Art Before Life

Sonya Chung, for the Huffington Post, discusses motherhood and writing.

From the piece...

At 37, this question is now pressing for me. At 31, in 2004, when I began writing my recently-released novel Long for This World, it wasn't. And yet, a primary character in the novel, Jane Han, is in her late 30s and grappling with motherhood(s) - her mother's, her own, her Korean cousin's. Many readers have shared with me how moved they were by these portrayals and have expressed surprise to find that I have/had no personal experience in parenthood. But if you'd have asked me back then and throughout the writing of the book if it was something I personally worried over- the question of becoming a mother or not- I would have said no, not really (primarily, I was worried about writing a novel).

Story-telling as catharsis, dredging up past experiences and endowing characters with your own angst or unfulfillment as a kind of emotional purging, is a familiar course. But writing as a way of being apprised of one's desires, fears, etc., not just those of the past, but also those that live in the present or might develop in the future, suggests how art precedes consciousness, and how it is prescient as much as it is reflective.

Now that I've "caught up" to Jane, it seems clear that, back then, in some corner of my (sub)conscious mind, I was struggling with something parenthood-related; intellectually at first, and then (through the process of getting to know Jane), emotionally and spiritually. To avoid spoilers, I won't reveal too much about Jane's journey in this regard. I will say however that, now -- with some distance from the character and the writing, -- I myself find it interesting that Jane is spared the conundrum that middle-class women my age, who don't feel the baby tug in a clear or overwhelming way, must confront: that is, again, the question of how one even approaches the decision, what are the "right" questions to ask?