"storytelling is intrinsic to biological time"

"This story has everything a tale should have. Sex, death, treachery, vengeance, magic, humour, warmth, wit, surprise and a happy ending. It appears to be a story against women, but leads to the appearance of one of the strongest and cleverest heroines in world literature, who triumphs because she is endlessly inventive and keeps her head. The Thousand and One Nights are stories about storytelling--without ever ceasing to be stories about love and life and death and money and food and other human necessities. Narration is as much part of human nature as breath and the circulation of the blood. Modernist literature tried to do away with storytelling, which it thought was vulgar, replacing it with flashbacks, epiphanies, streams of consciousness. But storytelling is intrinsic to biological time, which we cannot escape. Life, Pascal one said, is like living in a prison, from which every day fellow prisoners are taken away to be executed. We are all, like Scheherazade, under sentence of death, and we all think of our lives as narratives, with beginnings, middles and ends. Storytelling in general, and the Thousand and One Nights in particular, consoles us for endings with endless new beginnings. I finished my condensed version of the frame story with the European fairy-tale ending, 'they lived happily ever after', which is a consolatory false eternity, for no one does, except in the endless repetitions of storytelling. Stories are like genes, they keep part of us alive after the end of our story, and there is something very moving about Scheherazade entering on the happiness ever after, not at her wedding, but after 1001 tales and three children."

from "The Greatest Story Ever Told" in On Histories and Stories: Selected Essays by A.S. Byatt

inoculation against the difficult, liminal world

"It seems to me now that part of the compelling power of Sweet Valley High’s vision of identical twins lay not in the obvious assignation between our split selves (id and ego), but instead, in the ways in which writing itself—real writing, difficult, strenuous, hard-won, “under your own name” writing—always stands in an uneasy relationship to its enchanting, seductive, rule-bending twin. The one who always seems to win, to get away with it—as if, in the end, only a toss of a golden head or the sparkle of an aquamarine eye can carry the day. The theorist George Lukacs called the “entertainment novel” the “caricature” or bad twin of serious fiction, and in a sense, for me at least, that was both the allure and the potential hazard of ghostwriting mass-market books. I wanted, as long as I thought I could risk it, to stay in the pastel, exclamatory world of the light and the popular, the world of fast cars and faster verbs, the world where difference was traded for sameness and the blondes triumphed and the eyes sparkled and the parents stayed married and the brother stayed away “at college” and the paralysis was curable and anything and everything could be resolved by the final chapter. I wanted the machine of narrative to work the way popular literature has it work: difference going in one side, and out the other side coming the reassurance of sameness. The same people, the same formula. You can do this, the books hummed to me as I wrote them. You can do this, they hummed to the girls who read them. They promised a way of being. A kind of inoculation against the difficult, liminal world of the real. A world we sometimes know only in relation to the fantasies that counter it. The pastels that turn it gray, rendering it more ghostly than we would like. Or sometimes bear."

From The Ghost Writes Back by Amy Boesky, an excellent read about her experience ghost writing fifty of the Sweet Valley High books. (Oh how I devoured those books!)

a lot of boys don't bother growing into men

"And the problem with being a boy in a man's body is that, basically, in this world, it isn't a problem. It's commonplace. There are lots of boys in men's bodies walking around--I work with a few of them. Some of them are my age, trembling on the precipice of the big four-oh, and some are even older. What I'm saying is, a lot of boys don't bother growing into men, because they don't have to--their bodies have already done it and it turns out that's all anybody requires."

from Lynn Coady's The Antagonist

In Conversation with Carrie Snyder

For the past few weeks, I've been having an email conversation with Carrie Snyder, author of The Juliet Stories. Carrie Snyder was born in Hamilton and grew up in Ohio, Nicaragua, and Ayr, Ontario. Her first book, Hair Hat, was nominated for the Danuta Gleed Award for Short Fiction. She lives in Waterloo with her husband and four children.

If you haven't read The Juliet Stories yet, please search it out. I loved this book and I think you will, too. Now, grab yourself a hot tea and perhaps a little snack.

Marita: Thanks for agreeing to chat with me about The Juliet Stories. I really enjoyed the book and I want to talk about it without giving too much away as it goes some interesting and unexpected places. In your acknowledgements, you wrote that you went to Nicaragua to research a different book, but came away with a vision for this one. Can you talk about how that trip and where you were in your writing life at that time?

Carrie: Before we took that research trip, I was unprepared and unwilling to consider writing about material that had an obvious autobiographical connection -- and yet it was an obvious autobiographical connection that had me interested in the country in the first place. But it wasn't until we were in Nicaragua again, and until I had a long conversation with a woman who had worked with my parents back in the 1980s, and had stayed and made Nicaragua her home, that I realized the story I wanted to tell was much closer to my own. The idea came to me on the flight home, and I turned to my husband and said, I think I have to write a completely different book. I needed permission, I think. I needed someone to remind me that our family had taken part in that moment in time, that we were a piece of another country's history. Just a fragment, just a thread, but yes. We were there. It was okay to want to go back and tell that story. It wasn't disrespectful to the people of Nicaragua. I wasn't stealing someone else's story. I think I had/have a horror of colonizing someone else's story.

