The novel

I´m writing a novel. There, I´ve said it.

I have felt for a long time that somehow I´m unworthy of doing this, that somehow it is other people that write novels, not me. I´m scared of this being seen as a crazy, gigantic step which might make me open to ridicule if I don´t succeed. Surely I´ve heard about how difficult it is to get published, practically a lottery? And surely I don´t realise just how much work a novel entails, perhaps years of single-mindedness?

Well, I do realise it. I realise that my novel might end up in a bottom drawer somewhere, printed on cheap pages of A4. I realise my husband might be the only person to read it- he has to, doesn´t he?-. Still, I´m doing it. Every day, when my older son is at nursery and the housework has been done, I sit at my laptop while my daughter sleeps. And every day the same defeatist thoughts come to pay me a visit, This is stupid, You´re a novelist now? That other stuff you wrote was positively lifeless. But I have learned selective deafness, and I carry on working through the negativity of it all. I tell myself I don´t have to write great literature, I just have to persevere and write something.

And magically, I do. And my few pages have now turned into 50, a lot of them complete rubbish, but some good. And tomorrow I will write something else, and the day after. And one day, God willing, it will be finished.


Sylvia