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978-0-7735-3377-6 April 2008
The grand prize winner is Annette Yourk for her piece "Mothering the Writer". Honourable mention goes to both Linda Langwith's "The Double Helix of Writing and Motherhood" and Kris Wright's untitled submission have each earned runner-up positions.
Mothering the Writer– by Annette Yourk
It's 5:30 a.m. My daughter is away and my son is at the sleep-as-career stage, but I've sought pre-dawn solitude for so many years, I still choose this time to come to the page. My head is not yet jammed with requests to fulfill, problems to solve, decisions to make and lists to conquer. My ears, not yet assaulted by tears, tantrums and pleadings to play. The pleadings to play have dwindled, of course. In their place, metal and hip hop renditions of amplified adolescence by /Arch Enemy, Pendulum/ and /Dilated People/. Sometimes it's difficult to complete a thought, let alone a manuscript.
I've grown to love the womb-like time of early morning. Just me and the hum of the house. Lucy, the collie, rests her nose on my knee. A few moments of affection, and she goes back to clocking 18 hours of daily sleep. Nothing distracts /her/ from her life's work.
The fizzle of desire at the sound of a crying child or his unexpected appearance at the marital bed is like the fizzle of creativity at their expectant appearance in the middle of focused work. Coitus interruptus may be an ineffective method of birth control, but such interruptions in writing are highly effective in aborting creative conceptions. The math is simple: writer plus family equals less writing time. However (here's where I strut my elementary math homework skills), the equation reversed can have a positive effect. Less writing time minus family can equal a more driven writer.
I've stuck fast to writing because the rest of my life – fragmented, parceled up and spoken for – will happily take it away. My identity and work as a mother is obvious, constant, written all over me. My identity as a writer is a hard won refuge, renewal and outlet. It's a necessity.
The alarm clock /must/ be set.
The other necessity is so down-to-earth I sound like my /own/ mother:
stability on the home front. Routines of sleep and meals and basic household maintenance help keep everyone sane. Routines get dropped from chaotic time to time, but they are grounding and sustaining when we restore them. Less stressed family equals less stressed writer.
My most cherished strategy for nurturing the writer is retreat. I load the car with a plastic crate of essential reference books and other work tools; poetry to ignite but not distract the imagination. I pack cozy, unflattering clothes, simple food like brown rice, vegetables and chocolate. Then I'm set for a few days or a blessed week. Just me and a rustic cabin on the beach. My destination is a mere ten minutes from where I live but, once there, I enter a parallel universe. I rise, write, walk; eat, write, walk; eat, read, sleep.
How I relish those withdrawals from the demands of daily living. I wish they were more frequent. Between times, I rise early and find my solitude in the peaceful availability of the morning.
The Double Helix of Writing and Motherhood -by Linda M. Langwith
Raising a family and being a writer come with their own challenges and rewards. While it would seem that being a mum would make it more difficult to be a writer, I believe that it is through parenthood I really found my voice as an artist. When my children were babies, my writing was confined to notebooks in which I hastily scribbled during nap time (if I were lucky enough to get all three to sleep at the same time). Somehow I managed to write a novel and three sequels using this method. But it was not until my last child entered kindergarten that I was finally able to type up the manuscripts and begin to work on them. Having only a small window in the day to write was great because I knew I had to get right down to it—procrastination was not in the cards. Cooking, cleaning, laundry and gardening took up the rest of whatever available time I had, after having fun with the kids.
I still didn’t have the luxury of a room of my own in which to write. That would come much later, once the basement was transformed from a dungeon to habitable space.
The computer, when we finally bought one, was positioned in the firing line between the living room and the family room. If I was going to continue writing I had to literally do it in the bosom of my family. By this time the kids were older and now in school. The days of nappies, disrupted sleep, feedings, teethings and toilet training were all behind me. But each stage of our children’s lives come with its own set of demands. To cook, gardener and cleaner was added chauffeur and homework helper. My trio was interested in what mum was doing at the computer, so I started reading everyone a chapter each time I finished, to choruses of more and more. The keyboard steamed as the plot sizzled. I was on a roll and churned out chapter after chapter.
Then I arrived at that blissful state of a room of my own. The relative peace and quiet is perfect for revision, but I find I don’t write quite with the same sizzling speed as I once did when surrounded by all the distractions of family life. Time has a way of filling a vacuum. My children are grown up now –one is studying abroad, one is a student in another province, while the third is a soldier and a student. One thing hasn’t changed though—they still love to read my creations. So maybe it was just as well that my writing was such a public thing when they were small.
Being a parent demands everything one has to give and more, just as do my artistic endeavors. Motherhood has truly been the crucible for my writing and enabled me to fulfill my dream of becoming a published author.
Untitled -by Kris Wright
I feel an intense wave of pleasure wash over me as I drive onto the university campus. Although this place is part of me, I haven’t been in the library for almost ten years. Another motherhood-induced detour.
Going to the library was a ritual of my young motherhood. In my mind’s eye I can see myself — waiting with a two year old boy dressed in footed pajamas, baby on my hip, supper in the oven. My husband arrives home, I kiss everyone goodbye and then I am off to the library. Not the one up at the university — the public library. There I lose myself in fiction and non-fiction — Margaret Atwood, Carol Shields, Jane Urquhart, toddler nutrition, Moosewood cookbooks, Harrowsmith magazine. I inhale it all — lose myself in the pages, returning home with an armload of books that will be read while I nurse, dry dishes and can tomatoes.
But today I am going to the university library. I need a volume of The Journal of American History for a newly begun writing project and can only get it here. I park and walk across campus — retracing a path that I have walked a hundred times. I sit down at a computer terminal to get the call number. I know exactly where the periodicals are; but I can’t remember the journal’s exact location. I feel like a student!
I rummage in my purse for a pen and pull out an unused pregnancy test that I had bought in a panic and then not needed. Blushing furiously, I stuff it back down, fearful that it will betray who I really am. I look around furtively — no one has noticed. Why am I even worried? I am probably surrounded by people who are far more sexually active than me. I’m a 35 year old mother of four, for goodness sake!
I get the call number and jubilantly run up the stairs two at a time to the second floor where the periodicals are stored. But when I arrive, I am greeted with another shock. Books — not journals! The library has been renovated and things have been re-arranged.
Slightly deflated, I wander back down to the main floor, find a librarian, discover the new location and try again. This time I am rewarded, not only by the particular issue I am looking for, but by the joy of being back in the stacks. Familiar periodicals greet me like old friends. I reverently finger new journals and lose myself in titles that I have never seen or heard of before. Time stands still.
A few hours later, I join a crowd of students leaving the library. I am carrying a new armload of books and some freshly photocopied articles. I realize that I am no longer the student I once was. In fact, I am probably older than some professors on campus.
But that doesn’t matter. My heart pounds, my mind reels … I am dizzy with the possibilities.
I dream of my own carrel as I drive home to make dinner.
I really liked L. LLangwiths story so much. She conveyed the struggle to parent well while striving to be there for her kids. She said so much with so few words. A good writer, and ambitious to succeed…