Tag Archives: motherhood

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As a largely unpublished (female, minority ethnic) writer, a writer who (like Toni Morrison states in her Paris Review article) has been given the permission to write by ‘No one’, I am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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