Catherine Egan's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing"
On Being Less Awesome Than Mervyn Peake
Dear Blog,
My oldest friend, after reading a draft of my fantasy spy story, gave me a copy of Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake, which I had never read.
The reason, in part (or in full?), was because my friend was decidedly unimpressed by my lackluster (or lack of) portrayal of Spira City, my made up version of early 20th century Paris, or the island fortress where the final chapters take place. Mervyn Peake’s castle-fortress Gormenghast was meant, I think, to inspire me to greater ambition, to give me a sense of what might be done with Place, in a novel. (I put up a wee review of the novel here).
In fact, this very dear friend of mine had nailed one of my biggest weaknesses as a writer. Well, maybe it’s one of my biggest weaknesses. I suppose that’s really for a reader to judge (though I’d prefer they didn’t). I am no good at describing places. And buildings in particular. I do a little better with natural scenes. Maybe.
I’m not sure how to get better at it. When I was a kid, I used to skip over the descriptions of places. I just didn’t care all that much. And I’m sure that it is linked to my lack of skill as a home-decorator. So anyway, I finally opened up Titus Groan a few weeks ago, and here is the very first paragraph of the book:
Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls. They sprawled over the sloping earth, each one half way over its neighbour until, held back by the castle ramparts, the innermost of these hovels laid hold on the great walls, clamping themselves thereto like limpets to a rock. These dwellings, by ancient law, were granted this chill intimacy with the stronghold that loomed above them. Over their irregular roofs would fall throughout the seasons, the shadows of time-eaten buttresses, of broken and lofty turrets, and, most enormous of all, the shadow of the Tower of Flints. This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow.
Wow. Right? Me, I probably would have written “surrounded by poor huts” and “tall, dark tower” and hurried on to the Character Has Feelings About Stuff That Happens bit.
Of course, most books that aren’t set in space or in the middle of the desert have buildings in them and not all writers dwell as passionately on their buildings as Mervyn Peake does. You can read any writer and feel insecure that the thing they do well is not the thing you do well, and maybe you should be doing the thing they do well as well. Sometimes the things I can’t do well loom so large in my imagination, and seem to overshadow the things I can do well. I want to be better, of course. A better mother, a better writer, a better person, a better interior decorator. I am trying to be better. I am hoping that when the friend who gave me Titus Groan reads my second spy story, he won’t think that the city of Tianshi is a total flop. (Yes, I know, Tianshi is awfully similar to Tian Di and why is that? I will tell you sometime, blog, but it is all Chinese – randomly in the case of Tian Di, and not at all randomly in the case of Tianshi!). But the sad fact is, I will never be as fine a writer as Mervyn Peake. Even so, I hope that when the book is done, its successes will outshine the failures, and the failures will not be so noticeable.
Still, Place / Setting is important. I am working on it. This is the second paragraph of my New First Draft:
Spira City would be brilliant with gas lamps, but Tianshi, the walled capital of Zhongguo, is pitch black at night. There is the odd flicker of a torch here and there, the dim glow of a candle in a window; the rest is darkness. Tonight I am restless. I don’t want to sleep, I don’t want to drink, I don’t want to talk. I am thinking of home, The Twist; its winding streets, raucous laughter spilling out of the brothels, half-starved cats stalking rats, the smell of spice and snow and smoke. The sounds and smells are all different here. Wet stone from the afternoon rain, which came down in a torrent while the bells of Ei-ji chimed their magic for it. The click of dice and low voices as I pass a torch-lit courtyard. Chicken feces and the faint scent of fried pork mingling in the air. They call it the Heavenly City, and by day the many-coloured tile rooftops shine in the sunlight, the markets overflow with silks and spices, terribly thin but strong young boys run through the streets with rickshaws calling out for rides, slender trees hang heavy with spring blossoms. With the dark, a hush falls. Where Spira City comes alive at night, Tianshi nestles down close to the earth, the people withdraw, the lights go out.
For years I’ve longed to get out of Spira City, to see the world. Now I find I’m feeling homesick.
Not exactly knuckled masonry and swarming epidemics of hovels, but we all do what we can.
Yours, Peake-enviously,
Catherine
My oldest friend, after reading a draft of my fantasy spy story, gave me a copy of Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake, which I had never read.