In my writing life at that time, I was weary. I'd published Hair Hat, I'd given birth to my third child, I was attempting a volume of poetry, and I'd abandoned a long and rewritten-many-times-over black romantic comedy. The Nicaragua book was pitched as a Heart of Darkness-type journey into the jungle, and it earned a Canada Council grant, and so we got to travel to Nicaragua. And thank God. Because along came Juliet (eventually...even after the aha moment it was slow going).

Marita: Oh, I know slow going! Having a brood of my own now, I am amazed that you have been able to write fiction with young ones, slow going or not. I just can't get in the right head space to work on the novel I've been trying to work on for the last five years. Poetry I can fit into the small clips of time I get. How were you able to maintain the head space needed to write fiction while in the baby trenches? And I'm curious about the choice of the structure of a 'novel-in-stories' and when that came up during the creative process.

Carrie: What a question. I want the answer myself, right now, as I feel so distracted by the publicity demands in the immediate aftermath of releasing the book. But I did have a few strategies that worked. Time is the obvious obstacle when you're home with young children. But you don't just need time to physically sit at a desk and work, you need mental time to work out ideas too. And when you're getting just a few hours a day, or a few hours a week, you're trying to cram that mental time in with the physical time, and it can feel just ... overwhelming. The task is so enormous. Writing a book requires keeping all these balls in the air, the overarching machinery, the individual storylines and relationships. And you've two hours to hack out a scene that works. It takes the first hour to get up to speed, to go over the work done the previous time, especially when there are long breaks in between writing time; and then you're rolling; and then time's up again. The frustration of this cycle is almost unbearable.

So I realized I needed writing weeks. (In fact, I need to schedule a few for this year, come to think of it.) With a full week (and I like to include the weekends on either end, if possible), there is time to do the thinking and the writing, to take those reflective pauses without panicking. All the consecutive hours build on each other. It's also a really fabulous way to flirt with insanity. The first writing span we tried, we managed two weeks. I almost lost my mind. But I got a full MS out of the exercise. Unfortunately, it was the black romantic comedy that never got off the ground. Still, I'd discovered how to get the work done.

In practical terms, my husband takes over the meal planning and organizing, the to-and-froing, we hire extra babysitting, friends pick up a lot of the slack, and that's how a writing week works. It's a lot of pressure, but the pressure doesn't seem to bother me. It's motivating.

That said, I do think the novel-in-stories form made the book more manageable to write. I did write the material as a novel in its earliest drafts. Basically all of that material was ultimately scrapped, very little remains. I remember when I finally wrote a story rather than a chapter -- and it was from Juliet's perspective. Actually, it was "Rat," the first story in the book. I really resisted doing it. I didn't want to write a second book of linked stories. What if this is where I get stuck? But when I let myself do it, it just made sense. I didn't write the stories chronologically, not at all. I filled in gaps and made discoveries as I went. Characters shifted, and then I would go back and alter earlier stories in order for everything to make sense. I wonder whether the same strategy could work for novel-writing. Hm. You've got me thinking, Marita. It definitely made the prospect of creating a whole book feel less overwhelming, writing it almost on an as-needed basis.

Marita: Hang on, you got a whole manuscript out of two weeks of writing?! That's amazing. Do you think you'll go back to the black romantic comedy, or is that one shelved indefinitely?

Carrie: Yes, I got a whole manuscript out of two weeks of intensive non-stop writing -- but the ms was already half-written before I began, and I had the storyline largely plotted out. And it was a very rough draft indeed. It's shelved forever. It's of its time, and it's already out of date, and best left behind. I kept a copy, of course. And I've read it since, and found it entertaining, if slight; not to mention it's got problematic plot issues that wouldn't be easy to resolve; and so, goodbye little book. I've had to say goodbye to several over the years. Not everything works out.

Marita: I have to admit that for the first half of the book, I didn't get the novel-in-stories label. I thought it was simply a novel, but then I started the second half and it was clear.

Carrie: I'm starting to wonder whether we should have labelled the book anything at all. (Though I suppose that's required, isn't it!) Readers have been telling me that it reads like a novel. I did write each chapter as an individual story, and I think that architecture shows itself more clearly in the second half, but perhaps by then readers are deeply into the book and have already accepted it as a novel. What is a novel anyway? A story that follows specific characters through a unifying plot? Juliet fits. And maybe it doesn't matter how the book was written, maybe it matters much more how it's read and received. If people prefer to read it as a novel, maybe we should change the label on the back of the book ...

Marita: Don't change the label! I think it fits. It doesn't have the same neat and tidy ending that many novels need and it's not a collection of stories. They are linked and novel-esque. I think it's apt.

