Category Archives: Editorial

Not Keeping Mum: On Motherhood and Writing

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“Every day includes much more non-being than being. This is always so. One walks, eats, sees things, deals with what has to be done; the broken vacuum cleaner; ordering dinner; washing; cooking dinner. When it is a bad day the proportion of non-being is much larger.”
– Virginia Woolf

This is it – this is precisely what is most difficult about being a mother of young children. I was speaking with a friend the other day who summed up motherhood perfectly: ‘Lots of time for reflection; little time for action.’

As a largely unpublished (female, minority ethnic) writer, a writer who (like Toni Morrison states in her Paris Review article) has been given the permission to write by ‘No one’, I am already a slow writer. I doubt myself; I hesitate. Motherhood takes away the luxury of time – tells you, If you’re going to write, you have to do it now! No one is going to hand you a slice of writing time on a plate.

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Talk at Birkbeck by a literary agent and consultant

Last week Tuesday, I attended a talk by a literary agent and consultant as part of the Creative Writing MA course at Birkbeck University, which I am currently undertaking. It was an informative talk about the marketplace and how to get published hosted by the Creative Writing MA Programme Director (who is also a prolific novelist).

One thing that irked me, however, was the agent / consultant’s view of the marketplace and, while I’m sure that his words accurately reflect his many years of experience in the field, it was very black-and-white the majority of the time while at other times he would admit that every so often a writer comes along and blows all of the rules out of the handbook – in short, it felt like he was contradicting himself. One of those times was his answer to my question:

‘You spoke of a revival in recent times of the short story genre. Is it still the case that an unpublished writer will be turned down if s/he approaches an agent / publisher with a collection of short stories, and encouraged to write a novel, instead.’ (Or something along those lines.)

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Yours Truly Published on Femmeuary

After discovering the collaborative blog Femmeuary and ranting about its brilliance and relevance (see previous post), imagine my absolute delight when I received an email from Alice Ash, founder of Femmeuary, thanking me for my review and asking whether they could publish it on their site! And now imagine even more delight because in the late hours of yesterday evening, my double review of Katie Nevison’s ‘Venus Fly Trap’ and the collaborative blog Femmeuary was published on the Femmeuary website (under the title ‘Femmeuary Reviewed’)!

Check out the link and see what it looks like, here.

Now all I want is to find out if there’s a way to make Femmeuary not simply a February-thing but an all-year-round-thing!