How I wrote a book
It’s my birthday today. I managed to get through an entire year of being thirty without doing a single ‘30 things I learned at 30’ list! Yippee!
This post has risen from the ashes of another abandoned one. That read was better constructed on a technical level, but three quarters of the way down, it kept getting very mawkish and self-indulgent (although given this is a column about my life and thoughts, perhaps that’s par for course). Regardless, if I’d been writing this week’s edition on paper, the analog way, my desk would have been littered with scrunched up balls of rejected drafts. I just could not make it work. So you’ve got this instead. It might be self-indulgent or mawkish, but hopefully not both at once.
My life at 31 is notably different from my life at 30. A lot is new: job title, flat, relationship status. This time last year, I was living in Glasgow; now my base is back in London (although I still spend a big portion of time in Scotland). I wasn’t in therapy, I’d not finished my book draft and I hadn’t yet emerged from a low period that left me reeling.
It was when that low period really began to bite that I started writing the Chaff. This is obviously not a coincidence. ‘Did the journal factory explode?’ is a relevant viral comment I saw the other day. I’ve always found it impossible to keep a diary — I lie to it by regular omission. It’s a very intimate and exposing endeavour, only writing for yourself. My childhood diaries read like auditions for canonisation, no room for ugly emotions like jealousy or annoyance. No mention of the crushes and humiliations which dominate my actual memories. A smooth existence that bears little resemblance to the ragged, real-life experience.
But blogging for a wider readership, at arm’s length? Let’s go! I’ll show feet for free! Pay a paltry fee and get uncensored emotional hole! You might not love me but you’ll sure as heck hear my howls of pain!
This column, like the book I can now announce exists!!!!, was born out of feeling deeply isolated and lonely. A lot of that was self-inflicted. But I was also alone in an unfamiliar city, with a longstanding relationship anchor breaking down. My resilience was in the pits.
