Tessa Broad

Questions

1. Please tell us a bit about yourself and your work.

I was born in Suffolk, spent my early career in London working in marketing and event management for several different publishers and a children’s charity. I now live in deepest rural Cornwall in an old farmhouse with my husband and our two beloved cocker spaniels. I love gardening, football and baking and have a passion for fashion and interior design. I am learning to play boogie-woogie piano online and am carer to my elderly mother.

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2. Has writing always been a focus for you or was it a Plan B?

Writing crept up on me. It wasn’t a Plan B from realising I wouldn’t become a parent but I guess it became a part of my life when I was pitched into a dark place due to the breakdown of my first marriage during fertility treatment. I found that writing it all down, writing it out, helped me to cope. During this time I also joined a screen writing evening class for distraction as much as anything and started scribbling down notes for screenplays and novels. I have since completed two novels, which got a little interest from publishers but nothing further and I have started two other novels, as yet unfinished. Alongside my fiction writing I wrote a straight memoir about my experience of infertility which I later turned into a letter which was published as Dear You: A Letter to My Unborn Children. Dear You is different from other infertility memoirs in that whilst it covers my experiences on the 'Treatment Trail’ as I call it, much of the book is a ‘conversation’ (albeit one-sided) with my imagined children. I wrote of my values, my loves and pet hates and of the upbringing I had envisaged for my children. Drawing from my life experiences and worldview I used it as an opportunity to pass on stories, anecdotes, insights and the odd nugget of advice to the children I never had.

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3. How do you explore ideas or find inspiration for your work?

Ideas often come to me when I’m out walking but could come at any time. If I haven’t got a notebook and pen handy I record ideas on my phone then transcribe them into notebooks later. I have notebooks everywhere, on my bedside table, kitchen table, my desk and in every handbag. I am a stationery junkie and love notebooks, plain not ruled (I find the lines restricting!). I always write with a fountain pen and in brown ink, just a quirky thing but I think it adds ritual to my writing, my journal in particular.

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4. What does the process of writing involve for you?

I will often talk through the ideas first, recording ideas which I then turn into pages of notes. I will then start to draft the book on my Mac writing from the notes. I go through the pages of notes to work out where each idea will appear in the book. I number the pages of my notebooks so I can link ideas to other notes.

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5. And what does writing then also give you in return?

It gives me peace. It soothes me. It takes me out of myself. It helps me work stuff out. It is like meditation for me.

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6. Has seeing your work in print changed how you view yourself, and also how you view your NoMo status?

I don’t think it has changed how I view myself or my NoMo status, perhaps validation of the latter.

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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?

When Dear You first came out, I felt that at last people ‘got’ me. Some, indeed many, were unaware of how it feels to be childless not by choice and I think (hope!) that readers gained an understanding of how it is.

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8. How do you feel about the current representation of childless and/or childfree people in literature?

Well it’s a bit rubbish! Mostly they are mad or bad or simply not there at all.

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9. What would you like the publishing world to know about non-parents, both as writers and readers, and our stories?

Simply that there are a lot of us ... a lot of writers and readers and that’s a big market being ignored and a lot of stories that need to be heard.

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10. What future plans do you have, especially for your writing?

I have stalled a little in my writing for various reasons but have notebooks full of ideas and I hope to get my writing groove back before too long. My role as carer for my elderly mother is giving me material that I’m putting together for my next missive which will be called Dear Me: A Letter to My Old Biddy Self. Here I plan to teach myself how to grow old ... that is, if come the day, I can remember that I wrote it and indeed where I put it!