By Jane Sullivan
Hooray for Overland magazine, which is offering a 2016 writer's residency to a woman with perhaps the most desperate shortage of time, space and resources for writing: a sole primary carer of one or more children.
The successful applicant will get an office at Victoria University "with enough space to accommodate small children if necessary"; a $6000 stipend; and a mentorship with writer Alison Croggon, all spread over three months. If you want to apply, be quick: entries should be in by midnight tomorrow (May 29).
Novelist Kim Brooks: Credit: Sarah Shatz
It should be pretty obvious why a sole parent would find this residency such a godsend, but in any case Overland tells us that research by organisations such as VIDA, the Stella Prize and Women in Literary Arts Australia has shown that women writers often struggle to find the time and space to concentrate on their craft. If they are also sole parents, they might find themselves increasingly isolated and their creative careers marginalised.
A couple of recent articles by American writers offer some disturbing personal ruminations on not just practical but also philosophical difficulties of being a writer and a mother (and these aren't even sole parents).
Novelist Diana Abu-Jaber. Credit: Scott Eason
Kim Brooks and Diana Abu-Jaber are both novelists and memoirists with many years' experience. They both began writing when young, with high ideals and optimism, then had their first doubtful moments about how to combine domestic and creative work at college.
In New York magazine, Brooks relates how her class at the Iowa Writers' Worskhop was invited to their revered professor's home, which smelled of milk and was cluttered with small children's mess. Something was wrong, she thought: "The thing going on, of course, was Parenthood, in all its unliterary, unromantic glory … I knew I'd never see my teacher in quite the same way again."
On the Literary Hub website, Abu-Jaber relates how 20 years ago, she had to combat a male teacher's assumptions. The novelist who was her dissertation director asked her: "If you had to choose between never ever seeing your family again and never writing again, which would you pick?" Taken aback, she fumbled an answer about not believing in the choice between making art and having a life. She was also advised more than once not to have children.
The two writers have devised different ways of coming to terms with art versus domesticity. Brooks asked a friend why writing seemed to be in such conflict with parenting, and received a reply she instantly knew was true: "Because the point of art is to unsettle, to question, to disturb what is comfortable and safe. And that shouldn't be anyone's goal as a parent."
Her solution was to be "a little less of a mother so that I could continue to try to be a writer" – keeping the essential things she saw about her mothering role and cutting down on all the other things she worried about.
Abu-Jaber had a similar moment of revelation from a writer friend when she was trying to decide whether to have children. "It will be fine, no matter what you choose," the friend said. "There is no wrong choice."
For all the problems, both women also assert that it can be an advantage for a writer to be a mother. Children bring you experience and lessons in life, what Brooks calls "learning to shape chaos".
The pressure of time and money brings "insight, force and vitality" to the work, says Abu-Jaber. And children are one of the great elements of the creative life: "Whether you feel ready or not, they can show you the way to the unicorns."