Books Instead Of Babies

I always wanted to have children. I babysat for neighbors’ kids, am a devoted auntie and godmother, and have great relationships with my friends’ children. But it never happened for me.

The reasons were not physical but psychological. I was a mess in my twenties and thirties: low self-esteem led to a variety of self-destructive behaviors, including an uncanny knack for choosing men who would never commit and were inevitably going to break my heart. 

I started therapy at the age of thirty-two and began the process of understanding where I was going wrong, but still I reached my late thirties without any prospect of a baby father on the horizon. I went for a consultation about freezing my eggs, but it was the early days of the technology when it was expensive and not very successful. I considered getting pregnant with donated sperm but I wasn’t brave or financially secure enough to be a single mother.

I’d always wanted to write, and had started and abandoned various novels, but it was in this period, as I confronted my childlessness, that I began what would become my first published novel. I didn’t articulate the link, but it was there, in the back of my mind. At least this way I could create something of my own.

I’m glad I’d had two novels published before my mum died, very suddenly, when I was in my early forties. No one could have been prouder than her. She held her own launch party for me, toured bookshops urging them to stock my book, and thrust copies at all her friends. Sure, she would have preferred grandchildren, but my brother and sister had already given her a handful. She didn’t live to see my novels creep into bestseller lists, or be translated into twenty different languages, but as far as she was concerned, I’d produced a legacy. 

And then I met and fell in love with a good man, a man who is still my partner today. He had a daughter in her early teens, with whom I quickly became close, and he was keen to have another child with me. But I’d left it too late and no baby came. 

I had switched to writing non-fiction by then because my first fiction publisher dropped me. But my partner urged me to get back to novels and even suggested a subject. I got a new deal with his idea and am now starting work on my tenth novel. Ten whole book babies! I’ve reached the stage when I’m even proud of myself (and that takes some doing).

Of course they’re not babies. I will never know what it feels like when a baby kicks in your womb, or suckles from your breast. I can only imagine the sheer force of maternal love that I see my sister experience for her brood – or the pain that can come with it. She pined for months when her eldest left for uni. 

I’ve never written about this before. When I meet women who ask whether I have children or not, I say that I have a stepdaughter. I ask about their kids and am interested in the answers. 

And yes, I do have regrets. Not huge, overwhelming ones that haunt me day to day, but regrets all the same. My sister said recently that she thinks I would have been a great mum, and that was a bittersweet compliment.

But are my books like babies? Let’s see…

• They have certainly disrupted my sleep – I have a terrible habit of lying awake in the early hours obsessing over plot problems. 
• I missed out on shaping and influencing my own child’s character, but I do it all the time for characters in my novels.
• Sometimes I compare my novels to other people’s and wonder if I took the right route, just as I know some parents feel. 
• Books will never crash my car, come home drunk and throw up on the carpet, but they do argue back sometimes. All novelists know that feeling…
• I worry terribly about sending them out into the world in case they meet people who are mean about them or cause them harm. 
• Each novel has brought grief and joy, in differing proportions.
• I love all my novels, but secretly have my favourites.
• Unlike children, my books pay me money, enough to live off. 
• My physical DNA has not been passed on to another generation, but my ideas have been passed on to my readers.
• My books won’t have grandchildren or great-grandchildren. I don’t flatter myself that they will be read in a hundred years’ time, although perhaps a curious reader will stumble across one online (or however books exist in the 22nd century) and get something from it. 

All in all, I feel incredibly lucky. It took me longer than most to find my way in life and it turned out I couldn’t have it all. But, woo hoo! I’m a published novelist. How cool is that? 

—

Gill Paul’s historical novels have reached the top of the USA Today, Toronto Globe & Mail and kindle charts, and been translated into twenty languages. They include two bestselling Romanov novels –THE SECRET WIFE and THE LOST DAUGHTER – as well as WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST, which was shortlisted for the 2013 RNA Epic Novel of the Year award, NO PLACE FOR A LADY, shortlisted for a Love Stories award, and ANOTHER WOMAN’S HUSBAND, about links between Wallis Simpson and Princess Diana.

Gill also writes historical non-fiction, including A HISTORY OF MEDICINE IN 50 OBJECTS, and she speaks at libraries and literary festivals on subjects ranging from the Titanic to the Romanovs.

Gill lives in London, where she is working on her tenth novel, and she swims daily in an outdoor pond.

Find out more about her on her website http://gillpaul.com/

Follow her on Twitter https://twitter.com/GillPaulAUTHOR

THE LOST DAUGHTER

If you loved I Am Anastasia by Ariel Lawhon you won’t want to miss this novel about her sister, Grand Duchess Maria. What really happened to this lost Romanov daughter? A new novel perfect for anyone curious about Anastasia, Maria, and the other lost Romanov daughters, by the author of The Secret Wife.

1918: Pretty, vivacious Grand Duchess Maria Romanov, the nineteen-year-old daughter of the fallen Tsar Nicholas II, lives with her family in suffocating isolation, a far cry from their once-glittering royal household. Her days are a combination of endless boredom and paralyzing fear; her only respite are clandestine flirtations with a few of the guards imprisoning the family—never realizing her innocent actions could mean the difference between life and death

1973: When Val Doyle hears her father’s end-of-life confession, “I didn’t want to kill her,” she’s stunned. So, she begins a search for the truth—about his words and her past. The clues she discovers are baffling—a jewel-encrusted box that won’t open and a camera with its film intact. What she finds out pulls Val into one of the world’s greatest mysteries—what truly happened to the Grand Duchess Maria?

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Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing