“I was already at home for my children. But if I was writing, was I really there?”
All Your Little Lies author Marianne Holmes discusses the pressure – and the potential empowerment – of balancing writing with bringing up a family
I’d been planning to write since I was tiny. On the commute, on holiday, in the small hours of the morning fuelled by a night out but each time life always interrupted the flow. The difference this time was that I started writing as an antidote to childcare, carved out from the few hours a week that my youngest spent at playgroup. For the first time, I wrote for the sheer joy of it and with no ambitions to be published whatsoever. I joined a writing group and began to commit to writing short pieces on a weekly basis. When I received positive feedback, small sparks of desire lit.
The word count began to pile up, without conscious effort, and I found I had bits and pieces that might just knit together. I dreamt that maybe I could complete a novel. That’s when things got difficult. I took feedback seriously and started paying attention to story structure and the craft of writing. I read books or watched films with half an eye on the way they were put together and, for a little while, they lost their magic for me. But I carried on because now I had a focus. I had a small window of opportunity while I was at home with my children. And I wanted to be able to say, ‘See that hole in my CV there? That’s when I wrote my novel.’
But when I had a draft, then I thought maybe I should just edit it for submission, because nothing ventured and all that. So, with both kids at school I decided to fully immerse myself. But it turns out writing in the gaps around family life, is not about letting the Muse flow freely while sipping coffee in a perfectly quiet room. It’s solving plot problems whilst cooking dinner. It’s diving down a research hole on the Internet and missing the message from school about the critical item your child needs for the next day. It’s reading a bedtime story whilst wondering how long a body takes to decompose.
And that’s when the guilt seeps in. I could be at home to write because I was already at home for my children. But if I was writing, was I really there? At times, it felt hugely self-indulgent and ridiculous. But there is something about having that pressure to make it matter that is empowering too.
In the end, that novel – A Little Bird Told Me – was published in 2018. Of course, then I had to see if I could write another, sell more, reach more readers. In the last two years, my family has been coping with some difficult things and there are days when I read a bad review or think about the salary I could be earning back in an office and I wonder what I’m doing. But sometimes the challenges are the grit in the oyster shell so I keep going on because maybe, this time, I’ll find a pearl.
Marianne Holmes is the author of A Little Bird Told Me, published by Agora Books in 2018 and her new novel, All Your Little Lies, published Oct 22. She was born in Cyprus and bounced around the UK, Germany, Kuwait, and Belgium with her RAF parents as a child but is now firmly based in London with her own family.
She has degrees in Classics (RHUL) and Linguistics (UCL), neither of which got much use while she worked in marketing.
Follow Marianne Holmes @MarianneHAuthor
About ALL YOUR LITTLE LIES: Annie lives a quiet, contained, content life. She goes to work. She meets her friend. She’s kind of in a relationship. She’s happy. Not lonely at all. If only more people could see how friendly she is — how eager to help and please. Then she could tick “Full Happy Life” off her list. But no one sees that side of Annie, and she can’t understand why.
That all changes the night Chloe Hills disappears. And Annie is the last person to see her. This is her chance to prove to everybody that she’s worth something. That is, until she becomes a suspect. Drenched in atmosphere and taut with tension, All Your Little Lies takes a hard look at why good people do bad things.
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