Per your question #1, Ros: I wrote 75 computer books as a single mother of three. Most of my first book, The Little Mac Book, was written with my baby daughter, my third child, in my lap propped on my knee, nursing, while I typed over her head. ;-)
A book I read years ago about women's work showed that a [single] woman's work historically has three requirements: it is safe, portable, and interruptible. My own work made me realize I was part of the continuum of women throughout history who have to find a way to take care of their little ones on their own—fortunately I could write instead of bringing in laundry and mending.
Robin, I love this - and that you are getting love from your readers in these comments! I hadn’t realised we had this in common, that the first books we both wrote were written while nursing out third babies, typing over the top of their heads!
Of course yours went on to be a big hit and mine didn’t even get published, but it was a start. Inspirational that you have written so many and helped so many people.
This is brilliant, Ros. I'm sorry you've got a misogynist on your heels though. When my three were little I was more focused then I've ever been since. If I had half an hour I got straight down to writing, no room for procrastination, and that's how I wrote my novel, in tiny bits of time that I managed to grab here and there.
Funny, putting "helped raise 5 girls" on my resume" didn't get me a single job! Over the course of several years. But we men have created an intolerable situation for women, and sex is "a shining artifact of the past" as Leonard Cohen once said, I'm slightly twisting his meaning (and he had his own issues). So I will now shut up and walk away, having nothing to add of any value. Except maybe one thing. As Substack gets flooded with celebs, the trolls 🧌 are flooding in too
When I saw that Note in my feed, I wanted to go back in time to show up in that room and say, “If that’s true, exactly the same is true about men. The only thing driving men is getting some action. Everything men have built since the beginning of time is just to keep little Willie happy. Men are only animals without free will, fooling themselves into thinking they matter in some way besides just being a sperm donor who can bring home bacon.”
I was upset for you for about 15 minutes and decided to just stay out of it!
I’m so sorry you (and other women) have to put up with this shit, Ros. It’s mind-boggling to me that so many men think and act this way. I’m glad you’re calling them out.
Ros, I’ve noticed virality brings trolls. The topic almost doesn’t matter. I recently had a note go viral about an encounter with a cranky employee at a fabric store that’s going out of business that turned into a lovely moment of genuine kindness and connection. The person said my note sounded like a fake Amazon review, that I was clearly lying about going to a vampire ball and demanded to know how much I had been paid to write my note 🤣🤣 To what end? I wanted to ask. How did you manage to find something to hate about a story about empathy? 🤦🏻♀️ I feel like it’s a bunch of hurt shadow artists who resent the success of others with a fiery passion. I wish they understood that going viral is just about luck and doesn’t necessarily mean we’re crushing it at the writing game (even if, in your case, you kinda are 😉)
I remember that Note, it was great, Jennie. Bonkers to get a troll even for that. “Hurt shadow artists” is a great phrase. If only they understood that envy holds you exactly where you are.
What a perfect quote. “Envy holds you exactly where you are.” I’d like to drop that in response to haters in the future but it will probably just set them on fire 🤷🏻♀️
My creativity flourished with the birth of my daughter. Giving birth makes you feel like you've done something no human in earth has ever done before, so you must be able to do anything.
I also invited a lot of butt hurt boys to my yard with a pro-feminism note, and stupidly felt the obligation (the irony) to respond to their ridiculousness. It taught me the art of a good block!
In Australia, we have recently enacted heavier laws for hate crime, mostly at the behest of the Israel lobby but they have also been used to target online hate of Muslims, I’d like to see them extended to cover misogyny because quite frankly, that's more of a problem n this country. In Australia, we lose 125 women to femicide, mostly by intimate partners but also a fair proportion of other men in their social circles.
I completed Uni, had a couple of journal articles printed and some poems and short stories published in local anthologies while single parenting 4 kids.
