC. I’m currently working on several more picture books, a YA novel, a verse novel, a second manuscript of poetry, and the beginnings of a short story collection.

Your playground bio:

I’m Abby’s mom -- my little girl is the one over there, running wildly in a ketchup-stained dress, pretending to be a cheetah who eats people. She’s just turned four.

Do you identify yourself as first a writer and then a mother, the other way around, or something else? Why do you think this is?

I guess it depends on how it comes up. When someone asks me what I do, I’m really at a loss. Do they mean what I do with my time? What I do to make money? If it’s the first, I’d say I’m a stay-at-home mom (though I also teach part-time and I’m a full-time student). If it’s the second, well -- I haven’t figured that one out yet.

Did you always want to be a writer? A mother? How does the reality differ from the fantasy?
Actually I wanted to be a part-time truck driver and a part-time librarian when I was little. And yes, everyone says I should have done the bookmobile, but that’s really not the same as an 18 wheeler. But I have always had an interest in writing. I remember composing poems in the bathtub while my mom washed my hair. I didn’t really start taking writing seriously until after I had Abby.

I knew that I always wanted to be a mother -- there was never a question in my mind. I adore children, and did all the requisite stuff, babysitting, mooning over friend’s babies etc. I still swoon at the smell of baby-heads.

As for reality vs. fantasy, I’d say my fantasies of being a mother were more bang-on than my fantasies of being a writer. I’m just starting to come to grips with the idea of spending the rest of my life facing rejection. There are very few jobs that require you to keep auditioning. And since I write almost exclusively about motherhood I don’t really fit with any press. I’m not all that keen on the publishing process -- it’s much nicer to just write.

What are your measurements of success as a mother? As a writer? Have these evolved and, if so, can you talk about in what way and why do you think this is?

The measurements of success as a mother? I’m trying to take this one day at a time. I want my girl to be strong and independent. To be confident and at ease with herself. I want her to be well-fed, warm, and reasonably attired. Basically clean.

As a writer? It changes every time I achieve something. It used to be “once I get a book contract” then I’ll be successful. Now it’s “once I get a book contract in YA fiction and poetry” then I’ll be successful. I’m sure that tomorrow it’ll be “once I get ______ award, or publish a novel, or get a bestseller ...” That’s how I’ll always feel at the heart of it, I’m sure.

Right now I’m really struggling with the idea of success as a writer, or with being a writer at all. I’m sure the right answer is that success as a writer depends on how much you love to write or how much you feel it expresses who you are. It’s hard to stop chasing the idea that success is a publisher who will give me a pat on the back and a cheque.

What's your writing schedule like? What was its journey to get to where it is now?

“Schedule” would be romantacizing it a bit. I write whenever Abby naps, and sometimes if I’m anxious to get writing I’ll write in the mornings before she wakes up. She’s going to be going to school this September, so I’ll have two and half days a week to write. The luxury!

When I had plenty of time to write I wrote a lot less. I write best under pressure. If I know that Abby might wake up any minute there is no (or little) procrastination. It used to take me days to write a poem -- now I write them in the moments that I can steal for myself. I also think that a lot of creative work is done while I’m with Abby. It’ s one thing to sit in front of a computer and try to conjure up ideas. It’s another thing to be out in the wide world, helping a child discover everything from caterpillars to larger life lessons. You need to be creative, intelligent, and engaged with the world to parent well. All of this will help feed into your creative work (or at least, I find it helps me). Going back to the question of how I self-identify -- before I felt comfortable defining myself as a writer it used to drive me crazy how people would tune out if I said I was a “stay-at-home-mom”. It was as though I said I was a person with no talent or ambition. More so, it was as if I said I was a backwards, anti-feminist moron who needed to be taught about the wider world of possibility that lay out there. If I say I’m a writer then people think that I must be an intelligent, engaged person (though there are plenty of writers who are neither). The vast majority of my writing focuses on my experiences as a mother. I think that the hard, wonderful, desirable work of motherhood is vastly underestimated and undervalued.

Has becoming a mother changed how you write? What your write? If so, in what ways?

