The story continues

Now that Meredith has been born, the story continues at The Book and the Buggy.

Belated good news

I'm delighted to announce that our daughter, Meredith, was born on 18th May 2012. The birth went well and she was a very healthy 7lbs 1oz. In the ten weeks since her birth, David and I have loved getting to know her and introducing her to our family and friends. More blogging may follow after the summer, once I get the hang of rocking the bouncer and typing at the same time.

How will it all end?

The hospital bags are packed, the Moses basket is ready and waiting, David is on standby at work. All we need now is for the baby to decide that she’s ready to arrive. The question of when she will arrive is constant background noise to our life at the moment. Friends, family and David’s colleagues are ready to swing into action when the time comes – and with the kindest of intentions they regularly remind us that it could be any time now.

The anticipation of others is nothing to the tense expectation in our house. While the main question for others is when, for David and me there are even more questions: where will we be when it begins, which of the many possible challenges will we face, who will be caring for us in hospital, how long will it take, how will we cope? We have worked our way through the long months of pregnancy and we are almost there, but what has always mattered most is what happens at the end.

This week the question of what will happen at the end of A New World has also been exercising my mind. The plot is sketched out with a degree of certainty and the characters are beginning to make themselves known. The landscapes of Cornwall and the sea are knitting themselves together into settings for the first two thirds of the story. But how it will all come to an end is unknown.

The book will have a happy ending, or at least a satisfying one. But how to achieve this is a challenge. The heroine of the story craves adventure and independence, but how much can I reasonably give to a fifteen year old girl in 1800? It is relatively straightforward to get my characters into exciting scenarios; it is harder to get them out of them in interesting and believable ways. I also have plans for my heroine after this novel is finished, so I am trying to come up with a way to conclude the book without finishing her story.

For both the book and the birth, the ending is important. For both, the ending will mark the start of the next big adventure.

Passive vs. Active

As I continue research and planning for A New World, I have been reacquainted with a familiar sensation – that I am a passive observer in the story’s creation. I like this feeling; it stops me from asking myself the question ‘what happens next?’ Instead, as I’ve mentioned before, it feels like the story is unfolding as I think about it. Planning and writing at this stage feels to me as though I’m telling a story that already exists.

William James, a sociologist of religion, characterised religious experiences as being ineffable, noetic, transient and passive. In other words, that they are hard for the subject to describe, some knowledge or understanding is communicated, they are fleeting and they happen without being prompted. I am not suggesting that writing is a religious experience. But I am often reminded of William James when I try to explain the way I experience the first creative stage of writing. Although it is me that is sitting down and doing the work, it does feel very much as though it’s happening to me.

If the writing process feels passive, carrying a baby is even more so. Clearly, just as with writing, David and I can’t separate ourselves entirely from the creation of a baby. But from the moment I discovered I was pregnant, it has felt as though I have done almost nothing to make that tiny bundle of DNA grow into the sizeable baby that is now trying to punch out a window between my ribs.  

Of course, the baby has grown inside my body; she has been nourished by the food I’ve eaten, kept safely in place by the hormones that I’ve produced and been formed, in part, by my own DNA. However, I have little conception of my body being in charge.

We have made it into the final month of my pregnancy. Our daughter could arrive at any point in the next four weeks. As we wait, we are even more convinced of our passive role. It will be her who decides that she is ready. The ability to choose to sit down and get on with work (between baby-enforced naps) makes the passive creativity of writing is a welcome distraction.  

A private enterprise

As promised by pregnancy books and websites, the baby is changing the way she moves. What were once random kicks are mow more coordinated movements. She moves now like someone trying to fight their way out of a jumper, which is both alarming and endearing. Her movements make her seem ever more like a little human and I have taken to asking her what she is up to. This development is making David even more impatient to meet her. If the roles were reversed, I would find it hard not to be jealous of the time he spent with her. It is hard for him that I have a constant physical dialogue with her, a private knowledge that it is difficult to share with him.

For all that the medical aspects of giving birth might feel far from private. Carrying a baby is a private enterprise. From the outside, all may seem quiet and calm, while on the inside the baby is often dancing a cancan with only me to feel her. I wonder if I will miss these private sensations when she is born, but I suspect that the reality of her arrival will eclipse any memory of this time.