Given your list is from medieval times, made me think of something I have often contemplated- the privelege of education. My great grandmothers were still signing their wedding agreements with an X while Emily Dickinson was writing her stuff (disclosure- I am not a fan of privilege). Their lives would have been infinitely more full of hard life experience and I often wonder what poems they wrote in their minds while working on farms, having children every two years and burying some of them, etc etc.
Not trying to derail the gender issue which clearly seems to be worsening at the moment, maybe due to women being educated and able to have their voices heard, including online, thus men having to evolve emotionally, which many are successfully doing!
Education was also more likely prioritised for boys in days gone by, thus enabling their voices and opinions to be broadcast more easily and influence gained. Also applies to religion…
This belief that feminists hate men is perpetuated by men who it serves? It’s their way of painting all women with the same brush. By radicalizing them, they try to diminish them.
I have been creative before children, while with my children, and with them out of the house. There really is no belief about it either way. I do not need to have one.
Loved this post. ❤️ I loved Still Life with Woodpecker, too, when I was a teenager. :) Becoming a full-time stepmum four years ago profoundly threw off all of my regular writing practice habits, but the river of creativity kept flowing and flowing under the surface of my daily domestic life. I got so, so, so sad, the farther away I felt from it. But I don’t regret all the love I poured into my stepson. I think it was a journey for me to learn how to include my inner writer as another one of my “children” I needed to look after and honour. It was just always a tough choice, deciding how to allot time and energy each day. My stepson has gone off to uni this year, and I’m gradually finding my way back to the riverside. 🪷
I’m so glad you are finding your way back to writing, Joy. Nurturing yourself is so hard when in full-on parenting. I love that you also loved Still Life With Woodpecker back in the day!
Great article as always. Sorry about the deranged misogynist hopefully he will soon lose interest and maybe enrol in a creative writing course. Re. The questions 1) I don’t have kids, so no idea if having them would have made me more or less creative although I would certainly be poorer 2) I have never attracted too much attention - I am far too boring and afraid of sticking my head above the parapet 3) hard one and I do have a tendency to roll my eyes when I hear what a hard time young men are having. Sticking the Tate brothers in prison would be a good start and maybe bringing back old style youth clubs where young people, male and female, can socialise in person rather than on their phones (it’s much harder to hate women and girls if you actually know some). Perhaps we should ask the deranged misogynist what he thinks?
Laughed out loud ... you have to be pretty thick-skinned as a writer! As for experiences of combining creativity and parenthood, I performed poetry live with my son in a sling on my chest and wrote and self-published my first book while single mothering my son from ages 4 to 9, a book which happens to be about motherhood, creativity and spiritual development, based on my own experience and research including interviewing other mothers (it's called 'Wild Motherhood: Tending the Fire of Your Creative Spirit' by Morgan Nichols). I got into writing online when my son was six months old. As in your story, motherhood was the catalyst to stepping out of the work grind and becoming the writer I'd always wanted to be. I also used to run creative writing workshops for mothers themed around the motherhood experience, which was a lot of fun.
Excellent questions. Excellent article too, thanks. Sorry about the 🧌.
1. Parenthood - the actually wanting to see my children at all part of it - ended my career, which has given me space to find creativity and this has brought new purpose to my life. Things work out as they’re supposed to. Or something.
2. Not yet. Hopefully a way off that. It’s a definite downside of trying to build a creative career.
3. A huge question. It comes down to redefining every patriarchal system that our society is built on, so I guess you’d have to lead from the front. A culture change in Parliament where disagreements are constructive and productive rather than boorish would be a good start. Diversity of thought is not just welcome but necessary, but I don’t understand why discussion has to be based on an adversarial pissing contest, to put it bluntly! Cross party working, true collaboration, servant leadership. That sort of thing would probably help.
I laughed my ass off. I like your snark. Also I'm a numbers person too, lots of database work so number crunch away, and the graphs!
That guy is wasting so much of his own time being an asshat, seriously, guy go do something else. Dishes, clean your garage, anything that's just a total waste of your time, maybe write something!