There is no doubt that my daughter is my muse. I did not start to write seriously until after I had Abby, and most of my writing revolves around her. I have a picture book, Flock of Shoes, about Abby that is forthcoming with Annick Press. I have a poetry manuscript, Sweet Devilry, that deals a lot with my relationship with Abby. In fact I started to despair to my husband that I’d never be able to write anything other than Abby poems and Abby books, and he said “So what? What’s more important to you that you’d rather be writing about?” And there’s the key -- motherhood is my writing desire right now. It may change in the future but for now I have this rich, rich material. It’s like abandoning a productive diamond mine because you feel like you should be looking for gold.

How aware is your child of your writing?

That’s hard to say. Abby will often play “work” which is where she frowns at a piece of paper and scribbles away at a poem, or types one out at the computer. In fact when Abby was two and a half she “wrote” (dictated) an amazing poem while she was in one of these play sessions -- it’s actually published in Vallum magazine (and she got paid more per poem in that magazine than I did!). Abby is very aware of what poems are, she has quoted Issa and Yeats, but I don’t know if she’s aware that most of my writing is about her. She’s more interested in my picture books, but she’s at the stage now where she’s starting to dispute the accuracy of the books (strangely enough she doesn’t dispute the magic in them, she disputes the main character’s emotional states).

A real concern of mine is how Abby is going to react to my work once she gets a bit older. I hope that she’ll see the love in it, but I worry that she won’t want the exposure. I guess it’s another thing that’s going to have be taken one day at a time.

Virginia Woolf famously wrote, "…a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write…." She never had children. Is a room to yourself enough for a writing-mama? What do you need?

Oh god, a room of my own would be fantastic. Right now I’m more hoping for an hour of my own. I was talking to Helen Humphreys the other day about being a woman and a writer and she said that writers (women writers especially) need either (or hopefully both) a stable income and/or a stable relationship. I’d really like both, but I’m glad that for now I have the stable relationship. My husband is a rock and a fantastic editor. But if I could have an ideal world, I’d have a room, a steady monthly income, and a guaranteed two hours a day to write. What more could anyone want?

If you could go back, what would you tell your pre-child self?

I tell myself to sleep in more. To read more. And I’d probably tell myself not to worry about the career -- being employed doesn’t suit me and that’s okay.

What do you think your pre-child self would tell you?

I don’t know. I don’t really have any regrets or unfulfilled ambitions. We’d probably just go out for a hotdog together.

In terms of this topic (motherhood and writing), do you have any regrets? Guilt? Envy?

No regrets. But I make up for it in spades with my guilt and envy. When we made the decision for me to pursue an MFA that meant that Abby had to go to daycare three mornings a week. It was excruciating. She did not take to it well for the first couple of months. She would wake up crying and I would physically pry her off me (while sobbing) at the daycare. Then I would go home and write two thousand words between 9:30am and 11:45am. I really felt like I was buying my writing time with the tears of my child and goddamn it, I was going to be productive.

And I’m jealous most of the time of other writers who can pursue what they do full time. But it’s a jealousy that’s more like a hobby -- I wouldn’t trade my situation.

The early years of motherhood have been described by various writers as a haze or as an incredibly creative time. How would you describe it? Are you still in it? When did you leave?

I think I’m on the cusp of leaving “the early years of motherhood” since my baby is starting junior kindergarten this September. For the first year after I had Abby I couldn’t write at all. I was really just trying to catch up on my sleep. After that year, I started writing in earnest and it’s been fairly productive.

Birthing a book is like birthing a baby. Way off or right on?

Hmmm. I’d say right on. The writing is the conception -- you’re all wrapped up in the exquisite pleasure of it, the guilty/naughty self-indulgence of it. Publishing is the delivery, it’s the hard work and you’re surrounded by experts/doctors (mostly men) who really just want you to put your legs in the stirrups and push. I guess the major difference is that a baby is someone you’ll love all your life, whereas a book can come back to shame you.