The reason, in part (or in full?), was because my friend was decidedly unimpressed by my lackluster (or lack of) portrayal of Spira City, my made up version of early 20th century Paris, or the island fortress where the final chapters take place. Mervyn Peake’s castle-fortress Gormenghast was meant, I think, to inspire me to greater ambition, to give me a sense of what might be done with Place, in a novel. (I put up a wee review of the novel here).
In fact, this very dear friend of mine had nailed one of my biggest weaknesses as a writer. Well, maybe it’s one of my biggest weaknesses. I suppose that’s really for a reader to judge (though I’d prefer they didn’t). I am no good at describing places. And buildings in particular. I do a little better with natural scenes. Maybe.
I’m not sure how to get better at it. When I was a kid, I used to skip over the descriptions of places. I just didn’t care all that much. And I’m sure that it is linked to my lack of skill as a home-decorator. So anyway, I finally opened up Titus Groan a few weeks ago, and here is the very first paragraph of the book:
Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls. They sprawled over the sloping earth, each one half way over its neighbour until, held back by the castle ramparts, the innermost of these hovels laid hold on the great walls, clamping themselves thereto like limpets to a rock. These dwellings, by ancient law, were granted this chill intimacy with the stronghold that loomed above them. Over their irregular roofs would fall throughout the seasons, the shadows of time-eaten buttresses, of broken and lofty turrets, and, most enormous of all, the shadow of the Tower of Flints. This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow.
Wow. Right? Me, I probably would have written “surrounded by poor huts” and “tall, dark tower” and hurried on to the Character Has Feelings About Stuff That Happens bit.
Of course, most books that aren’t set in space or in the middle of the desert have buildings in them and not all writers dwell as passionately on their buildings as Mervyn Peake does. You can read any writer and feel insecure that the thing they do well is not the thing you do well, and maybe you should be doing the thing they do well as well. Sometimes the things I can’t do well loom so large in my imagination, and seem to overshadow the things I can do well. I want to be better, of course. A better mother, a better writer, a better person, a better interior decorator. I am trying to be better. I am hoping that when the friend who gave me Titus Groan reads my second spy story, he won’t think that the city of Tianshi is a total flop. (Yes, I know, Tianshi is awfully similar to Tian Di and why is that? I will tell you sometime, blog, but it is all Chinese – randomly in the case of Tian Di, and not at all randomly in the case of Tianshi!). But the sad fact is, I will never be as fine a writer as Mervyn Peake. Even so, I hope that when the book is done, its successes will outshine the failures, and the failures will not be so noticeable.
Still, Place / Setting is important. I am working on it. This is the second paragraph of my New First Draft:
Spira City would be brilliant with gas lamps, but Tianshi, the walled capital of Zhongguo, is pitch black at night. There is the odd flicker of a torch here and there, the dim glow of a candle in a window; the rest is darkness. Tonight I am restless. I don’t want to sleep, I don’t want to drink, I don’t want to talk. I am thinking of home, The Twist; its winding streets, raucous laughter spilling out of the brothels, half-starved cats stalking rats, the smell of spice and snow and smoke. The sounds and smells are all different here. Wet stone from the afternoon rain, which came down in a torrent while the bells of Ei-ji chimed their magic for it. The click of dice and low voices as I pass a torch-lit courtyard. Chicken feces and the faint scent of fried pork mingling in the air. They call it the Heavenly City, and by day the many-coloured tile rooftops shine in the sunlight, the markets overflow with silks and spices, terribly thin but strong young boys run through the streets with rickshaws calling out for rides, slender trees hang heavy with spring blossoms. With the dark, a hush falls. Where Spira City comes alive at night, Tianshi nestles down close to the earth, the people withdraw, the lights go out.
For years I’ve longed to get out of Spira City, to see the world. Now I find I’m feeling homesick.
Not exactly knuckled masonry and swarming epidemics of hovels, but we all do what we can.
Yours, Peake-enviously,
Catherine
On becoming someone else
Dear Blog,
When I was younger I was braver than I am now, and I was more selfish, and I was stupider, and I was more fun. I would have laughed at your jokes, even if they weren’t funny, not something I can promise anymore, but if you were a stranger crying in a corner I might have pretended not to notice, whereas now I would go over with a tissue and ask you if you were OK.
I would have been appalled, at fifteen, at twenty, at twenty-five, if I could have seen what my life would become in my thirties. I think I understood even back then that Domesticity had its eye on me. I spent my twenties gallivanting all over the world, eschewing a real career or any real responsibility for / to anything / anyone because I was On The Run from dreaded Domesticity. Not that it mattered. I ran far and wide and had a great many adventures but the run-on-sentence of my adventuresome youth came to a full-stop in a hospital in New Jersey when I looked into the startled eyes of my first child. He looked back at me and proceeded to scream his fucking head off.