It's interesting to know that 'Rat' was the first story you wrote for the book. I really loved that one, it was such a great introduction to the world and characters. One thing that struck me was your portrayal of Gloria. I don't know how to succinctly describe my initial reaction to her other than she seemed so real, such an accurate portrayal of a mother. Do I admit that I saw myself in her? I guess I just did. I don't see that enough in literature.

I'm sure many readers will assume that much of you is in Juliet which I am sure is the case, but I'd love to hear about your relationship with Gloria. How she evolved as a character. Your feelings towards her. Her representation of the maternal in The Juliet Stories and what that might mean.

Carrie: Gloria may just be my favourite character in the book. She's complex, she changes, she's got depth and talent, and she's big -- a big difficult personality. I said in another interview that I wouldn't want Gloria to be my own mother. But that said, she's got a lot of me and my mothering in her. I find it interesting that you saw yourself in her too. In what ways particularly, could you tell me? Over the years that I was writing the book, Gloria, the mother-figure, changed more than any other character from my initial conception -- once I decided she would be a musician and performer, she moved into new territory, and frankly it was territory that struck close to home. The artist/mother. I wanted to treat her fairly and honestly, and I have sympathy for the difficulty of that balancing act. I sense a ruthlessness in myself sometimes that wouldn't be seen as motherly. My kids standing at my elbow begging for attention -- and what do I do? I tell them to go away. Is it cruel to send them away -- even knowing they're in the care of another? Will my children remember this about me, and suffer from it? I don't know. It troubles me sometimes, but then I could never have written this book without being that intensely focused -- to the exclusion of everything else, including my children. That's difficult to admit.

Marita: There is so much about Gloria that I can see in myself. We're both somewhat sloppy--ready to pull out the breast at any time which is as much for comforting ourselves as it is for the child; we're messy--we'd both rather be doing something much more interesting than housekeeping; we're quick to drop the role of mother when opportunity calls--there are a few scenes in which Gloria is at a party or with other adults and happily loses track of her children, assuming others will keep an eye on them, so she can soak up the adult attention she's been craving (this may be me projecting a little, but there you have it!). She also believes that she and her family are not as important to her husband as his job and I can recognize all the frustration in what carries. (I should stress here that I only feel that way at times, when I joke that I'm a theatre-widow. Short spurts for me versus a relative lifetime for Gloria.) I feel like she feels like she doesn't have enough control over her own life, and I can definitely relate to that. So yes, I understand Gloria.

I don't think it's cruel to send them away. I think it's important for children to know that parents have lives outside of them and for them to see parents at work. It will give them great perspective for when they are older.

Carrie: I love the connections you've made to Gloria, some of which I also can claim for myself. (And it's so true, isn't it--that sometimes breastfeeding is as comforting for the mother as for the baby; there can be a real give-and-take relationship between mother and baby, and it's not really talked about much at all. Breastfeeding tends to be presented as something the mother does for her baby, kind of sacrificial, rather than being a mutually beneficial act. Sigh. I miss breastfeeding. And now we've officially strayed into serious mommy territory ...)

You mentioned being a theatre-widow, and I think in my own marriage it's the opposite--my husband has to be a writing-widower from time to time. And that's a difficult thing to ask of someone else. Though I'm not sure Bram, in the book, has any real awareness that he's asking anything special of his wife and family. Which may also be of the era. I hope the times they are a changin'.

Marita: I wanted to ask you about the photo of Gloria that is mentioned in "Photograph Never Taken". Is there a specific photo you had in mind? Reading the description, I thought that I knew that photo, but then I thought, no, that photograph is a figment of your imagination and you just did a great job in describing it.

Carrie: Ah, the photograph. You are the second interviewer to ask that exact question, which makes me rather pleased, I must admit. Because it means the photograph must seem very real. No, it's not. It's the invention of my imagination. I had some difficulty finessing the description. I wanted it to be general enough that the reader could fill in the blanks, but specific enough to be highly evocative. I'm glad it worked. To talk a little further about the photograph, I wanted to comment on what it's like to be the subject of someone else's artistic expression, and how little the end result may relate to reality. Someone pointed out that there are a number of photographs in the book; that wasn't deliberate, but I love the medium, and I love what it can do. Its dual nature seems almost magical. Transformative. And yet capable of capturing a moment, pinning down time.

Marita: That's interesting that the photograph has come up before! Congratulations on conjuring an iconic photo through prose! I was Juliet's age in 1984, so I really wasn't sure. There are images I come across as an adult that are from my youth that I don't remember seeing for the first time, but know I must have at some point. Memory can be a funny thing.

Last year, you did the 365 project. Did that impact the writing of The Juliet Stories or did the interest in writing about photography inspire you to take on the project?

