Being a Writer

It's a hard old life, being a writer. All that sitting and thinking and staring, the endless games of Patience, the realisation that life is passing you by outside, so you go outside and realise how suddenly important it has become to clean out the hen house or cats' litter tray. Then you come back inside and that pile of ironing REALLY needs doing, like NOW. And before you know it, it's time to cook dinner and faff about recording the minutiae of 'Eggheads' in your special 'Eggheads' book to see if CJ de Mooi can pull an even smugger face than he did on 27th October two years ago.

Sometimes, being a writer can leave you feeling quite exhausted...

And then there are the times like yesterday morning when you wake suddenly at 5.50 with the sudden realisation that the last 5,000 words of your latest endeavour are all wrong and are thus rendered a complete waste of time BUT the real direction of the piece is buzzing around in your still sleepy brain NOW, but you know if you wait until after your morning swim or nut'n' oat breakfast cereal, the MAGNIFICENCE of the idea (whole sentences and everything) will be gone - POOF! - never to be retrieved and you know, you really, really know that those words and ideas are being given to you by a greater universal force because they are the words of a literary masterpiece that will start a bidding war and (finally) get you published. (Or at the very least, leave you feeling very satisfied with your work).

So you leap out of bed, put on your specs (generally stabbing yourself in the eye in the process), crash into the dressing table and find the pen and notebook you always keep by your bedside for such occasions, only the pen has run out so you have to go downstairs and the cats think 'Waa-hay! Breakfast time!' and they stare at you in an aggressive fashion until you've fed them and refreshed their water bowl because they couldn't possibly drink the water put there last night, it'd be too, too disgusting (what with all the cat hairs floating in it). And then the hens, through some kind of psychic chicken power, realise you're up and about and start a-clucking so you have to wade out in the rain and mud in your jim-jams and feed and water them so they don't wake up the neighbours.

You get to your writing space, desperately repeating the GREAT IDEA over and over in your mind to maintain its essence and brilliance so it doesn't escape before you can commit it to paper. You grab a pen and another notebook and scribble like fury as the words spill out faster than you can write them. And then a cat will appear and say 'Did you change our water?' and you shriek, 'Yes! I changed your *!^'@*! water,' and the cat says 'Calm down, I was only asking,' and stalks off to discuss with the other cat how tetchy these writers can be.

And all before 6.30...

So if you're thinking of being a writer, bear these things in mind - 1) Always keep 5 pens on your bedside table 2) delete Patience from your laptop 3) DO NOT keep cats or chickens 4) invest in a dictaphone 5) always listen to the Greater Universe because it always knows best.

Then when your hubbie comes home and, as you're wrestling to prise overdone sausages off the pan because you forgot to turn them because you've been so absorbed in writing your Grand Idea, you say to him, 'Here, have a read of this and see what you think,' and when you turn back there are tears in his eyes and he says that what you've written is so beautiful it has made him cry -then you know that it's all worthwhile.