Thanking my lucky stars as per usual
Being a writer is funny. To me it is still funny even calling myself that but there we go. It is funny because you live a strange, serendipitous existence.
Eight months in and this year has been a little thrill ride of unexpected things. I started the year drinking whiskey by a bonfire up in the Vietnamese mountains. Then I came home to freezing but beloved London and got to go to the Southbank Sky Arts Awards. I did some work for a charity supporting limbless ex-servicemen. I finished my second book and sold it. I went off to France for the Festival du Premier and then to surf Tynemouth. I wrote for the Guardian, Metro, Grazia. Now I am sitting in a little guestroom at Pembroke College about to put on the same posh frock I wore for the Southbank Awards (I only have one needless to say) to mark the end of three weeks of supervision sessions (workshopping, chatting writing) students at the National Academy of Writing - like something right out Educating Rita.
Tomorrow I’ll go to the Young Vic to continue devising the Tony Hogan one woman play with my incredibly talented director. In the spring Spread the Word will stage a London excerpt debut of the show and have provided a bursary to enable me to continue adapting the novel and working with Jonathan Kemp to design our Queer Fiction Arvon course which we’ll be teaching in June at the Ted Hughes Centre. Then? Then for August and September I’ll be working on my Thirst edits ready to deliver before…going to KOREA for the Paju Booksori and WOW Book Festivals. Afterwards I’ll travel a little: temple stays and mountains and beaches and kim-chi and K-pop. I’m thinking I may come back with the apple pip of novel three. I’m hoping so.
I think most people realise that these little red flags I’ve just pitched in the sand here don’t tell a whole story. Life still goes up and goes down. But Jesus, I am grateful. I feel like I have a strange, unexpected life at the moment and every day I think to myself if this is my little go of exciting stuff for a while I’ll happily have it then go back to normal and thank every star for everything I’ve been given. I don’t take a minute of anything for granted.
