The difficult bits


See, there are two bits about being a writer I do not find easy. And who knows, maybe there are more than two.


Anyway.


The first (of the two) is the bit when a book is germinating. Gestating. Not even hatching, just growing in the dark. For months I drift, thinking, looking like the world's biggest loser, like an axolotl in a coma, unemerged, nothing to show, dosser and parasite and all those kind of bad things a person would rather not be. Watching for will o' the wisps and (worse) following them through all that marshy stuff to no destination. So, that's the first kind of not easy. And it's a solitary time. You can't think a book and be sociable. Well - I can't.


The second is where I am now. This feels like a piece of well-masticated chewing gum, one end held between a teenager's teeth, the other between the fingers of said teenager - stretching... stretching... stretching... My soul feels so extenuated and thin it has become impossible to itself.


Cos


laundry, housecalming, grocery-shopping, washing up, correspondence, dealing with tradespeople, answering publishers' correspondence, filling out author questionnaires, responding to people who need help encouragement kindness


all have to be done. And those responsibilities grip one end of me, and the unfolding story grips the other end of me, and the two worlds grip tighter and tighter and move further and further apart and I am stretched in the middle.


And why I don't like this is not because it is uncomfortable. I am at home with uncomfortable (although I do find it uncomfortable...). I don't like it because it brings to the surface, inexorably with a horrible grin on its face, all the flaws in my character.


I become whiney. Very whiney. And impatient. And intolerant. And rude.


I become frightened of interacting with people because in this very thin transparent state I walk in constant danger of committing that most unforgivable of social gaffes: saying what I think.


Now is the time to fast from Facebook. Fast. Fast fast I mean.

Now is the time to cancel social engagements.

Now is the time to stop answering the phone.


Now is the time to


stop


right


here
(please pray for me)