The last time I wrote a novel I was newly married and living in a tumbledown farmhouse with four sheep and a gaggle of poultry. I rose early, drove my husband to the bus stop, swam 40 lengths in the local leisure centre then cloistered in a small writing room at the top of the house. I sat down to write like I prepared to swim: poised on the pool edge, primed, daunted, eager to be in my element. There were days it was difficult, lonely work. There were days I tended towards madness.
Once, I called my husband out of theatre to ask him how to operate his air rifle. I had hung a bird feeder outside my window to enjoy the wildlife, however two grey-backed crows barred smaller birds from the table. This black-caped mob stripped the feeder of fat balls and my fixation with them grew. What is even more surprising is that my husband, mid-anaesthetic, instructed me in how to load and fire his rifle, then returned to his work and left me to it. When the gun went off, I came to. There I was, on my belly at the sash window, operating a firearm in my pyjamas while a murder of crows mocked me from the tree.
Apprentice to the Wildwood
Fifteen years on, I am working out what a writing practice looks like within the context of family life. I find novel writing to be a deeply immersive process. The lines between fiction and fact blur and I can get lost for hours, days or weeks in the labyrinth of imaginary worlds. How can I yield to that process and then jump into my car for the school run?
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