I always thought I’d be content as a stay-at-home mum after having kids. After all, having quiet time to myself at home has always been one of my favourite things to do.
But the thing about having kids is that they crack you open. And not just physically (sorry!). Once they arrive, out spills every single in-built physical and mental requirement you possess: especially those that you’d been able to successfully hide from the world – and from yourself.
And, very soon after having my first baby, I learned something pretty basic about myself: it wasn’t that I just enjoyed quiet time to myself. I needed it. A lot of it. And often.
Let me spell out the obvious: when you have a baby you get very little quiet time to yourself. Even at night. Especially if that child happens to be wired in exactly the opposite way to you and enjoys human company Every Waking (And Sleeping) Moment.
Six months into motherhood and, on the surface, I was having the best maternity leave I could’ve wished for. I’d lucked out with my local NCT group, my baby was thriving and I was getting plenty of support. But inside I was constantly exhausted, overwhelmed and overstimulated. I knew what I needed: I needed some quiet. I needed to just be, with nothing but my brain for company. I needed to exercise my thinking muscles again.
I believed the solution was to return to work. But, as I mentioned last time, I knew that going back to my previous role as an on-call media spokesperson wasn’t an option. So I decided to search for a part-time job: one that I could leave at the office at the end of the day.
I sat at my laptop, navigated to Guardian Jobs and set the filters for any part-time role in London to get my job hunt off the ground. And there it was, the very first result: a part-time copywriter role for a charity that was hugely relevant to my career history.
I knew in my gut that this was the job for me. Yes, it was a huge step-down responsibility-wise. Yes, it paid much less (and I was in a hugely privileged position to even be able to consider this). But it felt right. Fateful, even.
I applied and I got the job. And, just after my baby turned one in the spring of 2016 – and at the age of 34 – I was finally being paid to do nothing but write. No more phoning up journalists who (I’d always convinced myself) didn’t want to hear from me. No more being called at 2pm on a Saturday afternoon by a Sunday paper wanting an urgent comment which would absorb my entire weekend. No more mopping up media crisis after media crisis.
This time it was just me and the words. WORDS! STRAPLINES! CAMPAIGN NAMES! EDITING! IDEAS! SPEECHES! SCRIPTS!
STORIES!
Don’t get me wrong: no job is perfect. But, for the first time in my life, the work felt right. In fact, it didn’t even feel like ‘work’ most of the time. And maybe this was why – even a few years into the role – I still couldn’t call myself a ‘writer’.
More often than not, when asked what I did for a living, I used to say something vague like “I work in marketing for a charity”. But to define myself as a writer? I couldn’t say the words to myself, let alone out loud to others.
So, what happened? Covid happened, that’s what.
And, if having kids cracked me open, then the pandemic well and truly scrambled me.
More on that next time!
This month’s tip for other aspiring authors: Still a tiny bit of time to sign up to Katie Sadler’s Growing a Sustainable Author Platform course for the presale price*. If you sign up let me know as we can do the workbook activities together 🤓 She’s also written a brilliant blog post on author newsletters here.
Currently reading: Save The Cat! Writes A Novel*. The strapline of this book by Jessica Brody on how to plot a book is ‘The Last Book On Novel Writing You'll Ever Need’. I can understand why. Using loads of popular fiction as examples, across countless genres, this book clearly explains how the most successful stories can be mapped against a simple ‘beat sheet’. In other words, certain things need to happen to your main character at certain points. Highly recommended.
What I recently enjoyed reading: Fault Lines by Emily Itami*. Motherhood? Tick. Japan? Tick. Hilarious yet poignant? Tick. This was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award recently and I’m not surprised – it’s a sublime debut that I couldn’t put down.
What I last enjoyed watching: The Lost Daughter on Netflix. This beautiful film – with Jessie Buckley (!) and Olivia Colman (!!) playing the same character at different points in her life – is based on the novel of the same name by Elena Ferrante*. I’ve not read the book, but if it’s anything like the film – a quietly devastating exploration of the push and pull of motherhood, especially for women with busy brains – I can imagine it’s extremely visceral and moving.
What I’ve been thinking a lot about: Cancel culture. Or, at least, what a lot of people believe to be ‘cancel culture’. I shared my thoughts on this in this very brief Twitter post.
I believe that if you have a regular writing practice somehow, you’re a writer. If you have the courage and drive to share what you write, you’re an author. You’ve earned it. I won’t even use the word ‘aspiring’.