Once upon a time, when I was much much younger, I was schooled in feminism by a man. I had read a quote from some elder musician – one of the old rockers like Alice Cooper or similar – saying something like "women don't have the same drive to make music because they can make the ultimate creation" – and I thought it was interesting. I told my friend and her boyfriend about it and while she also though it sounded feasible, he was absolutely incensed. Turned out, he worked with a lot of female musicians who were struggling to get their voices heard. He gave a quite frustrated speech about systemic sexism in the industry and all the things stacked against a woman wanting to succeed and I came away wiser (and happy to learn women aren't just biologically less inclined to make art).
Years later, I had kids and realised I HAD actually lost a lot of my artistic ambition and was happy just being paid to do corporate work and spend the rest of the time doing personal crafty things. I worried that the elder musician might have had a point after all.
But then the babies grew into little girls and I realised I wanted more than anything to them that I wasn't just a corporate wage slave, that I was creative like daddy was. So I'm putting the second act down to extreme tiredness and a desire, above all, to just earn money so we could keep existing. Luckily, the third act has proved my friend's (now) husband absolutely correct. Having babies has made me want to be MORE creative, not less.
Per your question #1, Ros: I wrote 75 computer books as a single mother of three. Most of my first book, The Little Mac Book, was written with my baby daughter, my third child, in my lap propped on my knee, nursing, while I typed over her head. ;-)
A book I read years ago about women's work showed that a [single] woman's work historically has three requirements: it is safe, portable, and interruptible. My own work made me realize I was part of the continuum of women throughout history who have to find a way to take care of their little ones on their own—fortunately I could write instead of bringing in laundry and mending.
Robin, I love this - and that you are getting love from your readers in these comments! I hadn’t realised we had this in common, that the first books we both wrote were written while nursing out third babies, typing over the top of their heads!
Of course yours went on to be a big hit and mine didn’t even get published, but it was a start. Inspirational that you have written so many and helped so many people.
Robin! Your book was a huge find for me when I bought my first Mac. That you wrote it whilst mothering makes it even more amazing. Thank you 🙏🏻
Robin, “The Non-Desginer’s Design Book” was incredibly helpful to me. It’s so nice to see you on here.
This is so cool! Robin and I have been friends for years and I love that she’s getting love from you and Carol in the comments :-)
Oh wow, I had no idea. That’s wild!
Could you share the book title that discusses women’s work with the three requirements?
This is brilliant, Ros. I'm sorry you've got a misogynist on your heels though. When my three were little I was more focused then I've ever been since. If I had half an hour I got straight down to writing, no room for procrastination, and that's how I wrote my novel, in tiny bits of time that I managed to grab here and there.
Funny, putting "helped raise 5 girls" on my resume" didn't get me a single job! Over the course of several years. But we men have created an intolerable situation for women, and sex is "a shining artifact of the past" as Leonard Cohen once said, I'm slightly twisting his meaning (and he had his own issues). So I will now shut up and walk away, having nothing to add of any value. Except maybe one thing. As Substack gets flooded with celebs, the trolls 🧌 are flooding in too
When I saw that Note in my feed, I wanted to go back in time to show up in that room and say, “If that’s true, exactly the same is true about men. The only thing driving men is getting some action. Everything men have built since the beginning of time is just to keep little Willie happy. Men are only animals without free will, fooling themselves into thinking they matter in some way besides just being a sperm donor who can bring home bacon.”
I was upset for you for about 15 minutes and decided to just stay out of it!
Thanks, Tim! 14-year old me could definitely have done with some support in that room. Some very good points you would have delivered too!
I can't help but notice the correlary, Tim. Men aren't very creative because Willie only wants to make babies (or at least TRY REALLY HARD).
I’m so sorry you (and other women) have to put up with this shit, Ros. It’s mind-boggling to me that so many men think and act this way. I’m glad you’re calling them out.
