In the beginning the thought was: I’ll write a book. It will be sublime and sweet and full of everything I want to say and all I can be. Then, onwards, pages and pages, on they go, somebody reads it, comments, critiques, years pass by – YEARS, actual years – and still the pages go on. So far in it’s not possible to ditch-out on the idea now, so far gone, so many pages under the belt. Then re-writes, revisions, screwing, tighter, tighter, whole pages cut – CUT CUT CUT – down from 100,000 words to 77,000 words and there are still worries, brewers, nigglers, ticklers, dodgy bits, bits my brain won’t reach to, bits I know deep down I should axe but can’t quite yet and the deadline is here. Oh, Lordy, it’s here. It’s the end of the week and I’ve been up through the nights.
It’s nothing like the ol’ student days of pro-plus and walkers crisps while knocking out some bollocks about a feminist playwright. This is terror. Personal, subjective, neck stuck out further than it is comfortable to be angst. Most days at the desk there is a voice shouting ‘hurl it into the wastepaper bin it’s shite’ that I have to somehow ignore.
At the end of this week I’m sending the thing away, with pipes sewn into its feathers and its bones boiled, I’m sending these pages off.
Also – exciting, today I went for a meeting at the airport where I am going to be a writer in residence and I discovered that I will have my very own desk looking out onto the airstrip. Glorious! I’ve got Arts Council funding and am really happy about this project. It is a triple whammy of being able to research and learn about a whole new area for a whole new project *twinkle twinkle future on the other side of this current project, the glittery distant place, it’s reachable!* and run some exciting workshops on collecting memories and stories to do with a sense of place around the airport, plus it buys me an extension on my maternity leave meaning more time to write and more time with the precious wee squawkers. Or should I say the eternally weeing squawkers.