I had a baby and everything changed. I changed. I stopped laughing at bad jokes and started carrying tissues. My worst fears expanded with my capacity for love, and it feels sometimes that it is all love and fear now, tangled together like shadow and light. The worst case scenarios now are beyond what I can bear to imagine, it makes me shake just to write that down and I have to stop and breathe, stop and breathe. And maybe I wasn’t very good at love before, I don’t know. I don’t think it’s true for every mother but I think it is often true, and it’s true for me, that this love I have for my children dwarfs every other feeling I have ever had. I see ridiculous headlines sometimes saying things like, “parents are happier than non-parents”, or “the childfree are happier than parents,” and I think that it is so laughable and so absurd to try to frame it that way.
Look, I was happier before. I didn’t have kids because I thought it would make me happy. I kept running around and boarding planes with my visas to this country or that country like get-out-jail-free cards, but as I got older there was more often than not this hilarious, clever man with me – that was a clue, but I didn’t catch on. We shared bed after bed in country after country so how I still thought I was going to escape I don’t know but sometime after I turned thirty this longing opened up in me. I was on a mountain in Peru and I put two leaves on the rock, pointing to another mountain peak as directed, and two rocks on top of them for two wishes. I wished for healthy, happy children. There on top of the world, free as I had ever been, adventure before me and behind me, I wished for children.
There are people who go gallivanting and adventuring with their children and there are people who balance fulfilling (or unfulfilling) careers with parenting, and there are people who are truly happiest giving their days over to the constant care that small children require. But becoming a parent, for reasons logistical, financial and emotional, stapled my feet to the ground, filled me up in ways I never expected and left me starving in equally unpredictable ways. There was a year, after having my second son, when I didn’t sleep. Someday, when it is less raw, I will write a blog post about severe, chronic sleep deprivation and what it does to a person, or at least, what it did to me – how it undid me. Emerging slowly from the other end of that tunnel, I don’t really know who I am anymore, besides mother to these boys, anchor of their world.
But the surprising (to me) thing is that my writing took off with parenthood. I mean, I was writing all along, but I didn’t have much discipline or much ambition. There were long stretches of time when I didn’t write, because I was busy laughing at bad jokes, marveling at the stars in the desert, drinking too much and boarding trains and whatnot. (“I think we’re on the wrong train,” I said, and he said, “There is no wrong train,” and it was true back then). It didn’t matter to me so much if I was writing or not. It was something I liked to do and wanted to do, but I didn’t need it the way I do now. I didn’t need an answer (for myself, because “I’m a writer” is something I have a hard time saying to other people) to the question “What do you do?”
Now, not a day goes by when I don’t write. I complain too much about not having time and kind, sympathetic friends say to me oh it must be so hard to find time to write with the kids and I say oh yes it really is, but the truth is that writing and parenthood have been, mostly, a pretty stellar combination for me. I’m finding time I didn’t find before I had kids, because I need it in a way that I didn’t before I had kids, and because my days and weeks are structured in such a way that there is this time and this time only that I can choose to use in a self-centered way, and that time is so precious I can’t bear to fritter it away.
“Look, you can watch more TV!” I say desperately, and they shout, “No! We want to play!” Kids these days, pfft. I can tune out most of it. The crashing and smashing and shouting and whooping and laughing and even the crying, if it doesn’t go on too long. I pretend that this is a time for them to learn self-sufficiency, and I hear LittleJ adopting my tone and my words when comforting LittleK, kissing his bumps before urging him back to the game, whatever it is. When I close the computer and look up they are grinning at me, having wrecked the apartment, these two gorgeous boys. They say “Do you want to play hide-and-seek?” and I do, and also I don’t, same old story. I say “yes” and go curl myself into the bathtub while they count. I hear LittleK saying “thirteen, sixteen, thirteen, sixteen, thirteen, sixteen” while LittleJ tries to get him to count properly, yelling with frustration. I lie there in the bathtub like the shell of who I used to be or maybe like something that came out of the shell that I used to be, I don’t know which it is most days, and I wait for them to find me.