Ros, I’ve noticed virality brings trolls. The topic almost doesn’t matter. I recently had a note go viral about an encounter with a cranky employee at a fabric store that’s going out of business that turned into a lovely moment of genuine kindness and connection. The person said my note sounded like a fake Amazon review, that I was clearly lying about going to a vampire ball and demanded to know how much I had been paid to write my note 🤣🤣 To what end? I wanted to ask. How did you manage to find something to hate about a story about empathy? 🤦🏻♀️ I feel like it’s a bunch of hurt shadow artists who resent the success of others with a fiery passion. I wish they understood that going viral is just about luck and doesn’t necessarily mean we’re crushing it at the writing game (even if, in your case, you kinda are 😉)
I remember that Note, it was great, Jennie. Bonkers to get a troll even for that. “Hurt shadow artists” is a great phrase. If only they understood that envy holds you exactly where you are.
What a perfect quote. “Envy holds you exactly where you are.” I’d like to drop that in response to haters in the future but it will probably just set them on fire 🤷🏻♀️
Yep, I suspect it would be lost on them.
I remember reading that post and I thought it was great! It made me smile.
Thank you so much, Helen 🩵
My creativity flourished with the birth of my daughter. Giving birth makes you feel like you've done something no human in earth has ever done before, so you must be able to do anything.
I also invited a lot of butt hurt boys to my yard with a pro-feminism note, and stupidly felt the obligation (the irony) to respond to their ridiculousness. It taught me the art of a good block!
In Australia, we have recently enacted heavier laws for hate crime, mostly at the behest of the Israel lobby but they have also been used to target online hate of Muslims, I’d like to see them extended to cover misogyny because quite frankly, that's more of a problem n this country. In Australia, we lose 125 women to femicide, mostly by intimate partners but also a fair proportion of other men in their social circles.
I completed Uni, had a couple of journal articles printed and some poems and short stories published in local anthologies while single parenting 4 kids.
Given your list is from medieval times, made me think of something I have often contemplated- the privelege of education. My great grandmothers were still signing their wedding agreements with an X while Emily Dickinson was writing her stuff (disclosure- I am not a fan of privilege). Their lives would have been infinitely more full of hard life experience and I often wonder what poems they wrote in their minds while working on farms, having children every two years and burying some of them, etc etc.
Not trying to derail the gender issue which clearly seems to be worsening at the moment, maybe due to women being educated and able to have their voices heard, including online, thus men having to evolve emotionally, which many are successfully doing!
Education was also more likely prioritised for boys in days gone by, thus enabling their voices and opinions to be broadcast more easily and influence gained. Also applies to religion…
It’s all so interwoven. 🤯
Yes, the exclusion of women from education has had a huge impact of the historical imbalance between men and women in the arts, well said, Sarah.
This belief that feminists hate men is perpetuated by men who it serves? It’s their way of painting all women with the same brush. By radicalizing them, they try to diminish them.
I have been creative before children, while with my children, and with them out of the house. There really is no belief about it either way. I do not need to have one.
I’m Creative. So I Create.☀️
´By radicalizing them, they try to diminish them.´ Spot on, Nicole.
Loved this post. ❤️ I loved Still Life with Woodpecker, too, when I was a teenager. :) Becoming a full-time stepmum four years ago profoundly threw off all of my regular writing practice habits, but the river of creativity kept flowing and flowing under the surface of my daily domestic life. I got so, so, so sad, the farther away I felt from it. But I don’t regret all the love I poured into my stepson. I think it was a journey for me to learn how to include my inner writer as another one of my “children” I needed to look after and honour. It was just always a tough choice, deciding how to allot time and energy each day. My stepson has gone off to uni this year, and I’m gradually finding my way back to the riverside. 🪷
I’m so glad you are finding your way back to writing, Joy. Nurturing yourself is so hard when in full-on parenting. I love that you also loved Still Life With Woodpecker back in the day!
