I am having a luxurious Sunday writing a new novel from what I call my “bed office”. It is me with a laptop, enough pillows to make Cleopatra jealous and a king size bed. I have a gorgeous pink and turquoise Indian handmade quilt too that makes me feel protected and cozy. My kind partner, who is also a writer and working on his novel in the room next to me, has just brought me perfectly crisp toast with melted Irish butter on it and I may very well be in heaven.
Keep Writing
I often get asked “what is something you would like to tell your younger self?” and use to not like that question because my younger self was a bit of twat who would not listen. But now, I would like to tell my younger self and other younger writers about this exquisite Sunday in the bed office because it was not always this way. No, it was not. I would like to tell my younger self and other writers starting out that whatever happens, do not give up and keep writing.
Recently, I read a creative non-fiction book by one of my favourite authors Elif Shafak called Black Milk. In this elegantly written memoir, she takes us on a journey from her pre-motherhood self through post-partum depression and through to today with a stark and generous realism. She also infuses the stories of many other writers along the way from the tragic and the iconic. Syvia Platt, Tolstoy, Virginia Wolf and many others. As successful as she is now, Elif allows us behind the veil of perfectionism to know how much she has struggled not just in being taken to court in her homeland of Turkey, but in staying true to herself as a writer and a mother. In it she reminded me of how complex and demanding those early years of writing can be.
She has a discussion with her four alter egos in the book and one keeps asking: “Who will take care of the baby while you write?” The painful question that seems quite simple is loaded with traps. For the even worse question is this: “How will you live with yourself when you don’t write because you have to care for this baby?”
The Bed Office
There were so many years when an uninterrupted day of novel writing in the bed office would have been impossible. I say years because it’s true. Not just days, or weeks or months – but years. And then another baby came along years later and that delayed the writing even more.
When my first son was three years old I went to a woman’s writing conference in New York City. It was an incredible experience. But I recall a speaker at the conference, and I hate that I cannot give her credit because I don’t remember her name – but she said something I have never forgotten. If you want to write as a woman you have to learn to sit at the kitchen table and dodge bullets so you can write. After the conference, my husband at the time got in a huge fight with me about my selfishness being gone to the conference. His parents had taken care of our son. He is my ex-husband now.
Dodging Bullets
This metaphor of dodging bullets at the kitchen table allowed me to stay writing. For many years I only wrote poems because they were short. I wrote them on the back of receipts and on napkins shoved in my hand bag or jacket pocket. Later, when smart phones emerged I wrote on there and emailed them to myself. That is all that time allowed. And they came through me like a stomach virus forcing me not to ignore the words.
Recently, I thought of those years when the demands of life were so costly I struggled to write as a Word Orphanage. I had these words I loved that were stranded in there and orphaned. I left them there while I fumbled to care for my children, work fulltime and take care of myself. I am sure no one who knew me had any idea that I struggled so much while my Dickensian like Word Orphanage tortured me. I felt a deep and profound longing to be with those words I abandoned.
The truth is that self-abandonment is what happens when writers don’t write and that is by far the most painful realisation. To deeply love the long form fiction narrative and to not be able to give her the time and devotion she deserves wounded me.
Like the prodigal writer, I returned shamefully and remorsefully to the keyboard with my handwritten notebook in tow. I was going to make it work this time. I was not going to reject this deeply important and sacred part of myself any longer. My sons were older and I was older too. I think that’s like the lyrics of a Fleetwood Mac song that makes me cry so I avoid it.
An Indomitable Spirit to my Writing
My youngest son is almost 18 and my oldest son is 30. I have given years into the unexpectedly demanding and relentless role of mother. It is with strange awareness I now extend that indomitable spirit to my writing. Oddly now, I see that the tenacity with which I worked and parented serving me well in being loyal and resilient in the long form fiction. I sold a film script for five figures and I thought perhaps I just got lucky until I did it again the next year.
I am not sure which famous person said it first but luck is when opportunity meets preparedness. So I got lucky. No matter where you are on your writing journey you can get lucky too. Just keep showing up at the kitchen table and dodging the bullets or fluff up those pillows and create your own bed office. Whatever it takes, just don’t stop writing.
(c) Nadia Ramoutar
Nadia Ramoutar is a writer, filmmaker and artist living in Co. Wicklow. She has been “an Inker” for a number of years now and it helped her write and illustrate two poetry books, sell two film scripts and a write a novel since then.
Her latest book Radical Notions of Love is available from Bridgewater Street Books here:
https://bridgestreetbooks.ie/product/radical-notions-of-love
Or listen to the audiobook here:
https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Radical-Notions-of-Love-Audiobook/B0GQ6TK1CY
Read more from Nadia on Writing.ie here.
