An overused metaphor

A lazy comparison that says nothing useful

I’ll just say it: writing a novel is like giving birth.

No, it’s not. In so many ways, it’s not even vaguely similar. Besides, most of the population doesn’t really understand what that means.

Are there some parallels? Yes. It might take nine months to create a book. Or it might take two months. Or it might take several years.

Is it exciting and nerve-wracking and sometimes painful? Sure. So are a lot of things.

Does it produce something you love and hope others will love? In a best-case scenario, yes, but “love” in English has so many meanings it’s hardly a useful term in such a comparison. Trust me, I’d let my books be lost forever to save any of my kids. Or any stranger’s kid. There’s simply no comparison in terms of value.

On the flip side, I hope my kids will grow up and support themselves, whereas I hope my books might eventually help support me.

It’s such a useless metaphor.

Now that I’m done writing, almost done editing, beginning to work with the illustrator, I am finding it hard to be patient. I want to know what the book will look like ten years from now, and twenty. I’m impatient, even though I know that finishing it is only one step in the answer to those questions.

Yet that’s the part that strikes me as familiar. I remember wondering “what will they be like when they grow up?” But this question wasn’t answered when my biological children were born. And it is something I wonder about equally for the children I didn’t give birth to. So it’s not actually related to pregnancy or giving birth, not in an exclusive way.

Good news: So far the kids are turning out great.

…but I don’t think that’s a reliable indicator for my book. On the other hand, if the book completely flops, really, who cares? I loved writing it. It doesn’t ever have to leave home.

Yep, it’s just a useless metaphor…but apparently I still use it.

Here’s a poem I wrote a few years ago, when I couldn’t seem to finish any of the stories I started:

I’m so jealous of stories.
How are they made? I can barely begin to conceive one before it scatters.
One starts to form, in my mind or through my fingers,
and I set aside time to shape it, guide it, realize its possibilities
But they all go wrong and nothing is left
but wasted words and dangling possibilities
I can’t remember how to give birth

Luckily a really vivid dream sparked a whole series for me not too long after I wrote that, but it wasn’t at all like giving birth.

It was a lot like writing.