Mammabe Writer
When my son was four I made an appointment with a creative writing prof (I won’t mention any names) at the university in my town to talk about entering the program. The prof wore the stereotypical black turtle neck under a tweed coat with patched elbows, and he told me that because I was a mother I’d never write anything. I left spitting mad, muttering something like ‘chauvinist some-kind-of-oinky animal’ under my breath, but his lack of encouragement, his overt disdain for my dreams, did its work and I enrolled in the biology program instead, a far more rigorous degree with labs and field work and which I finished, along with a minor in environmental studies, with an honours designation.
But the desire to write hadn’t left me and a few years later, with a story nagging at me, paragraphs and scenes haunting my sleep and my waking hours, I started my first novel. My situation had changed drastically. I had two children, my daughter eight years old, my son seventeen, and I no longer had a supportive husband. I was a single parent, working as a self-employed contract biologist so I could be at home with my kids. And I had a draughty 1920s era house to look after, and a dog to walk. I thought I must be crazy to consider taking on a project as daunting as writing a novel. But when a friend called to invite me to form a small writer’s group with her and two more of her friends, women I didn’t know, I jumped at the chance. The four of us fumbled our way forward, unsure, getting to know one another, learning to trust. I’ve never felt so encouraged and supported as I did in that group. We read our work aloud to one another, we gave feedback, edited and proofread, and attended readings and other literary events, hungry for knowledge, for the how and the why of writing. We made grand statements, ‘it’s not about publication, its about the process’ and then we’d laugh and say, ‘of course it’s about publication.’ We made rules about giving and receiving feedback, to protect our fragile egos, and we sometimes cried at a particularly beautiful or sad piece of writing. We were in love with the creative process and I think, with each other.
