by Suzy K Quinn
I’d worked hard all my life, but with two little kids this was a whole new level. After Lexi was born, I’d somehow managed to finish that second book for my two-book publishing deal. I did this through late nights, early mornings, stress and way too much wine.
Now we had two kids and no publishing deal. My existing publisher didn’t buy my latest book (The Ivy Lessons, a romance between a teacher and a student with lots of sex scenes) and nor did any other publisher.
Shit.
I had not expected that.
I should have been disheartened and thrown the manuscript into the bin, but instead I felt a quiet determination bubble up inside me. Somehow I would get this book in front of readers and they could decide if the story was any good or not.
If readers hated the book – well, fine. But I thought it should have a chance.
Between working every hour I could, writing, and looking after the kids, I learned how to self-publish The Ivy Lessons and put it up for sale. In truth, I didn’t really expect much to happen right away, and assumed I’d have to do lots and lots of social-media hawking to get sales going.
I was wrong.
Within weeks, the book totally caught fire and started selling thousands of copies. Within months it was selling tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands.
This felt fantastic.
A real Cinderella story.
After years and years of struggle, rejection and being a ‘poor but happy’ writer, I was actually one of those overnight-success stories you hear about.
Me!
So there you go, anyone else who is struggling. The only way you can fail is by giving up. Keep going and you’ll get there.
For the first time in my life, we had no money worries whatsoever.
Readers started emailing me, asking for new books. I wrote the Master of the House series, then decided to take a bit of a risk and write something different – a romantic comedy about motherhood called The Bad Mother’s Diary. This would document all the amusing/distressing things about being a parent and put them in a nice romantic comedy for everyone to laugh at.
It was so different from what I’d written before that part of me expected it to sink like a stone. Still, worth a try. I knew exactly how much single-mother Juliette deserved her happy ending.
When I finished The Bad Mother’s Diary, I knew it was a long shot. Everyone was saying romantic-comedy books weren’t the thing these days. Over twenty publishers rejected the manuscript, which didn’t surprise me. Publishing editors are usually youthful, stylish and child-free. They don’t want to read about kids emptying Rice Krispies boxes on the bed or understand why weeing yourself as an adult is funny.
Once again, I self-published and stuff started happening. Great reviews appeared. Hundreds and hundreds of five-star reviews. (There were a few shit ones too, but let’s gloss over those.) Then thousands of five-star reviews. Copies began flying off Amazon’s virtual e-book shelf.
The book, I was told, was lifting people’s mood, making them laugh out loud, making mothers feel loved and happy.
This was exactly why I had written it.
I was beyond proud.
Emails flooded in. Mothers told me how much they loved the book, how much they’d laughed, how they’d in fact cried with laughter and could I please write another one?
‘Blimey,’ I thought. ‘I knew it all along. I AM a genius.’
That same week, Demi landed the job he’d been after, and we felt extremely lucky, happy and blessed.
After years of long, hard slog, things were finally coming together.
One fine spring morning, The Bad Mother’s Diary hit the UK Kindle top five and I was beyond delighted. It was right up there with Stephen King’s latest release.
Wow!
Demi was at work, but I was determined to celebrate in some small way.
‘Kids,’ I announced. ‘We’re going to the garden centre. We’re going to buy a tree to commemorate this happy time in our lives.’
Lexi was nearly four and old enough to be excited by that sort of thing, and Laya was too small to complain.
‘What sort of tree?’ Lexi asked.
‘Umm . . . a fruit tree.’
I said this in a confident and assured manner, hoping the kids wouldn’t rumble my lack of gardening knowledge.
‘That will take a long time to plant, Mummy,’ said Lexi. ‘Growing things. You need a big hole for a tree. The gardener at nursery said. Like a crater.’
‘Oh, gardening is easy,’ I said.
Off we went to the local garden centre in our sensible car. When we got there, the kids fought about who went in the trolley.