Great article as always. Sorry about the deranged misogynist hopefully he will soon lose interest and maybe enrol in a creative writing course. Re. The questions 1) I don’t have kids, so no idea if having them would have made me more or less creative although I would certainly be poorer 2) I have never attracted too much attention - I am far too boring and afraid of sticking my head above the parapet 3) hard one and I do have a tendency to roll my eyes when I hear what a hard time young men are having. Sticking the Tate brothers in prison would be a good start and maybe bringing back old style youth clubs where young people, male and female, can socialise in person rather than on their phones (it’s much harder to hate women and girls if you actually know some). Perhaps we should ask the deranged misogynist what he thinks?
Laughed out loud ... you have to be pretty thick-skinned as a writer! As for experiences of combining creativity and parenthood, I performed poetry live with my son in a sling on my chest and wrote and self-published my first book while single mothering my son from ages 4 to 9, a book which happens to be about motherhood, creativity and spiritual development, based on my own experience and research including interviewing other mothers (it's called 'Wild Motherhood: Tending the Fire of Your Creative Spirit' by Morgan Nichols). I got into writing online when my son was six months old. As in your story, motherhood was the catalyst to stepping out of the work grind and becoming the writer I'd always wanted to be. I also used to run creative writing workshops for mothers themed around the motherhood experience, which was a lot of fun.
Oh and you were one of my big inspirations back then, when I lived in Brighton and saw you perform your poems live!
Oh wow, that’s lovely to hear, thanks, Morgana! I love how you, too, used motherhood to step into the creative life you dreamed of.
Excellent questions. Excellent article too, thanks. Sorry about the 🧌.
1. Parenthood - the actually wanting to see my children at all part of it - ended my career, which has given me space to find creativity and this has brought new purpose to my life. Things work out as they’re supposed to. Or something.
2. Not yet. Hopefully a way off that. It’s a definite downside of trying to build a creative career.
3. A huge question. It comes down to redefining every patriarchal system that our society is built on, so I guess you’d have to lead from the front. A culture change in Parliament where disagreements are constructive and productive rather than boorish would be a good start. Diversity of thought is not just welcome but necessary, but I don’t understand why discussion has to be based on an adversarial pissing contest, to put it bluntly! Cross party working, true collaboration, servant leadership. That sort of thing would probably help.
I laughed my ass off. I like your snark. Also I'm a numbers person too, lots of database work so number crunch away, and the graphs!
That guy is wasting so much of his own time being an asshat, seriously, guy go do something else. Dishes, clean your garage, anything that's just a total waste of your time, maybe write something!
Some people. 🤦
Haha, thanks my friend. Snark mode and numbers made me happy this week.
Thank you!
Once upon a time, when I was much much younger, I was schooled in feminism by a man. I had read a quote from some elder musician – one of the old rockers like Alice Cooper or similar – saying something like "women don't have the same drive to make music because they can make the ultimate creation" – and I thought it was interesting. I told my friend and her boyfriend about it and while she also though it sounded feasible, he was absolutely incensed. Turned out, he worked with a lot of female musicians who were struggling to get their voices heard. He gave a quite frustrated speech about systemic sexism in the industry and all the things stacked against a woman wanting to succeed and I came away wiser (and happy to learn women aren't just biologically less inclined to make art).
Years later, I had kids and realised I HAD actually lost a lot of my artistic ambition and was happy just being paid to do corporate work and spend the rest of the time doing personal crafty things. I worried that the elder musician might have had a point after all.
But then the babies grew into little girls and I realised I wanted more than anything to them that I wasn't just a corporate wage slave, that I was creative like daddy was. So I'm putting the second act down to extreme tiredness and a desire, above all, to just earn money so we could keep existing. Luckily, the third act has proved my friend's (now) husband absolutely correct. Having babies has made me want to be MORE creative, not less.
This is a great story, Katie. Love that you found the creative engine in there.