Check Goodreads or Indiebound, and you’ll find a virtual bookcase of writing guides: books on verse, dialogue, and plot; books for academics, Christians, and preschoolers. Precious few, however, have been created for women. Of course, women don’t always need or want gender-specific writing advice, but for some of life’s changes and challenges—motherhood, for instance—tailored guidance can provide just the right incentive and inspiration.
In the first in our blog series, Three Quick Reviews, we suggest three women-centric books on the craft of writing.
In this excellent guide to creative nonfiction (CNF), Hopper draws on her life as a writing teacher and mother as well as on her memoir, Ready for Air: A Journey Through Premature Motherhood. She covers essential elements of CNF such as finding a voice, choosing a tense, reflecting on personal experience, and getting published. Hopper also advises on aspects particular to mother-writing: dealing with pain and fear, revealing details of family, and finding humor in the everyday. Many examples of published CNF illustrate how these elements work. Enticing exercises invite new writers to get started and experienced writers to hone their craft.
DeMarco-Barrett begins with that gigantic, looming hurdle to a successful writing life: time. We’re busy. We have families and jobs and a messy kitchen and an urgent deadline. When could we possibly write? Now, she says. Write in those few minutes before the kids wake up or that single minute while the kettle boils. You don’t need a quiet morning and a cozy office, just a notebook and determination. In short, engaging chapters, DeMarco-Barrett provides advice on getting organized, avoiding distractions, mining your life for ideas, and polishing your drafts—even if that draft is written on the back of your kid’s homework.
While not explicitly for women, Writing Past Dark, deals with emotional obstacles to the writer’s life felt, perhaps, more keenly by women. Friedman says she wrote the book because “I wanted a companion I could reach for” during the lonely writing process. Historically, women have been lonely, isolated writers indeed. But even now, the new mother who ekes out time for a blog, the single mom who gets up early to write poetry, the MFA mom in the midst of the “ten-year nap” who watches childless colleagues publish books and win awards—these women surely feel the envy, fear, distraction, and paralyzing writer’s block Friedman describes so beautifully.
Do you have a favourite writing guide? Can you recommend a guide for women or mothers? Do you have an idea for our next Three Quick Reviews? Add a comment to this post or email your idea to editor@understoreymagazine.ca
Demeter Press, based in Toronto, has published books on motherhood since 2006. Their catalogue includes fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and many ground-breaking scholarly works. Due to recent loss of grant funding, however, Demeter is at risk of closing. They need support — through books sales — to continue their engaging and important work.
birth of the uncool, published by Demeter in 2014, is a stunning collection of poetry by Canadian writer Madeline Walker. Based on Walker’s lifelong quest to be “elegant, distant, hip, and stylish,” the book explores her embrace of uncool in her fiftieth year. The following is from her chapter on motherhood (reprinted with permission).
Genealogy
I know the gene bequeathed
is not my fault.
I ask forgiveness anyway.
Scientists announced
they’d almost isolated the little fucker in their
slick white labs. If only I could
have swiped out that gene,
surreptitiously, from the soup
that made you, spliced in
something else — and extra love gene
perhaps.
But then, what loss? What might
we have missed? Your smoky
intensity, blue depths, brooding
passions? Your courage to climb out of the
tar pit? The wisdom that comes of suffering?
Demeter’s books are 50% off until July 15. See their catalogue or Facebook page for more information.
No doubt you’ve been asked, perhaps by a partner, an acquaintance, your own child returning from school: “What did you do today?”
Maybe you have asked yourself: What have I done today? What have I achieved?
How do you respond?
“I sold two paintings.”
“I closed a deal.”
“I ran 10K.”
Do you respond with the big things we tend to count as true accomplishments or the smaller things, the hundreds of smaller things we do every day?
“I made coffee, fed the cat, took out the garbage and washed the kitchen bin, put in a load of laundry, helped three boys make their breakfast, swept Rice Chex off the floor, wiped jam from the chair backs, unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher, made three (different) school lunches, and pumped a flat bike tire… all before 8 am.”
Not world-changing.
Not glamourous.
Sometimes not even noticed.
But necessary.
We “do” so much as mothers, caregivers, partners, working women. Our days are filled with accomplishments both monumental and mundane. For some we receive, or allow ourselves recognition; for many we do not. For some we feel satisfaction and pride; for others guilt, resentment or sheer boredom.