I made those unenforceable parenting threats you hope the kids never call your bluff on. You know the ones: ‘I’m taking you home RIGHT NOW if you don’t stop giving your sister Chinese burns.’ Or: ‘No more sweets EVER again if you don’t put that down!’
We looked at fruit trees.
‘What do you fancy, kids?’ I said. ‘How about a nice apple tree?’
A long, thin, elderly gardening assistant sidled up to us and said in a gentle voice: ‘Not a great time to plant trees, actually. It’s been an overly warm spring.’
Time of year? Was that a thing? Couldn’t you just stick trees in the ground whenever?
I began turning tree labels over, casually looking at the growing instructions. Then I moved on to packets of vegetable seeds.
‘WELL, Lexi and Laya. Of course, lettuce, as everyone knows, is very good to grow at this time of year . . .’
The gardening assistant leaned in again. ‘Depends where you’re growing it. Do you have covered veg beds? For the slugs?’
I abandoned my faux gardening knowledge and asked the assistant for help. He said, as Lexi had, that trees needed very big holes. Maybe I should just go for sunflower seeds.
‘You can’t go wrong with those,’ said the assistant. ‘They’re idiot-proof.’
I’d have liked to tell the assistant that I wasn’t an idiot, but actually, in the world of gardening, I am.
‘We can grow these in the garden,’ I told the kids, taking a sideways glance at the gardening assistant. ‘And have big flowers in a few weeks’ time.’
‘Actually, growing takes time—’
‘Come on, kids! We’d better get going.’
Back home, I made a big song and dance of planting the sunflower seeds.
‘We’ll grow one for each of you, girls,’ I said. ‘And for your dad and me. Then we’ll have a sunflower family.’
‘Will they grow by tomorrow, Mummy?’ Lexi asked, eyeing the colourful seed packet with its bright yellow flowers.
‘Not tomorrow,’ I said in my wise parent voice. ‘Maybe by the end of the week.’
But nature, it turns out, is lazy. And slow. Growing is a slow business. It happens little by little so you barely notice, and then one day – poof! Your kid is big enough to reach the top drawer in the bedroom, run downstairs with your condoms and post them through the neighbour’s letterbox.
It was the same with my books. I wrote for years and years and then suddenly – poof! Just like that, things took off.
A week after seed-planting day, nothing was happening. Well, tiny little sprouts happened, but no sunny yellow petals.
This was crap.
I checked the seed packet.
‘Oh, hang on,’ I told Lexi. ‘No, it’ll take more than a week. THREE MONTHS! Oh, for goodness’ sake.’
‘How long is three months?’ Lexi asked.
‘Well. You’ll nearly have started school by then.’
‘Things take a long time to grow,’ said Lexi in her wise-before-her-years child voice. ‘Nature is patient.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘No one. I just knew.’
So we had to be patient. And with careful watering and nurturing, the sunflowers grew as tall as the kids.
Taller.
By the end of summer, our garden glowed with bright-yellow peta
ls, and as the petals wilted we collected the seeds.
Now we have sunflowers in our garden every year – one for each member of the family. But it took a REALLY long time to grow those first seeds.
Fucking ages.
Natural things don’t grow fast, with the possible exception of mould. But as I learned to be more patient, I enjoyed the growing much more.
#30 LIE – GIRLS DON’T FIGHT AS MUCH AS BOYS
As summer approached, I had three profound realisations.
First, I was enjoying being with the kids much more than I used to.
Second, Lexi would start school soon and be really grown up.
Third, Laya was excellent at fighting these days. We’re talking proper kidney punches.
‘NO, LAYA!’
This was the reigning cry in our house the summer before Lexi started school.
Second children are little firecrackers. They have to be. They need to take down someone much bigger than them, preferably immobilising them entirely so they can run for the hills before getting thumped with a big-sister fist.
Laya would knock her big sister over, then hide inside a kitchen cupboard or a suitcase to escape retribution. Sometimes Lexi would admit she deserved the violence. More often, Laya was a bit heavy-handed – thumping first and reasoning later.