Writing a book is a similarly private enterprise. Much of the creative work that is involved in the writing of a book goes on unseen in my head. This is particularly true of the stage I am at with the writing of A New World. As the plot and characters emerge in my imagination, I am also driving to see family, or washing my hair, or hoovering.  As the weather improves, just sitting in the garden is often very productive for the book. This is one reason why I find it hard to describe the process of writing, although there is a product eventually the process of creating it sometimes looks very much like doing nothing.

Although I enjoy feeling the baby moving and a career that involves sitting about thinking, these private enterprises are not meant to stay private. The purpose of me writing books is to have them published and sold. The purpose of me carrying a baby is for us to become parents. It will not be long now, before the baby arrives. I hope that the book follows suit.

Preparation vs Inspiration

Last week I began the marathon washing of the baby’s belongings. I am washing blankets, car seat covers, pram linings, a mosquito net, and bundles of clothes. She now has far more clothes than me or David and has gorgeous dresses handed down by her cousin to last her until she is at least two years old.

If all goes as it should, we still have weeks, possibly months, until she is here. We have time to decide where the cot should go in her room so that the light from the hall doesn’t wake her. We have time to discover the difference between vests, bodysuits, rompers and sleep suits and time to decide where to put the wipes and the nappies and the creams for smooth nappy changes.

However, there can be too much preparation. Soon, we will know what needs to be within easy reach and what can be forgotten in a drawer, but for the time being there’s only so far that preparation can take us.

In writing a book, there is a similar balance between preparation and inspiration. For my first book, Wild Rose, I came up with a story one evening and began writing the first chapter the next day. None of that first chapter ended up in the finished book. The whole method of narration changed as I wrote and by the end of the first hand written draft there were characters and events that had become redundant. What I learnt helped me to write a plan for my second book, A Good Death. I started writing with the middle chapters of the book, stuck to my plan and changed little as I went along.

As I approach my third book, A New World, I currently have a paragraph summary of a story and lots of ideas in my head. I don’t feel I can just start writing, as I did for Wild Rose, until I have done a bit more preparation. But whereas I knew chapter by chapter what would happen in A Good Death, I am prepared to let inspiration do more of the work this time.

The writing of this book will need to be approached differently to either of the others. As I’ll be writing and caring for a newborn at the same time, it will be important to learn to embrace sleep-deprived mind wandering and to ensure that there are notepads by the changing table, the nursing chair and the Moses basket.

Even planning how I’m going to write when the baby is born is a little futile. In finding a balance between preparation and inspiration, our daughter is yet to have her say.

Related posts: Putting the baby to bed 

Gestation of a kangaroo

The gestation of a Virginian opossum is just twenty days, while an Indian elephant is in the womb for about twenty two months. Forty weeks of waiting and preparation seems like a fair compromise for humans.

                                                                        

Now that I have reached thirty weeks, the arrival of the baby is beginning to feel imminent. Practical preparations have accelerated and I am taking a break from writing for a week or so to get the baby’s room finished, newborn clothes assembled and hospital bags packed. All these measures beg the inevitable question of when she will actually arrive. Being ready ahead of time might turn out to be fortuitous, or we might be walking backward and forward past the hospital bag for another twelve weeks.

At times it feels as though we are running out of time to prepare for the baby, at others it feels like an age before we get to meet her. But ultimately, she will arrive at some point within a long but fairly predictable period of time.

Books, on the other hand, have a long and unpredictable gestational period. Wild Rose, has been in gestation for more than three years already. There are many different reasons for this long period of development. I wrote and edited Wild Rose in my free time while working as a teacher. Submitting to agents and waiting for feedback is a time consuming process. Getting feedback on a manuscript, editing and proofreading are also lengthy operations.

The gestation of a book is also more like a kangaroo than a human. A kangaroo’s development can be stalled. If two embryos form, one will be frozen at a particular point in its development until the other leaves the womb and enters the pouch.

The manuscript for A Good Death has been stalled. I heard back from my agent this week that the changes I’ve made to the manuscript aren’t radical enough. There are really two books within it that need to be separated – a difficult and painful process. I will need to let the feedback sit in the back of my mind for some time, while I work on A New World. Hopefully, when I come back to it there will be creative space for it to grow.

So, while the gestational period of our baby is somewhat fixed, the gestational period of a book is long and unpredictable. Having said that, there comes a day when a book is published and placed on the shelf. When our baby is born she will have a long way to go. The end of gestation for her is the beginning of what will hopefully be a long life of development.