I'll Take the Pethidine Now, Thanks...

There's a common trope in writing circles. It gets trotted out all the time, is massively overused, and is something I've resorted to a few times myself. It's the idea that writing a book is like having a baby. 

It seems writing a book is like... a  painful, 
bloody, dog-eat-dog, dystopian world?As a happily child-free grown up, I'm in no real position to understand whether there's any merit to this comparison. But I've seen it made so many times, by women and men with kids, as w...