CRASHING OVER CORNFLAKES

‘I’m thinking of starting a support group for partners of writers.’ This little bombshell was dropped over breakfast some days ago. I think it was a joke because my other half, although a people person, is not given to joining groups of any persuasion, let alone starting one. Once I’d got over choking over my cornflakes, I worked out the message behind the statement: his way of saying: ‘You’ve actually been reasonably sane and pleasant to be around when you took your foot off the gas and re-joined the human race for Christmas, long may it continue when you get back to business.’

And I see his point.

Only your other half watches the mighty struggle with a plot problem, witnesses the messy reaction to a bad review, the apoplexy when an editor wants significant changes that seem, initially, bonkers, or the knee-knocking fear before a literary event or, hell’s teeth, a radio interview – I have a particular terror of these even though I’ve done a fair few.   In other words, they get the real, beneath the skin writer, the one that obsesses and sweats and has impossible highs and mind numbing lows.

But there is also another more serious side to this rather tongue in cheek observation. In common with other writers, I strut my stuff on social media. It’s inescapable. Publishers and agents expect it and, apparently, so do readers. In the midst of a real life crisis, (mercifully rare) however, I am known to ‘fake it.’ This can be confusing for your other half. ‘How can you write like that when X is going on and you feel like this?’ As a result, I’ve made two resolutions for 2017. The first is to get my priorities well and truly straight. Real life relationships matter more than fictional. The second, rather than faking it, when life chucks its worst, I will go off air, under radar, to ground, because I only pretend in my stories.