At first, we admired Laya for tackling bigger children. How courageous. Then she started biting people.
I’ll admit, I’m partly to blame for this.
The first person Laya bit was an older boy at a birthday party. He stole her cake, then held it high in the air and literally said, ‘Nah nah nah nah nah!’
Laya bit his arm.
The boy dropped the cake.
I thought it was quite funny. I mean, needs must. He was a really big kid and the cake was the last pink Mr Kipling French Fancy.
Of course, I did the ‘good parent’ bit and told Laya not to bite, but I think she picked up on my secret pride. She went on to bite kids her own age who hadn’t snatched her cake.
I realised my error.
No, Laya. Biting is never acceptable. No, never. OK, yes, if an adult is trying to kidnap you, Lexi, yes, you’re allowed to bite then. But by and large, no.
As Lexi prepared for school, trying on her new school uniform and writing her name on her school books (really she wrote an illegible X, but we humoured her), sibling squabbles reached fever pitch.
We’re talking hourly rumbles.
Laya wanted to do everything Lexi did and would bite and push in protest.
It didn’t matter that Laya was barely two years of age and incontinent. She wanted to write her name, and if that meant biting her sister to get the pen then she would jolly well do so.
Lexi didn’t help. She made tactless comments like, ‘Your unicorns look like dogs, Laya.’ Or, ‘You have baby legs.’
These thoughtless remarks would result in howls of rage, pushing, shoving and sometimes acts of vandalism.
Then Lexi got a new school uniform. A pencil case. A school bag. Shiny new shoes.
Laya wanted all of these things.
Demi suggested we get Laya her own school uniform so she could join in with her big sister.
I said that buying Laya things she didn’t need would spoil her.
Demi said I’d bought the girls ridiculous Minnie Mouse Havaiana flip-flops when they already had sandals. They couldn’t walk in those flip-flops – the Havaianas kept falling off. The girls certainly didn’t need them.
I shouted that the flip-flops were on sale and a bargain.
We compromised. Laya wore one of Lexi’s oversized school dresses.
The kids still fought.
Siblings fight. They all do it.
Girls, boys or gender-indeterminate.
(Demi: ‘I rarely fought with my brothers. Violence and aggression come from your side of the family.’)
However, as the fighting went on, we had an uncomfortable realisation.
Yes, the kids fought about kid things. Whether Pokémon were a type of ghost (‘Yes, they ARE, Laya’), if you could eat paper (‘Yes, you CAN, Lexi’), etc. But sometimes the girls sounded a lot like Demi and me having an argument.
When Lexi screamed, ‘SHUT UP, THAT’S STUPID!’ for example.
Or when Laya said, ‘Bloody hell, Lexi. Ups sake, Lexi.’ (Translation: ‘For fuck’s sake, Lexi.’)
At first, I wondered where they’d got these horrible words. What an awful, disrespectful way to talk.
Probably they’d picked up things at nursery. Or from Grandad.
‘Face it,’ said Demi. ‘They’ve learned those words from us.’
‘Oh, that’s just STUPID,’ I replied.
Uh-oh.
It was true.
The kids were parroting our arguments. Mimicking our conflict. Speaking to each other with no respect.
This was all Demi’s fault. He was the one who swore.
(Demi: ‘You swear ALL the time!’)
I informed Demi that he must not talk to me in a disrespectful manner or use swear words. With immediate effect.
He informed me that I must stop giving his things away to charity without asking, putting things in the laundry basket that were actually quite clean because I couldn’t be bothered to hang them up, drink glasses of water he’d poured for himself, delete unwatched episodes of Match of the Day, buy new furniture when there was nothing wrong with the old stuff . . . and a bunch of other petty nonsense that I simply ignored.
We did try for a while to talk in a constructive, respectful way. But honestly – it took so much time. Far easier to just shout, ‘Demi, WHY have you put all these charging leads in the drawer that is CLEARLY a tools drawer? AND THIS CHARGER IS NOW OBSOLETE ANYWAY. IT IS A STUPID PLACE TO PUT IT.’
