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February 27, 2006
Disturbing My Heart
I’m very rarely beaten by a book. If I don’t like the sound of something then I don’t read it but once I’ve read the first couple of sentences I feel obliged to give it a chance which usually means I battle it out to the end, if only to be able to define why I find it so bad.
In a charity shop the other day I picked up a Women’s Press book called Delighting the Heart; A Notebook by Women Writers (Susan Sellers ed) The back cover promises that;
’Seventeen women - poets, novelists and playwrights - talk with candour and warmth about how they began to write, how they approach a new piece of work and how they develop it.’
It sounds like a great inspiration/ motivation piece for the 50 hours editing I’m supposed to be putting in over the next month. You see I’m a sucker for all those stories of the Woman Writer’s struggle in the face of adversity; Jane Austen hiding her work away as soon as someone came in the room; JK Rowling pacing the baby about in the buggy until it fell asleep and then scribbling away in a cafe, making one cup of coffee last all afternoon. (OK so that one turned out to be a literary myth but I love it all the same) In fact the only thing that gets me out of bed at 6:15 in the morning, is the knowledge that I’m not as dedicated as Sylvia Plath, who got up at 4:30am, so that she could get the work done before the kids woke up.
I was hoping for something similar from Delighting the Heart. Perhaps I would learn that there are other women out there who snatch whatever babysitting time they can, here and there, from whoever is willing enough to charge a pittance, or better still nothing at all. (Yo! Grandparents!) Perhaps I would learn that for other women too, most of the time this means a packet of Starburst and a Disney DVD and the motherly guilt that usually ensues. Maybe I would even acquire a few helpful tips on how to concentrate whilst world war three is kicking off in the room around me, or how to persuade a four year old that surely she can wait for that snack because Jesus Christ she had lunch only half an hour ago.
According to the Women Writers featured in the book so far, I have the following options.
1) Leave the kids with the husband and swan off to that spare flat I keep in London for just such purposes, only coming home at weekends,
2) Divorce my husband and let him have full custody.
3) (And I actually like the sound of this one) Buy a holiday cottage in the middle of nowhere in Cornwall and disappear for week long writing breaks, several times a year. (mmm I wonder how long it would take to save up for a nice cottage if I put a PayPal button on this blog.)
4) Tiredness dulls creativity. I mustn’t write when I’m tired. (If I took this one seriously then strictly speaking, I should not have got out of bed at all today.)
Page 20 and already I feel my soul ebbing away. Perhaps I better put this one aside, ready for a better time, when I might find it amusing or something. Right now my heart is not delighted but very much disturbed.
Posted by purple elephant at February 27, 2006 10:42 PM