As many readers of this blog might have gathered, I’ve recently packed up and gone north for a few months to write a book. To be starting a new chapter feels fresh under the armpits and frolicky in my soul. As you might have gathered from posts of late, I’m also very anxious. It’s the biggest project I’ve set out to complete.
It feels like I’m stepping into a brand new field.
To answer a few questions:
Why north?
I’ve come to the Byron hinterland (the trees and hills back from the coast) because it’s 10 hours from my distractions. I say this a lot here – these days you can’t whinge about being interrupted or bombarded and not getting anything done. Because you will be constantly. This is life now. So it’s up to to put up your own parameters. And install the barbed-wire fencing. I tell everyone I’m away for a few months, they leave me alone and will forgive me for not returning emails. Also, I won’t be tempted to take on a quick MC job, or help some charity launch an appeal or duck out to have a coffee with some guy working on a cool project who wants my thoughts etc.
Also, I love heat and steaminess and trees and hills and up here I’m myself. I’m not a city girl.
Finally, up here, on my own, I’m scared. I have no mobile reception. Which I love. Being scared is good. It jolts. It forces the mind to grasp at new things.
What’s the book?
I was commissioned a year ago by a publisher to write a book. It’s due this month. I’ve not started. I have an extension (ergo, I’m getting serious and heading north). It’s a bit like my Sunday Life column, a bit like this blog, but includes all the bits in the background. It’s not memoir, it’s not self-help. It’s…well, it’s yet to be written.
Perfectly, I have to be my truest self to write this damn thing. I have to be my message. And, so…
This is what I’m doing with my blog…
It will be business as usual, mostly.