Yours, stapled to the ground but in reach of my computer,
Catherine
When I was younger I was braver than I am now, and I was more selfish, and I was stupider, and I was more fun. I would have laughed at your jokes, even if they weren’t funny, not something I can promise anymore, but if you were a stranger crying in a corner I might have pretended not to notice, whereas now I would go over with a tissue and ask you if you were OK.
I would have been appalled, at fifteen, at twenty, at twenty-five, if I could have seen what my life would become in my thirties. I think I understood even back then that Domesticity had its eye on me. I spent my twenties gallivanting all over the world, eschewing a real career or any real responsibility for / to anything / anyone because I was On The Run from dreaded Domesticity. Not that it mattered. I ran far and wide and had a great many adventures but the run-on-sentence of my adventuresome youth came to a full-stop in a hospital in New Jersey when I looked into the startled eyes of my first child. He looked back at me and proceeded to scream his fucking head off.
I had a baby and everything changed. I changed. I stopped laughing at bad jokes and started carrying tissues. My worst fears expanded with my capacity for love, and it feels sometimes that it is all love and fear now, tangled together like shadow and light. The worst case scenarios now are beyond what I can bear to imagine, it makes me shake just to write that down and I have to stop and breathe, stop and breathe. And maybe I wasn’t very good at love before, I don’t know. I don’t think it’s true for every mother but I think it is often true, and it’s true for me, that this love I have for my children dwarfs every other feeling I have ever had. I see ridiculous headlines sometimes saying things like, “parents are happier than non-parents”, or “the childfree are happier than parents,” and I think that it is so laughable and so absurd to try to frame it that way.
Look, I was happier before. I didn’t have kids because I thought it would make me happy. I kept running around and boarding planes with my visas to this country or that country like get-out-jail-free cards, but as I got older there was more often than not this hilarious, clever man with me – that was a clue, but I didn’t catch on. We shared bed after bed in country after country so how I still thought I was going to escape I don’t know but sometime after I turned thirty this longing opened up in me. I was on a mountain in Peru and I put two leaves on the rock, pointing to another mountain peak as directed, and two rocks on top of them for two wishes. I wished for healthy, happy children. There on top of the world, free as I had ever been, adventure before me and behind me, I wished for children.
There are people who go gallivanting and adventuring with their children and there are people who balance fulfilling (or unfulfilling) careers with parenting, and there are people who are truly happiest giving their days over to the constant care that small children require. But becoming a parent, for reasons logistical, financial and emotional, stapled my feet to the ground, filled me up in ways I never expected and left me starving in equally unpredictable ways. There was a year, after having my second son, when I didn’t sleep. Someday, when it is less raw, I will write a blog post about severe, chronic sleep deprivation and what it does to a person, or at least, what it did to me – how it undid me. Emerging slowly from the other end of that tunnel, I don’t really know who I am anymore, besides mother to these boys, anchor of their world.
But the surprising (to me) thing is that my writing took off with parenthood. I mean, I was writing all along, but I didn’t have much discipline or much ambition. There were long stretches of time when I didn’t write, because I was busy laughing at bad jokes, marveling at the stars in the desert, drinking too much and boarding trains and whatnot. (“I think we’re on the wrong train,” I said, and he said, “There is no wrong train,” and it was true back then). It didn’t matter to me so much if I was writing or not. It was something I liked to do and wanted to do, but I didn’t need it the way I do now. I didn’t need an answer (for myself, because “I’m a writer” is something I have a hard time saying to other people) to the question “What do you do?”
Now, not a day goes by when I don’t write. I complain too much about not having time and kind, sympathetic friends say to me oh it must be so hard to find time to write with the kids and I say oh yes it really is, but the truth is that writing and parenthood have been, mostly, a pretty stellar combination for me. I’m finding time I didn’t find before I had kids, because I need it in a way that I didn’t before I had kids, and because my days and weeks are structured in such a way that there is this time and this time only that I can choose to use in a self-centered way, and that time is so precious I can’t bear to fritter it away.
“Look, you can watch more TV!” I say desperately, and they shout, “No! We want to play!” Kids these days, pfft. I can tune out most of it. The crashing and smashing and shouting and whooping and laughing and even the crying, if it doesn’t go on too long. I pretend that this is a time for them to learn self-sufficiency, and I hear LittleJ adopting my tone and my words when comforting LittleK, kissing his bumps before urging him back to the game, whatever it is. When I close the computer and look up they are grinning at me, having wrecked the apartment, these two gorgeous boys. They say “Do you want to play hide-and-seek?” and I do, and also I don’t, same old story. I say “yes” and go curl myself into the bathtub while they count. I hear LittleK saying “thirteen, sixteen, thirteen, sixteen, thirteen, sixteen” while LittleJ tries to get him to count properly, yelling with frustration. I lie there in the bathtub like the shell of who I used to be or maybe like something that came out of the shell that I used to be, I don’t know which it is most days, and I wait for them to find me.