We invite you to keep track—for an hour, a day, a week—of what you do. Not a “to-do” but an “I’ve-done” list. Send your list to Understorey and we will publish it on our new blog (anonymously, if you prefer). See our contact page for addresses.
In his book Material World, Peter Menzel documented possessions; households around the world were emptied onto the street and photographed. In What I Eat, Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio documented the daily food intake of people from diverse cultures and backgrounds. And in Where Children Sleep, James Mollison captured the sad and startling places children rest at night.
In a similar way, the “I’ve done” lists are meant as art of the everyday, a literary gallery of the number and diversity of womens’ daily achievements. The lists are also a way for all women—writers and non-writers, from Nova Scotia and away—to contribute to the magazine. Not a competition but a celebration. Not a challenge but a small tribute to ourselves and each other.
I met poet Alice Burdick on a snowy morning at the Biscuit Eater Café in Mahone Bay. We sat in winter sun made cozy by the scent of baking, Latin tunes on the CD player, and shelves stacked high with books, including Alice’s latest collection, Holler.
We planned to talk poetry and motherhood but first took a few minutes to enjoy lattes, muffins, and marvel of leaving the house. It has been a cold winter in Nova Scotia with a lot of storms and school closures, times Alice spends at home with her children, Hazel, aged 6, and Arthur, 4.
Alice Burdick: I usually write at home, even when the kids are at school, but I do miss those days of leisurely writing in cafés like this one.
Katherine Barrett: When did you start writing poetry?
Alice: I took an extra-curricular writing course in high school called The Dream Class. It was run the by the Toronto school board, taught by Victor Coleman, and introduced me to the major poets and poetry movements of the twentieth century. I got hooked and later started making my own chapbooks—complete with hand-painted covers and pages—and selling them at book fairs and bookshops.
Katherine: And you’ve published a lot since then.
Alice: Yes, several chapbooks, three full-length poetry collections, and poems in literary magazines across Canada.
Katherine: How has motherhood changed your writing practice?
Alice: Other than spending less time in cafés? I’m much more focused than I was before kids, I just sit down and write. I treat it like a job and that way I’ve kept writing straight through motherhood, even when the kids were babies. I have to write to feel fully human.
Katherine: Your latest collection, Holler, contains many poems about children and mothering.
Alice: More than my previous collections, yes, and readers have said Holler is my most accessible book. I’m not sure how those two points are linked but it likely has to do with the immediacy of motherhood.
Body House
(from Holler)
Hazel stands in front of me
and points to her eyes.
They are windows, her ears,
they are windows, and her mouth,
she says it’s a door.
Her body is a house,
and she’s home
for now.
Katherine: Tell me about “Body House.”
Alice: My daughter, Hazel, was about three when she came to me with these pronouncements about her eyes, ears, and mouth. I saw her trying to situate herself, her body, in the world; trying to process the information that flows in and out. Three is such an innocent age, free of insecurities about bodies but I know that she’ll one day become aware of how others see her. That’s why I added “for now.”
Ghost Feet
(from Holler)
Please make me a book
from salad and tears. I cry at condiments.
My ghost feet light up the sidewalk.
Will you forget a book or a person so easily?
Arthur makes a series of sounds
that will one day be words.
He gets his point across
the floor, straight to the cat’s dish.
Katherine: To me “Ghost Feet” is about that crazy headspace of motherhood. Why am I crying at condiments? No, my kid is crying at condiments. We’re both crying. Never mind because there goes Arthur to the cat dish….
Alice: I’d say a lot of the poems in Holler share that quality: the brain on tangents brought home by the physicality of parenting. But “Ghost Feet” actually started with Michael Jackson. A friend challenged me to write about him; a “literal” video for Billie Jean and the line “my ghost feet light up the sidewalk” stuck in my head. So the poem is a reverie of sorts: the beauty of life; our quick acceptance of its disappearance; and the everyday strangeness of kids and parenting.
Katherine: What are you working on now?
Alice: I have a new poetry manuscript in the works. I’m also trying my hand at collaborative fiction, co-writing with another author. And now that the kids are a little older, I’ve started carrying my notebook around again, taking notes. We’ll see where it all goes.
