Andy Carter on High-Risk Criminals, Fatherhood, and the Need to Write

Parents Who Create

△ The book I’m reading and deeply loving right now.

△ Building a living encyclopedia — for a parent, a child, a friend — using photos, stories, all of it — has me completely hooked. whoami.wiki is the one I’ve been looking at. Runs on your machine, and all data is yours.

△ I have a thing craving for cardamom buns. If you’ve got a recipe you swear by, please send it my way.

Here’s my conversation with Andy Carter — on High-Risk Criminals, Fatherhood, and the Need to Write

Give us a snapshot of your life as it actually is.

I live with my beautiful wife Louise and our two wonderful boys, Joshua (8) and Jacob (6). We are currently in one of life’s real sweet spots, out the other side of the sleepless nights and meltdowns in Morrisons, but still some time to go until the turmoil of the teenage years. Crucially, my kids are not embarrassed to be seen with me. Yet.

I work as a probation officer in West Yorkshire, spending my days sitting in small rooms with high-risk criminals.

Where can we find you?

I share everything I write on my Substack publication, The Flagging Dad.

Why do you create?

It keeps me sane and, honestly, I think I become a bit of a pain in the arse if I don’t.

What does the inside of your creative mind actually feel like?

Good question. A shed?

What has parenthood changed about your work — and what has it refused to change?

I write predominantly about parenthood so, rather than crushing my creative dreams, having kids has done the opposite and given me the inspiration (and plenty of material) to keep writing.

Describe the conditions under which your work gets made.

If I am working on something, I tend to get up at 5.30-6am, listen to folky indie music from the early noughties through my headphones, and write in the living room before the rest of the house wakes up. My 20s self would be disgusted, but I now love this time of day.

What kind of work becomes possible when your children are nearby, and what becomes impossible?

I say this with love, but I am incapable of doing any writing whatsoever once the kids are up and about.

What have you had to become in order to keep creating?

A man who wakes up at 5.30am, even though my wife has banned me from drinking coffee at this time because our new coffee machine is “too loud”.

What is the part of your creative life that no one sees?

My dickhead of an inner monologue saying, “Who do you think you are? Why would anyone care about this?”

Who or what has most shaped the way you create now, not at the beginning, but in the reality of your current life?

I tend to deal with what is in front of me, so my writing is mostly about being a parent and a probation officer, and the unexpected parallels between these two worlds.

I've been writing about parenting since our first son was born in 2017, but it's only much more recently that I started focusing on my job too. For some reason, it took eight years of working with murderers, armed robbers and arsonists until I thought, “Oh, this might actually be quite interesting?”

What happens when you’re interrupted, and how do you get back into your work?

Once I am interrupted, I find it nigh-on impossible to snap back into it. I was fully immersed in writing yesterday morning when, at 6.45am, my eight-year-old son charged into the living room, munching an ambitious handful of Cheerios, leaving a trail behind him on the carpet, and I fully accepted that that was that for the next 23 hours.

When does your work actually happen? (Not when you’d like it to—when it does.)

I mostly write in the early mornings. Occasionally on the train to and from work, or during a lunch break in a trendy café near my office that charges FIVE QUID for a flat white.

I’d love to be able to do creative things in the evenings but, after a day at work, domestic duties, and taking the kids to and from whatever classes they are doing that evening, all I am capable of doing between 8 and 10pm is sitting on the sofa, eating Kettle Chips, and watching multiple episodes of Below Deck with my wife.

What keeps you creating on the days it feels pointless, indulgent, or impossible?

The thought that, what else would I be doing with my free time?

Scrolling the career stats of 90s footballers on Wikipedia, most likely.

Be honest: how do you procrastinate?

By taking deep dives into the career stats of 90s footballers on Wikipedia.

How much of your creative life is pleasure, and how much is endurance?

Let us go for 85% pleasure, 15% endurance. That is quite specific, isn’t it?

What do you protect fiercely in order to keep creating?

Obviously, my wife and kids are the most important things in my life, so I want them to be happy above anything else.

I try to make sure that my writing hobby does not make me a self-indulgent pain in the arse who doesn’t pull his weight with the laundry. Whether or not I succeed in doing this might depend on who you ask…

What have you had to let go of (willingly or not) in order to keep creating?

The notion that, at some point in my life, I will become a man who goes to the gym.

Which parent-creators make you feel seen, and why?

There are so many fantastic parenting writers on Substack, far too many to mention, but off the top of my head, here are some warm, funny and entertaining parent-writers that I wholeheartedly recommend: Charlotte, Sara, Daniel Puzzo, Alix O’Neill, & Lee Bacon.

What piece of work are you avoiding finishing, and why?

I started writing an uncharacteristically serious piece a while ago, but it has been sitting unfinished in my drafts for ages. I think I worry sharing it might feel a bit like when Charlie Simpson left Busted and started Fightstar.

If you could ask any creator one question, what would you ask?

Why did you leave Busted at the height of their success to start a post-hardcore band, Charlie?

What are you in the middle of creating and what shape is it in?

I have recently started writing a new memoir and I'm currently enjoying (I think?) that exhilarating and slightly manic phase. I'm 10,000 words into it and, so far, it is going really, really well and I am confident it will be the best thing I have ever written. You could ask me this same question tomorrow and get a very different answer, though…

What does “a room of your own” actually look like in your life now? (Literal or not.)

Sitting on the living room sofa in semi-darkness, hunched over the glow of my too-small laptop with, honestly, very poor posture that will probably lead to an occupational health appointment at some point in the near future.

What do you want to create that your current life doesn’t easily allow?

Aside from writing, I love playing the guitar.

My wife does not love me playing the guitar.

When I attempted to serenade her with some Eagle Eye Cherry recently, I could see, quite visibly, her finding me less and less attractive with each chord change.

If someone walked in on you mid-creation, what would they see, hear, and find slightly odd?

A nearly middle-aged man hunched over a laptop in a dimly lit room, humming wildly out of tune to “Fake Plastic Trees” by Radiohead and making strange facial expressions.

Where do you feel like a fraud in your creative life and what do you do with that?

I had a piece published in a national newspaper a while back and immediately felt a sharp pang of imposter syndrome, finding myself neurotically refreshing the comments section. The feedback was largely positive until someone pointed out I’d spelled “drawer” as “draw”, at which point I thought: who was I kidding? Thinking I’m some kind of writer has all been a terrible, terrible mistake.

PARENTS WHO THINK TO THE COMMENTS 👇🏻

If I don’t get to create, I start swearing at things that don’t deserve it and working my way through bowls of crunchy toffee popcorn like something’s gone badly off track. Be honest — what do you become when you don’t get to create?

Next week: I’m bringing you Anna Neima. Thank you for being here.

This interview was written up while listening to JT’s Numb, which I put on for my menopausal cat, Myrtle.

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