Yours, stapled to the ground but in reach of my computer,
Catherine
Process & Result
Dear blog,
One day this past winter, or maybe it was early spring, I was at the playground with LittleK and everything was wet because it had been raining. There was only one other mother and tot there. I thought maybe we would chat and alleviate the boredom of the rainy-day playground with not-yet-two-year-olds, but I couldn’t think of anything to say to her and I guess she couldn’t think of anything to say to me either, because we just smiled and didn’t say anything. Then, as she was leaving, she thought of something to say to me. I was helping K climb a ladder and she said: “He’s never going to learn how to do things himself if you help him all the time.”
I sort of wanted to say, well it’s so wet and his boots are too big and he isn’t a very good climber and I am an anxious person and he is more precious to me than my own life and even though I know I can’t and shouldn’t, I want to protect him from every bump and tumble, I can’t help worrying about chipped teeth and bloody chins, but instead I just said, “yes he will,” and of course, a few months later, he climbs the ladder perfectly well on his own.
It bothered me, though. As we splashed our way home through puddles, I was thinking about how before I had kids I had no clue there existed this massive industry peddling various True Paths of Parenting, but once you have kids, it is almost impossible to be unaware of it: attachment parenting and free-range parenting and, god, French parenting, the judgment heaped on “helicopter” parents and Tiger Moms, all of that. The idea behind it all seems to be that if you Do Everything Right you can produce a child (and eventually an adult) who is secure and intelligent and independent and “successful,” whatever that might mean to you. They will not be daunted by the slippery ladders of life if they have been confidently climbing them all along. Or something.
I am as susceptible as anyone to that needling anxiety that I am somehow Doing It All Wrong. With Kid #1, I read a bunch of books, hoping they would tell me how to be a good parent. With Kid #2, as generally happens, I felt much more relaxed. After all, I only had to look at Kid #1 to see that while I may indeed be Doing It All Wrong, he was doing just fine in spite of me.
***
This may not seem related, but it is, so bear with me (if you feel like bearing with me, that is – you could also stop reading this and go do something else, obviously, it’s not like I’m going to know about it): I’m writing a novel. This will be the sixth novel I’ve written. Two of them were terrible – one a jumbled first attempt at a novel, and the other written in a sleep-deprived haze as if I was desperately trying to type my way back towards being a person who could function and write stories. Three others make up The Last Days of Tian Di series. Shade and Sorceress was published by Coteau Books last fall and its sequel, The Unmaking, will be out in September. Approving the final galleys of Shade and Sorceress was the first time I ever had to say of a book I’d written: OK, this is finished. It was terrifying, but thrilling too, to see it finally in book form, with its lovely cover and my name there on the front, knowing I couldn’t change it anymore, that it was really, truly done and I had now put it out into the world, beyond the reach of my edit-itchy fingers. It was my first taste of completion.
Now I am Almost Done something new. Or maybe not, but I think that I am. The first draft came out in a giddy six-week burst of excitement, and it has been through several revisions since. I’ve never found the process (and the revision process in particular) so deeply satisfying before. I’ve never been so sure that I know what I am doing. I find myself enjoying the mechanics of it so much, mapping out the plot in tiny detail and rearranging, cutting, adding, making character background notes for myself, pages of elaborate world-building, all of it. It’s the giddy, joyful feeling of getting better at something you love to do, and now as I get closer to done, I am really proud of it. While I might at times bemoan my limitations, I have a confidence as a writer that I don’t have, could never have, as a parent. I enjoy and I think I am good at the process, the notes and ideas, the outlining, the drafting, the rewriting and revising. I work at it because I love it and if you work at one thing long enough then there is a result: a book!