Carrie: The 365 project was undertaken largely on a whim -- a friend told me about it. (I should add that the project's aim was to take an original self-portrait for 365 consecutive days.) My husband had just given me a new camera with a beautiful lens for my birthday, and I was trying to learn how to use it on a purely technical level; but I also wanted to figure out how to construct better photographs. The 365 project was immensely helpful in both regards. If you compare the early photos to the later photos there is such a difference in quality -- and even in imaginative narrative (because, as I discovered to my great pleasure, photos tell stories too). I also learned how to be a subject. The project underscored my belief in daily discipline as an educational method (it's exactly how I learned to write). I began looking at photographs differently. It opened my eyes to the art form. And I stuck with it and took 365 photos. The appeal is simple: I have a visual mind with no physical talent for artistic expression. ie. I can't draw to save my life. So I've always had to filter these vivid visuals in my brain through words instead. But I love the immediacy of a picture. My camera has freed that part of my brain.

There were several specific photographs that underpinned the writing of the book (none of which are actually described in the book, come to think of it). One is of a young contra soldier. Another is an iconic photo of a young revolutionary soldier breastfeeding her baby with an AK-47 slung over her shoulder. And another is of a revolutionary leader celebrating after the fall of the dictatorship. All Nicaraguans. I kept these photos on my desk while I worked, and they pre-date the 365 project. But the scene where Gloria is photographed arrived during the 365. I have no doubt it was a result of the 365. Portraiture was on my mind.

Marita: I'm reading Hair Hat right now and like in The Juliet Stories, your portrayal of the parent/child relationship is incredibly accurate. I don't see this done well often enough. Am I reading the wrong books or do you agree? Which writers and books would you hold up as being great explorations of this relationship? I read the brilliant We Need to Talk About Kevin last year and it was so much about relationships between parents and children and between spouses, but I'm thinking of books that are less extreme.

Carrie: About parent/child relationships in books, I'm at a loss to think of examples of inspiring explorations of the relationship in literature. There must be, and maybe I'm just reading the wrong books too! I read We Need to Talk About Kevin a number of years ago, and it did feel like an accurate portrayal of maternal love, but you're right -- that's within an extreme context. King Lear just flashed into my mind. A lot of my favourite characters are orphans, or estranged from their parents. Alice Munro has some early stories about young motherhood with moments that struck home for me. But even in these, the children are at some distance, somehow, from the mother's story; or vice versa. Not that I mind. I'm just struggling to pull up an example.

I view the relationship like any other. There is drama in the give and take. There are opportunities for both mother and child to be loving or neglectful. I approach my characters with compassion and empathy; that's my method. I open myself to them and try to understand. People are complicated and messy and contradictory and there is always more sleeping under the surface than can be guessed. The intersection between characters is an opportunity to both bring more to the surface AND to bury more too; these revelations/suppressions can occur simultaneously. And the mother/child relationship is absolutely loaded with history. It's incredibly rich material to work with, and all the richer when both parties are given voice. I strongly disliked The Descendents (the movie) because it gave the mother no opportunity to define herself; and that's such a cliche in literature. The absent mother being examined and blamed; or unexamined and exalted. Mothers are much more interesting than that.

Marita: "The absent mother being examined and blamed; or unexamined and exalted. Mothers are much more interesting than that." YES! I agree, and not just because I'm a mother, I'd like to add, but because I have a mother and the older I get, the more I realize how complex she is. Which I feel like is a stupid thing to say, of course my mother is complex--all people are complex, but I think it's just a continuation of the separation of baby and mother. How at first babies don't know that their mother is not actually part of them and I guess we spend years and years pushing away (oh, my heart broke a little writing that!) until we're fully our own person out in the world.

I disagree that the parent/child relationship is like any other. I feel like it is deeper and much more complex. There's the saying, "of course your mother knows how to push your buttons, she installed them!" It's a tricky relationship to write about because of all that history. Perhaps that's why there are so many orphans in literature.

Carrie: First I have to get into the idea of whether the parent/child relationship is like any other -- I have to because I'm finding myself very resistant to what you're saying. And usually if something bothers me, or I have a particularly visceral reaction against it, it's a clue that I need to explore further. It means I'm closing my mind to something important, something I'd rather not face -- usually. And I've thought about this overnight and my conclusion is that I dearly wish the parent/child relationship were like any other because I can't bear the thought of being that important to my children. Do you know what I mean? I think there's more, too. I've observed parent/child relationships of fairly extreme dysfunction, and I want for both the child and the parent to be able to live free from that burden, that sense of failure if their primary formative relationship is deeply estranged. Also, I do genuinely believe all relationships have the potential to be exquisitely complex; it's just that the parent/child relationship is cast that way from the very moment we're born, and there's no escaping its complexity and its history.

Marita: When The Juliet Stories ends, Juliet is a young mother herself. We only get a glimpse of her in this role. What kind of mother do you think she is? (I know this is speculative and a lot of people just rolled their eyes at me, but I can't help but feel like this is something you already know.) And why did you end at that point in her life?

Carrie: I think Juliet is an excellent mother in many ways, and a terrified mother in others. She's protective of her babies, but she's afraid to let them go, too. She cannot imagine living the life her own parents chose. And I think that grieves her; she admires their courage and regrets her own caution. She's been adrift and children have rooted her to something. I've actually refrained from imagining Juliet past this stage in her life. Her life could go so many different directions. Her children will grow, that's a given. How will she cope? Will she feel herself becoming unrooted, again, as they mature and push her away? Or will she walk across the street and open herself to the many lives and calls around her, as in the story Disruption?

