Why my decade as a single mother was the greatest creative gift of my life

I said that I would stop and do nothing, but then it was the hottest day of the year, and I felt compelled to pull 42 boxes of books and other paraphernalia out of the long cupboard that runs all the way down the edge of my bedroom. This is partly because all the bookshelves in my house have been empty, and walking past them was like seeing jaws with all their teeth missing: it was unsettling and even disturbing. The children worked hard: getting the boxes meant crawling in to a very confined space and creating a human chain, pushing the boxes from one end of the burningly hot cupboard, which is more like a tunnel that sits in the eves of the house, to the other. I stood on the landing, shouting directions and encouragement, and they worked like they were in a coal mine.

It’s a relief to have my books out, although sorting them all out is going to take another push. Since I was unable to sit around with boxes all around me, even as we all melted, I made a start, and donated several boxes of them to Regent Books in Wantage, an incredible second hand bookstore in my local town. When I started at university, Oxford was stuffed with second hand book stores, which have all gone, apart from Oxfam. There’s a special delight in the treasure hunting aspect of rifling through second hand books, and if you’re looking for gold, there are tonnes at Regent Books - it’s definitely worth a visit if you are anywhere near the Oxfordshire/Wiltshire/Gloucestershire/Buckinghamshire area.

I enjoyed making the children help me with the books, and seeing their reactions to all this writing. “So many books Mom!” said Lester, standing in front of me, sweat pouring down his face. “And so many more books to write!” I’m coming to the final stages (please god, please, please) of finishing my new book. Next week, it’s booked in with the copy writer and will come back to me in August, with small tweaks and changes. But at that stage, the major rewriting will be over.

And this combination of books plus children last week made me think about that often quoted phrase, “ the enemy of creativity is the pram in the hall.” Only a man would have said that, right? I’ve had five children, and written five books (actually seven, as I have two unpublished novels on my laptop, more of which later), and I spent the first ten years of my career as a writer as a single mother. In my experience, becoming a mother didn’t curtail my creativity, but fired it. The pram in the hall isn’t the enemy of creativity, but I can tell you exactly what IS the enemy of creativity - and it might surprise you.