***
So anyway, maybe LittleK would have learned to climb a ladder sooner if I hadn’t helped him. And I guess this mom at the park who was so disturbed by my helping my kid up a wet ladder that she simply HAD to say something to me about it was trying to make a larger point about children becoming more independent and resourceful people in general if left to do little things like climb ladders by themselves. Maybe that’s true and maybe it isn’t but really, I cannot tell you how little I care. Of course I want my kids to be happy and healthy and kind, now and in the future. There is a kind of startled satisfaction and delight in seeing them sit at the table and eat with forks, and there was much celebration when K was potty-trained and we were Done With Diapers Forevah, there are a million ways in which we watch them grow and learn and change and feel like we had something to do with it and so yay us, but I intensely dislike the idea that childhood is a process and adulthood is the result. It belittles childhood, as if who they are now is secondary to who they might become, and besides, I think it’s a huge waste of energy, trying to carefully mold your child.
I don’t control the narrative here. I can’t go back and revise all my mistakes and while sometimes I wish I could, mostly that’s fine. I am not working towards an ending, laying plot points to carry the story where I want it to go. It goes so fast, this whirlwind of days and nights, the bandaids on knees and the midnight washing of pukey sheets and the crab that startled us jumping out of the oyster shell on the beach and that glorious run down the long grassy hill and I almost had a heart attack this morning when he chased his ball towards the road and now look, just look at them with their heads together over the book, so intent, such a pair, I can’t believe how long their legs are now, or their toenails either, yeesh, I need to find the nail clippers. I’m not really in control of the way it turns out. I may have given birth to them but now they are in the world I am not the author of any of this, I’m just on hand to make sure they eat some vegetables and don’t fall off the playground equipment. We are just trying to have a good time and be kind to each other. It’s busy and messy and frustrating and fun and there is very little time to look back or look forward.
What I mean to say is that I am not at all concerned about how my helping K up a wet ladder may or may not affect some older, future, unimaginable K. They are who they are now and, perhaps unluckily for all of us, I am who I am too, but we love each other beyond measure. I have faith that they will grow up to be kind people, if That Guy and I can manage to be kind to them and to each other. Beyond that, I don’t even know how to think about the future, who they might be, what our lives will look like.
So. JUST in case you are thinking, holy batcow lady, what are you trying to say, this is what I am trying to say: when you are writing a book, there is this process that is partly an end in itself but not really, because the point, the REAL point, is the result: a book. You work on it until it’s done, until it is the book you wanted to write. But when you are taking care of a child, that’s not the way it is at all. It’s all process and then we die. There is no finished product. There is no completion. We are always being and becoming and there is so much beyond our control, so much we are always getting wrong, that sweating the small stuff just means sweating a lot. My conclusion: children are not books and vice versa. You’re welcome.
Yours, always-ready-with-a-radical-philosophy,
Catherine
One day this past winter, or maybe it was early spring, I was at the playground with LittleK and everything was wet because it had been raining. There was only one other mother and tot there. I thought maybe we would chat and alleviate the boredom of the rainy-day playground with not-yet-two-year-olds, but I couldn’t think of anything to say to her and I guess she couldn’t think of anything to say to me either, because we just smiled and didn’t say anything. Then, as she was leaving, she thought of something to say to me. I was helping K climb a ladder and she said: “He’s never going to learn how to do things himself if you help him all the time.”
I sort of wanted to say, well it’s so wet and his boots are too big and he isn’t a very good climber and I am an anxious person and he is more precious to me than my own life and even though I know I can’t and shouldn’t, I want to protect him from every bump and tumble, I can’t help worrying about chipped teeth and bloody chins, but instead I just said, “yes he will,” and of course, a few months later, he climbs the ladder perfectly well on his own.
It bothered me, though. As we splashed our way home through puddles, I was thinking about how before I had kids I had no clue there existed this massive industry peddling various True Paths of Parenting, but once you have kids, it is almost impossible to be unaware of it: attachment parenting and free-range parenting and, god, French parenting, the judgment heaped on “helicopter” parents and Tiger Moms, all of that. The idea behind it all seems to be that if you Do Everything Right you can produce a child (and eventually an adult) who is secure and intelligent and independent and “successful,” whatever that might mean to you. They will not be daunted by the slippery ladders of life if they have been confidently climbing them all along. Or something.
I am as susceptible as anyone to that needling anxiety that I am somehow Doing It All Wrong. With Kid #1, I read a bunch of books, hoping they would tell me how to be a good parent. With Kid #2, as generally happens, I felt much more relaxed. After all, I only had to look at Kid #1 to see that while I may indeed be Doing It All Wrong, he was doing just fine in spite of me.