My own children are now 10, 9, 6, and 4, and I've seen my mothering friends, those who are a few steps ahead of me, pass through this time and come out the other side with amazing new conviction and determination. If I were imagining anything for Juliet, it would be that. My friends don't necessarily choose to continue with the careers they'd started before having children -- many have switched direction, even quite drastically. They've gone back to school, retrained, or simply re-imagined themselves. Having children has given me a sense of urgency, of time passing -- not in a bad way or a scary way, but in a seize-the-day way. Juliet's passion is waiting for her. I hope. I feel in the last story that she's stepping away from the things in her past that have been burdens, that she's seeing them for what they are -- the beautiful remains of her life. Hers.

For a long while the book ended on a different last line, one that came after the one that stands there now. It went like this: "Tell me, for I need to know, what remains?" And I think that question will propel Juliet forward rather than back. It's a question we're all asking. The first section of the newspaper that I turn to is the obituaries -- not necessarily the big reporter-written obits, but the small ones published by family members. If we could choose, what of our being do we want left behind? What memories? What remains?

Marita: Are you done with Juliet, or do you think we'll get stories of her middle aged and elderly in the future?

Carrie: I can't imagine writing more Juliet stories. I felt like the last story in the book was my goodbye to Juliet. What do you think? Do you imagine more Juliet? Do you wish she would return? Literary fiction doesn't tend toward sequels, but even so, the thought really never crossed my mind. That said, I would never say never.

Marita: I don't think I'd want a sequel, but when I finished The Juliet Stories, I was sad that I had to say good-bye. I'm that kind of reader, the type who will cry at the end of a book, not because it's sad, but because it is over and even if I reread the book, I won't have that same experience again.

I've been thinking about Juliet a lot since reading your book and I realized that she might be the only protagonist that I've read that is exactly my age (except for another character in Hat Hair). No wonder I'm so attached to her! Even if she had a very different childhood than mine, in some ways, she is me. I want to know how it all works out for her. What's she like when she's deep into middle age? Or has adult children herself? How she faces retirement? Being elderly? I don't necessarily want to read all those stories, but that won't stop me from imagining her getting older as I do.

All that said, I do hope that perhaps she'll show up as a secondary character somewhere later in your writing career, maybe in a book you write twenty years from now. Someone's mother-in-law, or a neighbour, or a patient in palliative care. A reward for the devoted reader.

I want to ask you probably at least a dozen more questions, but this feels like a good place to end. Before we wrap it up completely, can you talk about your next project and how that relates to The Juliet Stories?

Carrie: Ah, my next project. I've been so overwhelmed with launching Juliet that I'm just beginning to think in practical terms about the next project. In the interim, to tide myself over between blog posts and Juliet-related writing gigs, I've been working on a book for children, a silly fun-to-write bit of text. And I've been sketching new ideas, plots, characters, but none are fleshed out very thoroughly; that will take time. It's daunting to imagine committing to a new character and plot, and I don't mind confessing that.

When I think about my next book, I reflect on how it will build on my previous work. Will I be forever a writer of linked stories? That is not my current plan. What is a "Carrie Snyder" book? What overall mood do I wish to evoke? What kind of story do I want to tell? Right now, I'm thinking about Ann Patchett's work as I shape this next book out in my mind -- specifically the fluidity with which she compresses and stretches time in her telling. I'm also thinking about generosity and love and compassion. It sounds hokey, but I want to write books that make readers more open to the possibilities around them -- in their own lives, and in the lives of others.

I want what I write to bring some small good into the world. I want it to express a strong, loving, forgiving moral core.

I'm too superstitious to talk specifically about the character and plot I've chosen to focus on, but I will say that I'm starting with research because the book will be set in the past (before Juliet was born, so she can't make a cameo appearance this time, though I like the idea of her turning up again many years on). My husband and I have booked one writing week per month for the next three months, which will give me a chance to play more deeply with my ideas. I hope I'm brave enough, honestly. I know how much gets thrown out in the process of writing a book, and it can be tough to begin knowing that. I have to remind myself that no effort goes to waste, that it is all toward the larger cause, and that discovery happens because one is willing to explore. I'm inspired by stories of scientists and inventors who set off on utterly hopeless causes and whose work may have been for naught, or who failed to receive credit for their discoveries, but who persevered nevertheless. (Bill Bryson writes wonderfully on the subject, if you're interested: A Short History of Nearly Everything, and At Home.)

Here is the other thing I've been thinking about lately, as I approach the next project. I've been thinking about how so much of Juliet felt like a gift. When people say, "I don't know how you do it!" (meaning write and publish a book while mothering four children, etc., etc.) I've been thinking that the answer really is that the credit isn't mine -- I did none of it alone. (And I'm not just talking about the huge amount of practical help I received from friends and family and especially my husband; I'm talking about something more mysterious.) Writing The Juliet Stories was an act of faith. I opened myself up to the possibility of Juliet, and I was there to receive the words when they were given. Now I'm sounding beyond hokey. I'm not belittling my own effort and work, but I believe there is something other in the writing process. Something beyond me. Something I can't decide to grab. I have to recognize it when it comes, and accept it, and place it, and polish it, and cherish it. And give it away again.

So, how do I prepare myself for that level of effort and focus all over again? I'm wrestling with that. Is my spirit open enough right now? Can I approach the work with real hope and belief that something beautiful is waiting to be discovered -- and by me? Can I approach it with lightness too? This is what I hope, Marita.

we do not come from solitude

"My mother once told me that when a child is born, threads are tied around the infant's wrists to bind her soul to her body. The soul is a slippery thing. A door slammed too loudly can send it running. A beautiful, shiny object can catch its attention and lure it away. But in darkness, unpursued, the soul, the pralung, can climb back in through an open window, it can be returned to you. We do not come from solitude, my mother told me. Inside us, from the beginning, we were entrusted with many lives. From the first morning to the last, we try to carry them until the end." from Madeleine Thien's Dogs at the Perimeter

there is nothing more astonishing than a human face

"And I'm glad I knew it at the time, because now, in my present situation, now that I am about to leave this world, I realize there is nothing more astonishing than a human face. Boughton and I have talked about that, too. It has something to do with incarnation. You feel your obligation to a child when you have seen it and held it. Any human face is a claim on you, because you can't help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and loneliness of it. But this is truest of the face of an infant. I consider that to be one kind of vision, as mystical as any." from Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

to be a mother is to be an illusion

"Only later did I come to understand that to be a mother is to be an illusion. No matter how vigilant, in the end a mother can't protect her child--not from pain, or horror, or the nightmare of violence, from sealed trains moving rapidly in the wrong direction, the depravity of strangers, trapdoors, abysses, fires, cars in the rain, from chance." from Nicole Krauss's Great House

finding the path

I'm writing this from the Wallace Stegner House. I had never been to Saskatchewan before, despite my husband's strong connection to the province, and I feel very lucky to have had this opportunity. I was supposed to have been here for just over three weeks, but we left as a family part-way through for a few days and returned. Then the boys left and I've been here alone for nine days. They will arrive tonight and then we leave on Saturday. Today was my last full writing day for a while.

It has been difficult being away from the boys. When I was in Banff last May, I was surrounded by peers, so if I was sad or feeling sorry for myself, I'd leave my room and force a hug on someone or share a pitcher while bemoaning the Canucks. In Banff I was lonely, but here I've been alone. For the first time I was given a glimpse of what old age might be like. Your spouse is gone, your children live far away, and you have no more friends left. It's terrible.

The people of Eastend have been lovely, especially Ethel, the amazing woman who runs the residency program (and who is also great a catching bats!). I know there are great people and experiences everywhere and that's one of the bonuses of doing a residency. But I've decided that I won't be doing one like this for some time, not when the boys are so young. All I need is a room with door and a desk. I don't need to be in another city or province, at least not right now. If I go anywhere for an extended time, it will be with my family.

The writing, however, has been great. I think I may have finally finished the final poem in my new manuscript of poetry and I have been working on a novel. It's a novel I started before I becoming a mother, but abandoned soon after I found out I was pregnant with my first child. After the foggy years in the trenches of early motherhood, I now feel like I can go back to it, but of course I'm a very different person now than I was then. It's changed completely. Some of the characters are the same, some of the themes and settings are the same, but everything else is different. Even since I've returned to it, I've had to strip it back and restart three times. Like I told my friend Laisha, I've written over 50,000 words in the last few months, but I still haven't got past 17,000 in a draft. I'm there now and I think (knock on wood) that I have finally found the story. It feels good to know that I'm on the right path.

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.

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.

Interview: Marina Endicott

Your back of the book bio:

Started writing while working in theatre as an actor, director and dramaturge. Was Associate Dramaturge at the Banff Centre Playwrights Colony for five years in the 90s, ran the Saskatchewan Playwrights Centre for many years. The usual progression of stories in journals, a couple of small awards, shortlisted for the Journey Prize; first novel Open Arms published by D&M in 2001, shortlisted for Amazon/Books In Canada First Novel award. Second novel, Good to a Fault in the first season of Freehand Books, finalist for the Giller Prize and won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book, Canada & the Caribbean. GTAF will be published in the US, UK and Australia in 2010. Next book, about a sister-trio-harmony vaudeville act touring the prairies in 1911, due out in 2011.

Your playground bio:

Mother of Will, now 15, and Rachel, now 13, both born while we were on Peter’s first posting with the RCMP in Mayerthorpe, Alberta. When Will was one I worked as editor of the Mayerthorpe newspaper for six months, because a perfect grandmotherly babysitter offered to look after him, but I soon gave up on working outside—too much strain on everyone. Because Peter worked shifts (and it seemed like mostly nights) and needed a quiet house during the day, conventional babysitting didn’t work for us. And maybe because we were both quite old to be starting on this, after believing we wouldn’t be able to, we wanted to be with our children ourselves.

