Perhaps like most people, I feel both envy and admiration for those who practice the same craft I do. In a self-pitying mood, I recognize the tendency toward over-simplification. Take Craig Mod’s road to authorship for example. It looks like magic from here. But no. In an interview with Offscreen Magazine he says: “I wouldn’t wish my journey to that point on anyone. It was a pretty shitty (a self-imposed kind of shitty, an of-the-own-mind kind of shitty) journey, and in hindsight, there were definitely easier roads which I chose not to take for whatever reasons. It was not an overnight success story.”
The boys are talking noisily outside because they’ve been given the task of getting the dog to pee by the apple tree. They are amused and a little afraid of his unpredictable puppy antics. One of the boys tries to entice him toward the tree by crinkling an old water bottle in which the dog is completely disinterested. He pees but not at the tree, and now there is an eruption of squeals and laughter, because, I suppose, he’s decided to run around in the backyard.
This is the life our house is bursting with right now. I struggle to remember even five years back, or ten years back. My brother and his wife are buying an exer-saucer for their son and I was startled to realize that not so long ago it was a permanent feature in our downstairs bathroom, so that one of us could take a shower while the baby was entertained.
I read an essay by Daniel Mendelsohn titled “Not Afraid of Virginia Woolf” in which he compares Mrs Dalloway (the novel) to The Hours (the film adaptation). He writes that in the film, one of the characters named Laura “decided to abandon her family after the birth of her
second child” only to move to Toronto to become a librarian. He concludes that it’s an example of the women being strong, “who choose life, who survive.” But I don’t believe him, or rather, I don’t believe the film-maker’s idea of women being strong. After all, Mendelsohn writes, “what the makers of the film are doing, it occurs to you, is exactly what Woolf worried that men did in their fictional representations of women: [they are] seeing women from the perspective of men.”
In a podcast interview with Ann Patchet, the hosts get into the details of a novel this author wrote and finished and discarded because she knew it was bad. “How?” they asked her. She answered: What I realized is that women can't be forgiven for leaving their children for spiritual reasons. (...) I was operating from an intellectual point of view and not an emotional one... and not thinking 'what would this actually be like'. (26:15 minutes in).
I am writing from here. My view contains family. And each time I’m tempted to write “excuse the family; excuse the mess and distraction and noise” I have to stop. It’s not fair to the family or myself.