***
This may not seem related, but it is, so bear with me (if you feel like bearing with me, that is – you could also stop reading this and go do something else, obviously, it’s not like I’m going to know about it): I’m writing a novel. This will be the sixth novel I’ve written. Two of them were terrible – one a jumbled first attempt at a novel, and the other written in a sleep-deprived haze as if I was desperately trying to type my way back towards being a person who could function and write stories. Three others make up The Last Days of Tian Di series. Shade and Sorceress was published by Coteau Books last fall and its sequel, The Unmaking, will be out in September. Approving the final galleys of Shade and Sorceress was the first time I ever had to say of a book I’d written: OK, this is finished. It was terrifying, but thrilling too, to see it finally in book form, with its lovely cover and my name there on the front, knowing I couldn’t change it anymore, that it was really, truly done and I had now put it out into the world, beyond the reach of my edit-itchy fingers. It was my first taste of completion.
Now I am Almost Done something new. Or maybe not, but I think that I am. The first draft came out in a giddy six-week burst of excitement, and it has been through several revisions since. I’ve never found the process (and the revision process in particular) so deeply satisfying before. I’ve never been so sure that I know what I am doing. I find myself enjoying the mechanics of it so much, mapping out the plot in tiny detail and rearranging, cutting, adding, making character background notes for myself, pages of elaborate world-building, all of it. It’s the giddy, joyful feeling of getting better at something you love to do, and now as I get closer to done, I am really proud of it. While I might at times bemoan my limitations, I have a confidence as a writer that I don’t have, could never have, as a parent. I enjoy and I think I am good at the process, the notes and ideas, the outlining, the drafting, the rewriting and revising. I work at it because I love it and if you work at one thing long enough then there is a result: a book!
***
So anyway, maybe LittleK would have learned to climb a ladder sooner if I hadn’t helped him. And I guess this mom at the park who was so disturbed by my helping my kid up a wet ladder that she simply HAD to say something to me about it was trying to make a larger point about children becoming more independent and resourceful people in general if left to do little things like climb ladders by themselves. Maybe that’s true and maybe it isn’t but really, I cannot tell you how little I care. Of course I want my kids to be happy and healthy and kind, now and in the future. There is a kind of startled satisfaction and delight in seeing them sit at the table and eat with forks, and there was much celebration when K was potty-trained and we were Done With Diapers Forevah, there are a million ways in which we watch them grow and learn and change and feel like we had something to do with it and so yay us, but I intensely dislike the idea that childhood is a process and adulthood is the result. It belittles childhood, as if who they are now is secondary to who they might become, and besides, I think it’s a huge waste of energy, trying to carefully mold your child.
I don’t control the narrative here. I can’t go back and revise all my mistakes and while sometimes I wish I could, mostly that’s fine. I am not working towards an ending, laying plot points to carry the story where I want it to go. It goes so fast, this whirlwind of days and nights, the bandaids on knees and the midnight washing of pukey sheets and the crab that startled us jumping out of the oyster shell on the beach and that glorious run down the long grassy hill and I almost had a heart attack this morning when he chased his ball towards the road and now look, just look at them with their heads together over the book, so intent, such a pair, I can’t believe how long their legs are now, or their toenails either, yeesh, I need to find the nail clippers. I’m not really in control of the way it turns out. I may have given birth to them but now they are in the world I am not the author of any of this, I’m just on hand to make sure they eat some vegetables and don’t fall off the playground equipment. We are just trying to have a good time and be kind to each other. It’s busy and messy and frustrating and fun and there is very little time to look back or look forward.
What I mean to say is that I am not at all concerned about how my helping K up a wet ladder may or may not affect some older, future, unimaginable K. They are who they are now and, perhaps unluckily for all of us, I am who I am too, but we love each other beyond measure. I have faith that they will grow up to be kind people, if That Guy and I can manage to be kind to them and to each other. Beyond that, I don’t even know how to think about the future, who they might be, what our lives will look like.
So. JUST in case you are thinking, holy batcow lady, what are you trying to say, this is what I am trying to say: when you are writing a book, there is this process that is partly an end in itself but not really, because the point, the REAL point, is the result: a book. You work on it until it’s done, until it is the book you wanted to write. But when you are taking care of a child, that’s not the way it is at all. It’s all process and then we die. There is no finished product. There is no completion. We are always being and becoming and there is so much beyond our control, so much we are always getting wrong, that sweating the small stuff just means sweating a lot. My conclusion: children are not books and vice versa. You’re welcome.
Yours, always-ready-with-a-radical-philosophy,
Catherine
