In answer to your question…

How is your writing going?

Not an easy question nor answer, I say, habitually by now.

And it’s not that I don’t appreciate the question, because I do. I truly do. It’s gratifying to know people are interested in what I’m doing, and that they might care about it like I do.

But in truth, I have no idea how to answer.

I’ve never tackled a writing project of this scale, and I’m struggling to see an aerial view of it. And it strikes me now as I write that image, that it’s not that I’m looking for perspective, but more perhaps I want to fly away.

Do you mean have I written any words that will eventually be printed in a book? Maybe. But not many. And they are scattered in various docs and apps and yellow postits that litter my desk like autumn leaves, slowly curling at the corners, becoming something forgotten, losing the sheen of life that led to me rushing from shower to bedroom dripping onto the floor and frantically scribbling some pithy idea that seemed so vital in that moment.

Do you mean do I get up each day and diligently sit down at my desk to chip away at this unwieldy thing that I hope one day will be a compelling story? Sort of. But mostly I shuttle between rooms, picking up kid’s toys and depositing them somewhere else they probably don’t go. Or making unnecessary cups of coffee. Or eating standing up at the sink, looking out at the fence I never got round to painting in the summer, and the vans, slowly decaying in the car park like rusting monuments to my failure to do basic things like give them a wash.

Do you mean am I happy with how things are going? Mostly. But more often I feel a sense of welling anxiety, like blood from a knife cut. Worry that I’m not doing enough, worry that I’m not doing the right things. And then worry that I’m being far too casual about it all, like I’ll just straighten my back and hammer out some words when I feel ready, as easy as taking out the recycling. Even though I can barely manage to do that with regularity.

And yet.

And yet.

More or less every moment of every waking day I am thinking of this story. I am kneading ideas, in the hope that they will become supple and rise into something glorious and desirable.

This is sometimes how writing works for me. There are long stretches of destitution, where I wander through a half-world, looking for answers. Looking for a place to begin. Looking for somewhere to fall. And when I find it, I will fall, and keep falling, and all else will melt away and I will know that I am on the way.

I feel myself tilting on the edge of this precipice where the fall does not mean the end, but the beginning. It’s coming. I feel it coming. I know that my apparent procrastination is not wasted. It is simply the space for ideas to breathe. And I know that right now I need to enjoy the feeling of being in this world, at this moment, because when I fall into the other, I may not come back for some time.

So in answer to your question.

Really, what I want to say is this:

I am the dawn treader, wheeler of light and air.

I am the feeder of a rat.

I am cigarette smoke in the cold, blue dark.

I am the rush of the burn in the gathering blackness.

I am the swirled history of a whisky glass.

I am the panicked croak of pheasant as dusk spills round the roots of trees.

I am ignored lists of things I need and things I’ll never do.

I am the salmon spawning in the pools, wrestling with instinct, writhing with fatalistic purpose.

I am jilted piles of books, aching to be noticed.

I am the soft curves of questions that rise from tilted eyes.

I am all of these things and none at all.

That’s what I want to say.

And yet I can’t.

Because people would think I had lost my mind.

And maybe they’d be right.