I can see why she couldn't. Straight autobiographical detail seldom finds its way into Barker's work, but the dark and complex layers of family experience inform everything that she does. About some issues as the only way of getting at the truth. She didn't start writing until she was 39, having first taught history. Then Virago published her first three novels about working class women in the north of England.
Barker is never without two novels on the boil.
It doesn't necessarily mean they'll both be written, but I like to know they're there. The great fear writers have is that they'll dry up, so one idea is a relief but two ideas are positively reassuring. If both books are almost equally ready to be written, one will fight the other for dominance. Suddenly, something will happen, something you read, something you think about, and the book that is second on the list comes to life and starts fighting the other. Although it's nice to have that liveliness, it can be very destructive.