And quicker for Demi to grumble, ‘For fuck’s sake.’
The girls smiling after winning a cookie competition Nana had entered them in. (Note the Laya-inflicted wound on Lexi’s nose.) Shortly after this, they attacked each other.
#31 LIE – CAMPING IS A LOW-COST FAMILY HOLIDAY
As the summer sun shone brighter, reality hit me: this would be our last summer with Lexi before she started school.
We needed to make this the best summer ever. A super-duper, outdoor spectacular.
Before I had kids, I wasn’t keen on the outdoors. At least, not without some sort of alcoholic drink to warm the cockles.
As a child, my sister and I were often thrown into the wild British countryside on family camping trips.
We hated these joyless ‘holidays’, which began with a six-hour drive up north to some freezing-cold campsite in the Pennines.
My parents would ooh and aah at the beautiful mountains and fresh-water streams, but Cath and I didn’t care. We were tasteless eighties kids and wanted arcade games, mini discos and roller-skating rinks.
‘The water here is so fresh!’ my parents would enthuse as they encouraged us to paddle in the campsite’s sub-zero stream. They would leave us to get blue feet while setting up the family tent – a 1970s beast of a thing weighing 40kg, with fifty steel poles and yards of heavy orange tarpaulin.
The tent was a real feat of structural engineering and took two hours to put up every time, accompanied by angry shouting about which pole went where, and then the inevitable panic that a crucial part was missing.
To our disappointment, my parents would always find that missing pole and we wouldn’t get to go home.
When the tent was finally set up, with its jaunty paisley curtains and orange walls, it took a further hour to construct the rickety camping equipment – canvas camp beds, screw-together chairs, folding picnic tables (all orange, of course – everything was in those days).
The camping beds in particular required great physical strength to get the legs in place. It wasn’t possible to set up them up without making Tom Jones ‘HUH!’ noises and going bright red in the face.
Because the huge frame tent took up most of the car, bedding was a low priority. O
ur parents bought themselves quite a nice, downy double sleeping bag, but my sis and I had nylon sleeping bags (also orange) that were thin enough to make shadow puppets through.
There were highlights. The melted Blue Riband bar with a cup of tea from a plastic flask, served on the hard shoulder during the long drive up north. The cinema trips during torrential rain downpours. The time we came home several days early because Dad woke up with frost in his hair and said it was ‘just too bloody cold’.
Britain is so cold – especially for skinny fussy-eater kids like my sister and me. Maybe we should have had better outdoor gear, but outdoor gear didn’t really exist in the 1980s. (Or if it did, my parents certainly weren’t shelling out for it. My dad had a freezing childhood up north with nothing more than a duffel coat and a clip around the ear to keep him warm. Spend money on thermals! You need to toughen up, you great jessies!)
By the time Laya was two and Lexi was about to start school, I tolerated the outdoors somewhat. But let’s not go crazy. I wouldn’t, for example, do anything silly like go camping.
Then Lexi’s nursery friends invited us to go camping.
Shit.
I hated camping. Right?
Mentally, I made my usual protestations, which were largely: ‘I hate fucking camping. It’s always so cold and uncomfortable.’
But the kids were really excited. Even little Laya, who could only just form whole sentences.
‘Tent! Tent! Whoosh!’
‘Please can we go, Mummy?’ Lexi begged. ‘All my friends will be there. It’ll be like a giant sleepover. With marshmallows.’
I told Lexi piously that when we were kids, we never had marshmallows on camping trips. Just thin orange sleeping bags and burnt sausages. If we were lucky.
Anyway.
I considered the camping trip. Just considered, you understand. We had kids. Camping was a thing people did with kids. Oh, why not? Let’s just try it out. When the kids realise how cold and uncomfortable it is, they’ll never want to go again – marshmallows or otherwise.
