Phew

Well, phew. A few weeks ago I moaned about not being able to write to a theme set for an anthology I fancied being in, and about the ridiculousness of theme-setting in general, but I'm beginning to wonder if it was simply that while my book tour has been running, my head just hasn't been in the right place for writing.

My book tour finished on Wednesday. Yesterday, as a way of signing off from it, I tidied my study. This morning I walked into the tidied room and looked at my old writing table with the sun pouring onto one corner of its surface, my pad laid neatly and my silver fountain pen gleaming beside it, and something happened. Some kind of reverberation in the air of the room, some kind of peaceful soft feel to it... You know what it was, don't you? That womb-like dream world coming back...

I sat at the desk. And it came, the story I had been trying to write all those weeks ago.

Last week I met Ben, an artist, for a drink, and I was moaning about this very thing: the way promotion requires a different mentality from creation, and if you do a lot of promotion you can end up not creating. He nodded and agreed, but I think he thought I was a wimp. It's the price of the democratization of art, he told me. I know he's right, but I don't half find it a struggle sometimes...