Lisa Edwards

Questions

1. Please tell us a bit about yourself and your work.
I am an editor and former publisher by trade but have always worked on other people’s texts – ironically, in the children’s book industry. I’ve always found that not being a parent gives me a more objective view of what children will like (or rather what gift-givers will buy for those children, because they’re mostly childfree/less people like me!)

2. Has writing always been a focus for you or was it a Plan B?
It came naturally out of working in the industry. When I went freelance, people asked me to write texts for children, and I then self-published my own memoirs.

3. How do you explore ideas or find inspiration for your work?
My children’s books centre around mental health and wellbeing because I’m a trained yoga teacher who wants to spread the message about how we can achieve calmness and stillness at an early age. I lost my father at ten so I’m on a bit of a mission with this. My own life is my inspiration for my memoirs, obviously, but I look for patterns of behaviour, reasons why I did certain things, questioning my motivations and taking accountability. When I’m taking on new clients as a literary agent, such as Three Dads Walking, I look for a mental-health aspect and a true story. I like telling the truth.

4. What does the process of writing involve for you?
In my memoir-writing, writing is a heavily therapeutic act, and there are some that say I should keep it private as a result. But I decided to share my story, and I’m glad I did because a lot of women (and men) relate to it. For the children’s books, I like to think of ways of delivering big yogic concepts in an accessible way, such as using a sloth character to explore stillness and calm.

5. And what does writing then also give you in return?
It gives me a sense of having worked out something profound about the world, of having identified a pattern of behaviour, a way that I or others might be behaving that belies a fundamental truth. It gives me great pleasure to hear my books might have helped others. I have heard from a lot of women in unhappy marriages who have found my story helpful and recently, I heard from a US charity that gives out one of my books to bereaved parents in a compassionate care package. It is often the last book they read with their child. That is true success to me.

6. Has seeing your work in print changed how you view yourself, and also how you view your NoMo status?
My memoir sales are mainly in ebook form – for self-published authors, it’s a bit of an ego hurdle to get over not seeing your book on a shelf or table in a bookshop. But in reality, the vast majority of sales are online. The ego journey around that is how I’ve changed. I no longer crave those visible signs of ‘success’.

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?
Many of my readers already knew I was childfree from my blog but that’s not the controversial thing about my memoirs. I’m very frank about my ‘freedoms’ in both books and that has divided opinion. Most people are, "You go girl!" but others have been judgemental. I’ve lost around four friendships over the book – they were all writing their own stories, incidentally, which was certainly a factor in their responses to mine.

8. How do you feel about the current representation of childless and/or childfree people in literature?
I don’t think I actively recognise the childfree/childless characters unless they’re framed as such. I think I’m so used to pro-natal society that I don’t even notice its prevalence. In TV, I have noticed that childfree women are often portrayed as cold-hearted career women with issues (e.g. Saga in The Bridge, Stella in The Fall). Thank goodness for trailblazing characters like Samantha Jones (Sex and the City).

9. What would you like the publishing world to know about non-parents, both as writers and readers, and our stories?
That we have fully rounded lives without having children to care for. That we have a freedom in the world that is usually the domain of adventurous men (because they often have wives at home looking after their families for them). I’ve just been on a trek in the Himalayas and I spotted 17 other solo women on the same trail. There are more of us out there than you think and we’re out there climbing mountains.

10. What future plans do you have, especially for your writing?
The third book in my memoir trilogy, Freedom to Roam, is rumbling around in my head, ready to be written down. I’m still in the middle of living it, though – the theme is being nomadic, and what it means to be uprooted from so-called ‘home’ in the world.