I wanted to do this project because I found so few satisfying examples of the writing-mother. It was either the mythology of Alice Munro writing while her children played at her feet, the writer who resented and neglected her children because she was so consumed with her art, or someone like Sylvia Plath who ended up with her head in the oven. Which writing-mothers do you admire and why?

Susan Musgrave has got to be at the top of my list. I just finished listening to her speak on a panel about writing and parenthood and I think she has it exactly. Your kids don’t really care about your writing -- they care about you being there, about dinner on the table, about having enough band aids for their unravelling knees. And that’s really wonderful. Writing can be so insular, so filled with politics, rejection, and deluded self-importance. My life as a mother balances my life as writer. It allows me the space away from writing and publishing that I need to keep sane.

Interview: Susan Olding

Photo by Catherine Farquharson.

Your back of the book bio:

Susan Olding writes fiction, poetry and nonfiction. Her first book, the memoir-in-essays, Pathologies, was published by Freehand in 2008, and was long-listed for the BC Award for Canadian Nonfiction and nominated for the Creative Nonfiction Collective’s Readers’ Choice Award. She’s currently working on a novel.

Your playground bio:

“Is she neglectful or does she have nerves of steel? Look at that kid!” (Pointing to the nethermost branches of the tree where my daughter invariably perches.)

Do you identify yourself as first a writer and then a mother, the other way around, or something else? Why do you think this is?

Writer first, mother second. Maybe because that’s the order I came to them?

Did you always want to be a writer? A mother? How does the reality differ from the fantasy?

Wanted to be a writer from the age of eight. Wanted to be a mother when I was ready to be one.

My fantasies of the writing life included regular espresso dates with Mavis Gallant in a sun-dappled Parisian café. The reality has not included such outings, but she’s still alive and I haven’t given up yet.

My fantasies of mothering, in contrast, were more grounded. After all, before I became a mother, I’d already helped steer two of my partner’s kids though their teenage years. And even if I’d been inclined toward starry-eyed idealism about babies, the home study (for our adoption) would have brought me firmly to earth. We had to answer countless questions about how we’d handle conflict and discipline, what we’d do if we disagreed about parenting, and how we’d respond to our child’s questions about race and adoption.

Even so, the reality is different from what I’d anticipated.

What are your measurements of success as a mother? As a writer? Have these evolved and, if so, can you talk about in what way and why do you think this is?

Success for me in either realm means being there, being fully present – at the desk or with the person. It’s harder than it seems.

What's your writing schedule like? What was its journey to get to where it is now?

Schedule? What’s that? I had one, before I became a parent. Maybe I’ll have one again when my daughter’s older.

Has becoming a mother changed how you write? What your write? If so, in what ways?

I write in shorter bursts. I steal what time I can steal. I get to work quicker when the hours are available. And I’ve written about my daughter, which obviously wouldn’t have been possible if she didn’t exist.

How aware is you child of your writing?

My daughter’s a great publicist. Whenever we meet new people she tells them about my book.

She also likes to write, and I suspect my example plays a role in that. Someday I hope we might collaborate on a project.

A close-up from Susan's desk. Keats sharing space with stuffed cats Mary and Felicia.

Virginia Woolf famously wrote, "…a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write…." She never had children. Is a room to yourself enough for a writing-mama? What do you need?

Space and quiet, yes – but also time. Books. And encouragement.

If you could go back, what would you tell your pre-child self?

Enjoy the quiet!

What do you think your pre-child self would tell you?

You are so lucky. Your life never lacks for meaning.

In terms of this topic (motherhood and writing), do you have any regrets? Guilt? Envy?

Sometimes I wish I could have started one or the other earlier, wish I could have got a head start on my writing career before becoming a mother, or could have become a parent young, so my child was fairly independent before I started to write. But mostly, I’m just glad and grateful for the incredible privilege of being mother and writer. I almost missed out on both.

The early years of motherhood have been described by various writers as a haze or as an incredibly creative time. How would you describe it? Are you still in it? When did you leave?

For me, the early years of motherhood were a time of extraordinary focus and intensity. My daughter has some special needs and it has taken persistence to understand their nature and strength to advocate for her. It is hard to be creative when you are so driven. This dilemma became, to a large extent, my material.