So I have stayed at home with them all this time, but have always worked more than full time on a variety of freelance editing and design jobs. Thank god for the interwebs.

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?

Depends on where I am. At school, definitely first a mother, possibly later as a writer (but remaining very wary of volunteer positions on the school newsletter).

Everywhere else, as a writer and possibly later as a mother, after sussing out the situation. I try not to talk about Will and Rachel, or their father Peter Ormshaw, partly because I try to keep their privacy intact, mostly because the danger is that I will talk about nothing else.

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

Always wanted to be writer, yes—although I spent many years as an actor, director and dramaturge in theatre. A mother, NO. I was the eldest of five and had enough of children when I was a child; I didn’t particularly want to have the chaos and worry, and didn’t think I’d be a very good mother. It wasn’t until I met Peter that I wanted to have children, because I thought our children would be interesting.

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?

Ouch. After a long year of book tours, I’ve been given a solid 3.2 from the Russian judge, aka Peter. As a mother: my children are happy, almost all the time, and pretty stable. They are not worried about money or food or social clumsiness; so we’ve averted my own childhood worries. I’m sure they have plenty of new worries all their own, but they are not in bad shape. Sometimes they are very smart, sometimes remarkably totty-headed. They are kind to each other and to us. People invite them to stay. They don’t eat like pigs; they are good at the things that matter most to them; I like them and love them, in fact I am besotted. I guess those are my measurements.

As a writer the measure of success is all internal, and they don’t give badges for that. A short-list or a win makes you feel okay about the work for fifteen or twenty minutes; digging down into it and working harder and trying to make it better is more lasting—maybe a whole half hour. Sigh.

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

Now, I write early in the morning until I have to get W & R up and off to school, about 7 a.m.; back to my desk by about 9. (After that break I find it hard to get back to work, and can end up answering email all day if I don’t watch out.) When they come home from school I talk to them for as long as they’ll listen, and then clean the kitchen and start supper, then go back to work until Peter comes home. After supper I bully someone into cleaning up, and go back to work until my eyes cross. And of course I write all weekend. During term time, I teach two days a week and they’re kind of luxurious social days where I don’t expect to get any writing done.

In the old days, I worked at four or five jobs: one big contract that took all my time for four or five months a year, and was dribs and drabs the rest of the year, plus teaching and editing jobs as they came along. I fitted writing in around the edges and in the early mornings, up till 2 or up at 5 a.m., wherever I could.

When the children were little I had an office (well, it was an unfinished concrete basement storage room) right beside their playroom, and I made myself a Dutch door by sawing the ordinary door in half. Then I could have the bottom of the door shut, so people knew I was working, but I could see and hear them in case there was trouble or need. I got used to listening with a tiny portion of my brain to the tone of their discourse rather than the words, and I worked better that way because I wasn’t wondering what was going on.

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

I suppose it has awakened me to the permanence of writing; to thinking about what they will think of my work when they are old enough; to not wanting to write something they’d be ashamed of. It’s made me cautious of how I exploit them. When they were very small I found Sharon Olds’s work disturbing and wondered how she could do it; now I applaud her bravery in writing that deeply private part of life. But I still wonder what her kids think of those poems about their penises etc.

I hope it has not changed what I write very much, even given all that. I certainly write faster and more disciplinedly now than I did before I had children. (I brush my teeth faster and more disciplinedly than before I had children.)

How aware are your children of your writing?

Much the same way that I was aware of, and disliked, my mother’s obsessive sewing when I was a child, I think. It is the thing that distracts me and makes me hard to reach. They assume that I’ll do well and are unsurprised if anyone likes the books; they are unimpressed by my efforts as far as I can see. Probably because they can’t help thinking I might keep the kitchen a bit tidier and make more regular meals and not work them so hard if I wasn’t writing.

They don’t read my books, even though their friends do. My son kindly says he’ll listen to the audiobook when it comes out. But they are proud of me anyway, I think. They’re more interested in my theatre career, as ancient history, and in their own future writing careers.

Do they both want to be writers? How do you feel about this?

Delighted. It seems to me like the only sane thing to do. And I’d much rather they were writers than actors, which my daughter is also thinking about.

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?

You need a good partner who doesn’t see the house and kinder as your solo field. You need a partner who is a writer, or who understands writing, and who is patient and funny and believes that you are good at what you do. You could manage without this uber-human if you were a writer without children, but if you’re going to be a mama, I think you’d better find a good partner.

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

Work faster. Don’t be sad, just work hard, and later on you’ll have wonderful children.

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

Shut up, you don’t know how awful it is being me.

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

Guilt yes, ferocious—but not too much for mothering, only for the home-schooling thing. Home-schooling while being a writer is tricky because you kind of think you’re always doing it and then it turns out nobody has done a page of math for three months.

