From guest blogger, Jill Mansell

Holly, the blogwerker here. I'm most likely to reach for a fun-sort of women's fiction [not the sob-sort] when I settle in for the evening. This winter I discovered Jill Mansell. Where has she been keeping herself? Over in England, apparently. Jill writes fun, yet meaty stories that I have eaten up. I was so happy that when I fawned all over her, Jill agreed to come over here [electronically] to guest blog

Hello! Question for you - do you like yourself? If it could happen, would you like to be your own best friend? I think the answer has to be yes, because you'd enjoy each other's company, love doing exactly the same things ALL the time...enjoy the same TV shows, visit the same shops, read the same books... Perfect, really.
(Yes, I know. These are the kinds of things I think about when I can't sleep at night.)

Then I started to wonder if I would be as happy if I had to be best friends with a younger version of myself. And that was when I realised how very much I'd changed over the years. It had never occurred to me before, but I'm different now- at 53 - in so many ways.

I used to be passionate about clothes and wore different outfits every day. I adored high heeled  shoes. Now I wear pretty much the same thing all the time - long bias cut skirts, long flowing tops and jackets, almost all of it black. I have refined my style to such a degree that I own many versions of the same clothes and would never consider trying anything else. I own no pairs of shoes at all, just a few pairs of boots for winter and jewelled flip-flops for the summer. The twenty-something me would be utterly baffled by this! (Can I just say, I do aim nowadays to look elegant rather than frumpy. And I do go wild with the accessories. I don't actually resemble a nun.)

I used to read only non-fiction, and mainly books about world war two. Now, I read chiefly light commercial fiction. That's the wrong way round, surely?

I used to LIVE for music and knew the lyrics of practically every song ever written. Now I rarely listen to it and never buy any. My younger self would WEEP if she knew this.

On the plus side: all those boys who broke my heart, made me cry and had me wondering miserably if I would ever be happy again? I can't remember most of their names or even what they looked like. Although when I'm enjoying a particularly glamorous best-selling author moment I'd be lying if I didn't occasionally think wouldn't it be great if they could see me now...?

Another major difference is I now spend most of my working day home alone, which is something I couldn't have done in my twenties. I had a genuine fear of solitude and made sure I was NEVER on my own. I shared apartments with friends, then married at twenty two. When my marriage ended after five years, I became a landlady and filled my house with tenants.

My life is so different now. I have changed so much. I might still like my younger self - she's basically a nice person, after all! - but we wouldn't be best friends, not in a million years. But what of the future? It's only just occurred to me that twenty years from now I could have metamorphosed into something completely different again. What might I start doing then that I wouldn't dream of doing now? There's sky-diving...triathlon races...nude modelling...

Oh my goodness, I could turn into one of those completely outrageous and fearless old ladies who are always up to all sorts. I want to start now, right away. That's it, I'm going to dye my hair purple and get a tattoo!

 

  Jill Mansell lives with her partner and children in Bristol, and writes full time. Actually that's not true; she watches TV, eats fruit gums, admires the rugby players training in the sports field behind her house, and spends hours on the internet marvelling at how many other writers have blogs. Only when she's completely run out of displacement activities does she write.

Jill Mansell's books have sold over three million copies and her titles include her most recent (in England) To The Moon and (here in the US) Staying At Daisy's