One of my pet peeves with fiction is when child characters start out important, then are reduced down to props or are inexplicably absent at the end. A good example of this is from An American Tail, when Fievel’s baby sister Yasha is completely nonexistent for the latter half of the movie.
If you’ve been following my blog this year, you’ll know that I had a baby about six months ago, and that I’m currently working on a fictional story about a woman who had a baby. The silly thing is, having those parallels is actually making it harder for me to write about motherhood.
I spend all day snuggling, kissing, playing with, and caring for my baby, then at night after the older kids go to bed and I settle down to work on my writing, I feel self-conscious about describing all of that. It’s a little too autobiographical.
And it’s bothering me enormously.
I’m going to add in more descriptions of motherhood when I rewrite it, but for now I feel like the first draft has a giant hole in it.
Chalk it up as part of the process.
By Autumn Rain 
Last year, I read a women’s fiction novel about a mother who kept saying how devoted she was to her kids, but all she did was take every opportunity offered to get away from them. It’s like authors like to use kids for whatever reason, but really enjoy dropping them when it’s convenient. One of the things I love about Alice and the Warden is how much baby time we get; reminds me of those early days with my babies!
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Last night I asked my husband to hold the baby so I could brush my teeth.
He said, “She’s pretty deeply asleep, so we could try putting her down.”
I replied, “That’s because someone’s holding her. She’ll wake up the second you put her down.”
He tried anyway, and she instantly woke up.
REALITY.
I really love babies, so I want to share the way I see them with this story, but that also makes me self-conscious, lol.
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Since I know you just had a baby, I do get the feeling you’re drawing from experience, but, if I hadn’t known, I think it would have just transported me back to the baby days and I would have just figured you were a mother.
Though, haha, those sneaky little babies! I miss those days.
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