Envy—only of people who have full time housekeepers. Honestly, it’s not the children/writing I find complicated and tough, it’s the housekeeping/writing that’s so miserable. And the housekeeping/children, too. I fervently hope to one day be successful enough to have a cleaner every day.

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 a long dark tunnel for me. The tunnel lightened about the time my daughter turned three—when they were both talking and walking safely and we could begin a serious conversation—but I only crunched off the cinders and emerged from it entirely when they were about 7 and 5. If I had found myself pregnant again then I would have been seriously depressed, even though third children are so often delightful, because it softened or dampened my brain for so long. Couldn’t keep a consecutive thought in my head for years.

On the other hand, the physical pleasure of those early years is profound. I was glad to write about it in Good to a Fault, about what it’s like to love a baby. I don’t anticipate grandchildren for many, many, many years but I wonder if that’s why people seem to like being grandparents, that tender physical response to the beauty of the child.

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

A book is much easier at the end. I think it’s mostly men who make that comparison—but certain men, mostly politicians, are always saying that something or other is like birthing a baby. Nothing else is remotely like birthing a baby.

But it is possible that if I hadn’t birthed two babies I’d have two more novels done by now.

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 admire Sylvia Plath for waiting as long as she did; despise her for leaving her children.

I worry that I’m like Mrs. Jellyby in Bleak House with her long curling lists and ink-stained fingers, forgetting her children.

I loved Laurie Colwin’s novels and stories but particularly her wonderful cookbooks (Home Cooking and More Home Cooking) which she wrote with her daughter in mind and in the room.

There’s a writing mother (who might be a portrait of Meg’s own novelist mother) in Meg Wolitzer’s The Ten-Year Nap—I was on a panel with her at the Vancouver VIWF and she read a hilarious passage about daughters in the hall outside their writing-mother’s door debating whether this is a big enough emergency to knock: the youngest girl has just got her first period. ‘Does this count as life or death?’ ‘You could exsanguinate. It’s happened before.’

One of my favourite writing mothers is Mrs Morland in Angela Thirkell’s long series of novels set in pre- and post-war England, widowed and left penniless with four young boys, who keeps them at Eton and Oxford by writing fashion/romance potboilers about an adventurous coutourier. Since Thirkell was writing books that might have been considered light entertainment, I’ve always assumed it was a self-portrait. I love Mrs Morland’s hair full of pencils and her modest estimation of her own work and her friendships with serious writers, and most of all her attitude to her sons, who she loves and despises and cares for diligently, especially her youngest son. One of the novels I’m still searching for is called The Demon in the House; that’s the youngest son, who cannot stop talking and asking questions and demanding her attention to his railway obsession while she’s trying to work. Reminds me of certain children I have known.

More than any fictional mothers, I admire my friends, like Annabel Lyon and Sara O’Leary, who wrote wrote wrote, doing such good work, while their children were small.

Interview: Sara O'Leary

Playing Hide and Seek With the Children (photo credit: EDGO)

Your back of the book bio:

Sara O’Leary is a children's writer, playwright, fiction writer, and sometime literary journalist.

Your playground bio:

In the spirit of my mothering style I have decided to only answer every other question. (This is akin to my technique of playing entire games of Snakes and Ladders by just repeating the phrase “Could you roll for me?” And don’t even ask me about hide-and-seek.)

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 identify myself first as a teacher--mainly as a way of staving off further questions. Sadly my subject area is “Creative Writing” --a term which I’ve always found unbearably fey. Sometimes I pretend to be a potter.

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

Never wanted to be a mother. Boy was I wrong. Always wanted to be a writer. (Not going to say it).

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?

Will gladly disclose my age but flinch at measurements.

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

I like to write really bloody fast and get it over with.

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

Time management is one of those mothering skills that spills over into all aspects of your life. For example, I can now fill out a questionnaire at breakneck speed.

How aware are your children of your writing?

One writes with me … we’re doing a YA novel together. One writes both much faster than I do, and much more than I do. They both are conscious of my children’s books but just last year my eight-year-old found my book of short stories in a shop and came up clutching it with a look of utter betrayal. “You never told me about this!” he said. He’s the same darling boy who asked when I was writing a weekly newspaper column: “Why is your picture in the paper every week when you’re not even famous?”

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?

Well, let’s not put Virginia in the corner – she was told she should not have children because of her condition. Anyway, these days I’m sure what she would wish for is a laptop of her own. Mine crashed this year because my film-making son had so loaded the hard drive with his projects.

When my first son was born, both he and our computer shared our bedroom. And yet there was room enough for all. Poor Virginia had no idea.

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

Go ahead -- enjoy it while you can.

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

I’m bored. I’m lonely. I lack a sense of purpose.

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

Regrets? Only that I didn’t start having children a decade sooner and have a dozen more. Envy? One of my least favourite of the seven sins.

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?

My sons are eight and fourteen and I suppose it’s time I found someone else to blame this haze on.

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

Bar the screaming.

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?

The ones I know. The ones with beautiful children and beautiful books. You know who you are.