Not a Write Off vol: 2

The one where the baby has started nursery, I ask which writing workshops you'd like to see, and have a little rant about heteronormative parenting content on Instagram.

As I write this, my hair is damp, smells faintly of chlorine, and it’s cool enough to wear a cotton jumper, which is pretty unusual for July. Well, for London anyway. I took the baby swimming this morning and she squeals in the changing room now, as I try and bend her squid limbs into a swimming costume that will very soon be too small for her.

Sometimes, I feel like motherhood is so hard to write about because it’s very easy to slip into clichés. ‘They grow up so fast.’ ‘Say goodbye to sleep!’ ‘Your life will never be the same again.’ Some of this is true, but not all of it and absolutely not all of the time. My baby’s whole existence runs in parallel to a jar of half-eaten jam in the fridge that I opened the day before I gave birth.

One day she couldn’t roll over and the next day it was like she was rehearsing for a rhythmic floor routine in the 2023 gymnastics world championships. Some nights she wakes up a lot, some nights I wake up more than her because I’m a horribly light sleeper and would startle if a mosquito farted outside the bedroom door. Sure, my life won’t be the same again, but isn’t that true of everyone?

For me, it’s like wearing new glasses and the ordinary, washed out world has come into sharp focus again. I hold things up to the baby. You see this orange? Look how bright it is, feel it’s skin. It’s bumpy, isn’t it? Here, you can hold this spoon for me. It makes a good sound on the chopping board, doesn’t it? What does that grass feel like on your toes? It’s a bit tickly, isn’t it. A bit damp. It must have rained this morning.

I have changed, yes, but it’s only fair, because—as biology would have it—the baby is obliged to change far more often than me.

Perhaps it’s hard to talk about parenting with any sort of nuance because a dominating narrative about what it’s like to be a mother already exists. When trying to find accounts on social media to follow that reflect my new reality, I was struck by how incredibly gender normative 90% of the content is. Most of it circles forty-year-old complaints, but with jump cuts and lip-syncing to make it seem fun and not, in fact, a worrying indictment of mothers assuming the majority of domestic work, yet again. Jokes about husbands doing the bare minimum, jokes about running on coffee fumes, jokes about being a ‘fun dad’ and the ‘nag mum', and endless ‘what my eight-month old eats in a day,’ videos that make me want to claw my eyes out. All of this has made me realise that I want to be surprised about each and every stage that my baby goes through. I don’t want to stack her up against others, or look up ‘what happens next’ when she throws the most beautiful spanner into every well-planned day.

Speaking of clichés, I’m reminded of a lecturer I had at university who I go some way towards blaming for my shrugging off of creative writing for the best part of six or seven years. ‘Cliché’ was his catch-all term for anything that was too straight-down-the-road, in the opinion of my lecturer, which included any sort of romance sub-plot that wasn’t horribly abusive or toxic. I can’t tell you how many times I sat through short stories that made me want to gag on my own fist. Perhaps the one involving a sibling murder in a bathtub full of frogs, or the retelling of American Psycho that nobody asked for. I know that writing is subjective and you can’t control how your work is received, but when I was told time and time again that my chatty, uplifting stories were clichéd, clichéd, clichéd, it ended up sounding like ‘there is no readership for you.’ I know now that isn’t true, but it took me a really long time to realise it.

The short story I wrote then—the one I got a 2:2 for—eventually morphed and grew into a sub-plot for my first novel, The Lonely Fajita. I tried to write the dark stuff. I even spent a year planning a dark, historical novel that I loved researching but hated writing, because it left me feeling miserable and moody. Should I have let that one lecturer’s opinion stop me from doing the writing I enjoyed doing most? No! Do I sometimes look his books up on Goodreads to gleefully read his 1 star reviews? Yes! Of course!

That leads me to this week, emerging from the realisation that I’ve been made redundant during maternity leave and that maybe—just maybe—it’s the universes way of telling me to double down on what I’m good at, just like I knew back at university that my ‘clichéd’ stories weren’t bad, they just hadn’t found the right reader. You, reading this, are one of my ‘right readers,’ I hope.

Going freelance isn’t scary in itself, because I’ve always liked having diversity in the work I do, but you know what is? Self-reliance. If I struggle to bring any money in, I can’t blame my boss, because I’d be blaming myself. I’m getting organised. I’ve figured out how to more than turn cells different colours in a spreadsheet. I’m partnering with some amazing writing organisations in the next few months and will be opening up mentoring spaces very soon. I’m designing some workshops and a writing course. Oh, christ, I forgot the big thing. I need to finish my manuscript for book four and will be writing one chapter a week between now and November to get it finished in time (one year late, but heyyyy ho). Irons are in the fire, slowly warming up, but I need to keep fanning those flames, because there’s something incredibly delicious about a possibility. About planning. Now, the challenge is to keep at it.

So, time for a poll! It’s the summer, so if you’re anything like me, you’re getting the itch for new school shoes and an annual trip to W H Smith to stock up on gel pens and Post-Its. September will always feel like the true start to the year. If you want to start working on your book, I can help.

Every time I do a workshop, participants let me know what they’d be interested in attending next time, so I’ll do the same here. If you’ve got an idea that doesn’t feature below, feel free to email me with your thoughts!

My Not A Write Off Win this week:

I forgot my laptop charger when I pitched up in a café during one of the baby’s settling in sessions at nursery, and rather than go home to tackle my Mt. Everest of laundry, I made a realistic plan to finish my novel in the next four months using the timeline method from last week’s post. Now, it all seems far more manageable and less OHMYGOD I HAVE SO MUCH TO DO!

• The plotting method that I swear by (paid)

• How I really feel about reviews

• How a playlist can help you edit your novel (paid)

• BONUS: The short story that inspired my first novel

• Read, watch, listen: August

Share your Not A Write Off win in the comments below, or just drop me a note if you want to chat about anything mentioned. And no, as much as I’d love to reveal the name of my lecturer, I cannn’ttttttttt. Even if you twist my arm. Maybe.