Birthing a book is like birthing a baby. Way off or right on?

Since I’m a mum by adoption, I wouldn’t know.

But bringing a book into the world does bear some resemblance to adopting a baby.

You plan and dream, maybe for years, and taste disappointment and even despair when your early efforts don’t work out. Often, you take some courses to learn what you need to learn. Your eyes go wonky from staring at the computer screen. Piles of paper litter your desk. You mail so many documents that nicer postal workers greet you by name, while the nastier ones roll their eyes and whisper to one another, “Her, again?”

The process demands patience. You do a lot of waiting. You’re completely dependent on the judgment of strangers with mysterious authority and apparently capricious tastes. Some of them don’t like you. This hurts your feelings or annoys you, and inevitably results in more paper work and more waiting.

Eventually – miracle of miracles – you get the nod of approval. And then you wait again. Sometimes you wait for very long time, so long that you almost forget what you’re waiting for. You ask your friends what it’s all about; you lean on them for assurances and praise. And finally, after months engaged in completely unrelated work, you get a call about the big day. Are you joyful? Of course. But you’re also in a panic because now you have to get ready! And there isn’t time! Despite those months and years of preparation, you feel completely unprepared.

At long last the book (or baby) appears – imperfect, no doubt, but more beautiful than you ever could have imagined. Somebody throws a modest party to help you celebrate. You show book (or baby) to old friends and new and talk about it as incessantly as you dare. Strangers admire it or think it peculiar and feel perfectly justified in expressing their opinions to anyone who will listen. Meanwhile, family members react in unexpected ways. Some become closer to you. Others issue dire warnings, or try to tell you how to handle the newest member of the family. Others barely speak to you at all.

And over time you discover that book (and baby) have lives of their own. They exist quite apart from you and your worries or your excitement or your pride, and they must follow the paths that are theirs to follow. You can’t control this. The most you can do is guide them.

I wanted to do this project because I found so few satisfying examples of the writing-mother. It was either the mythology of Alice Munro writing while her children played at her feet, the writer who resented and neglected her children because she was so consumed with her art, or someone like Sylvia Plath who ended up with her head in the oven. Which writing-mothers do you admire and why?

I cast my historical vote for George Eliot. She may never have given birth to a child, but she didn’t let biology or her restrictive Victorian upbringing interfere with the range of her love. To her partner George Henry Lewes’s children, she became a beloved “Mutter” – someone they depended on for her warm and sagacious counsel.

My contemporary vote goes to the writer-mothers I know and love--Fiona Tinwei Lam, Rachel Rose, Jane Silcott, Judy McFarlane--and many others, whose children are now older. The ones who are sharing this journey.

Photo by Susan Fisher.

A New Beginning

Well, six months sure flies by. And here we are: 2010. A new year, fresh starts, a blank page. It feels good, doesn't it? Or does it? Truthfully I'm ambivalent about the new year. There are things that happened in 2009 that I'm not ready to let go of yet and some things I wish had never happened.

Here on ATSAD, 2009 was the Year of the Writing Mother, a project I had always envisioned to run its course over the year. Although we are now in a new year and I neglected to post a word in the second half of the year, I'm not quite ready to let it go yet. I've decided to go with the Chinese calendar and let the new year begin in February. I have interviews with four fantastic writing mothers in my possession and will be doling them out between now and the Year of the Tiger.

Except it won't be the Year of the Tiger in my sliver of Blogland. 2010 is the Year of the Wife.

Over the last few years I have been working on a new collection of poetry told from the points of view of the polygamous wives of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon Church. I'm very close to finishing my manuscript and have started to find the wives homes in literary journals and a beautiful chapbook. I'd like to share a bit of my work with you this year as well as the work of some other very talented friends who have also explored wives in their own writings or readings. This idea is still very much in its infancy, but I'm pretty excited to see where it will go.

I hope you'll drop in occasionally to check up on me and the wives. I can't offer my standard tea with warm blueberry scones, but I hope to have some engaging discussions and writing to make the visit worth it.