Helen Murray Taylor

1. Please tell us a bit about yourself and your work.
I’ve always written but I’ve been writing with focus since I moved to France after life events forced a major change to my career and circumstances. I started with two Open University creative writing modules and went on to do a distance learning MA with Lancaster University.

My debut novel The Backstreets of Purgatory was published in 2018. It’s the story of the 16th-century Italian bad boy of art, Caravaggio, turning up in present day Glasgow. It’s dark, funny and, although not intended to be in any way autobiographical, infused with the topics that preoccupy me (mental health, versions of motherhood).

My memoir love lay down beside me and we wept will be published in April 2025. After IVF and a miscarriage, I was hospitalised with depression and sectioned under the Mental Health Act for a prolonged period. The memoir sprang from this time, from my months on the ward and the psychological upheaval being restrained against my will, from the challenge of being a doctor turned patient, but also from the moments of pure comedy and unexpected comradeship I encountered there.

2. Has writing always been a focus for you or was it a Plan B?
I trained in medicine and worked for a few years as a junior doctor but suffered from mental health problems. I switched careers to research science (molecular parasitology, studying the parasite that causes malaria) but after years of treatment for infertility and losing an IVF baby, I became severely unwell. When I was eventually well enough to look forward, I realised I needed to rethink my life completely. One thing that I’d always wanted to do was write. So, yes, writing is probably a Plan B, but it was one that has been with me since I was a schoolkid.

3. How do you explore ideas or find inspiration for your work?
The ideas come from everywhere. From overheard conversations, from characters I encounter, from places, works of art, old buildings. Anywhere where I can ask myself what is the story that I don’t know here? Who are these people? What else is going on? What if…?

The idea for The Backstreets of Purgatory came after I read a biography about Caravaggio and realised that he clearly considered himself a hard man. What if… he found himself in a pub in Glasgow? What would happen? How would the locals take to him?

I started the memoir a long time ago with an essay that I didn’t show to anyone other than my creative writing tutor for years. Eventually I plucked up the courage to see if I could get it published. It came out in an online magazine. The reception that it received made me realise how important it is to share experiences like mine and that I ought to write the rest of the story. I had a couple of other projects on the go at the time, but the memoir wouldn’t let me be. I had to write it.

4. What does the process of writing involve for you?
Rough ideas, free thinking, mind maps scribbled in notebooks. For some reason the physical process of writing with a pen and paper helps me develop ideas in a way that writing on screen doesn’t. If I have a difficult plot point to work out or a character that needs further development for me to properly understand them, I’ll do it in my notebooks. Pages and pages of almost illegible notes. Running (until I got injured) and walking are also part of my writing process. I don’t think about my work consciously when I’m out. I let my subconscious do the work for me. I’ll invariably come back from a run or walk with fresh insights.

Once I know where I’m going with a book, I write on screen. I have a terrible habit of editing as I go along, so progress is often slow. I absolutely love the editing and rewriting part, but it is much easier to do once there is a full first draft. It’s getting to that stage that is the challenge!

5. And what does writing then also give you in return?
I credit writing my novel as a major factor in my mental health recovery. I was so consumed with the lives of my characters that I didn’t have time to dwell on my own issues. I feel like my brain healed in the background while I was busy with Caravaggio and his new pals.
 

6. Has seeing your work in print changed how you view yourself, and also how you view your NoMo status?
Not having the career that I expected and not being a parent caused me all sorts of issues with self-esteem and made me question my purpose in life. Having a book published really helped me view myself more positively.

7. Tell us about the wider reception that you’ve had to sharing your story - has it changed how others have viewed you and your identity as a non-parent?
Although it is terrifying having a memoir coming out, I wrote it hoping that it might help someone. There is so much hidden pain around infertility, miscarriage and mental health problems. Sometimes you just want to read something that recognises what you have been through. Being seen, having the pain acknowledged — that can be a comfort in itself. If my memoir gives solace or support to just one person, then it has done its job. The ARCs (advance reader copies) have been on NetGalley, and a few people have already had the chance to read it. I’ve been contacted directly by a couple of readers thanking me for sharing my story. I can’t tell you how much this means to me.
 

8. How do you feel about the current representation of childless and/or childfree people in literature?
I’m not sure that I can answer this question properly. In the past you didn’t have to look far to find unflattering stereotypes of the childless woman while no such stereotypes existed for men in the same situation. They are familiar to us all: the bitter woman, the evil woman, the mad woman, the tragic woman. Equally there were stereotypes of motherhood; saintly or horrific with not much in between. Things should have moved on, but I imagine the modern-day equivalents aren’t too hard to find given the misogyny and general unpleasantness that is rife on social media. The fact that JD Vance could dismiss the vice-president of the USA as a "childless cat-lady" shows that there are still people who consider women without children a group to be ridiculed or feared.

Thankfully, there are loads of brilliant novelists writing strong, complex female leads who are not defined by their parental status or gender expectations. Off the top of my head, some of my favourites are Elena and Lila from Eleanor Ferrante’s Neapolitan series, Janina from Drive
Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, and more recently Sadie Green from Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. All exceptional characters, some with children, some without, but all of them in their own way refusing to be confined by society’s expectations.

9. What would you like the publishing world to know about non-parents, both as writers and readers, and our stories?
That whether we are non-parents by choice, by accident or against our will, we are fully formed individuals who are not incomplete simply because we don’t have children. That not every version of a happy ending has to involve children. That not every story has to have a happy ending.

10. What future plans do you have, especially for your writing?
The immediate future is exciting. It isn’t long until publication day for love lay down beside me and we wept. I am about to record the audiobook for it. I didn’t expect to be asked to narrate it, and I’m thrilled (and nervous) about the prospect.

The projects that I put on hold while I wrote my memoir are waiting for me to revisit them. They are both novels. I’m also toying with the idea of more creative non-fiction. The village where I live is filled with eccentric souls who would light up any page. It’s very tempting. The whole place is a microcosm of weirdness, tragedy and comedy. But then, that is just life, isn’t it?