Friday ramblings

"I realized a long time ago that I have absolutely NO control over my writing, how it goes any given day, or week, or in any given book. I can follow the same schedule, sit at the same computer, eat the same two chocolates, every single day, with wildly varying results. And that, my friends, makes me NUTS. It's why I spend so much of the rest of my day organizing drawers, separating my daughter's toys into neatly ordered bins, and obsessively updating my calendar. I need to feel like I'm doing something right, when such a big part of what I do and love is always the big question mark." - Sarah Dessen

YES.

When I read this I felt like my brain had taken a deep breath and was letting it out slowly. SUCH a relief. Perhaps it is the tension between the control freakish, perfectionist part and the chaotic, creative part that enables the writing to happen for many people. I am so glad to hear that I am not the only one who feels completely chaotic and out of control while writing and makes up for it by being compulsively organised and structured in every other area.

Today has been a strange day, largely because I spent the morning reading my own book in book form. I had read the uncorrected proof copy, but this was the first time I had read the finished product (and I managed to spill a drop of coffee on one of the pages. Typical. I suppose it wouldn't really be my book unless it had a coffee stain). It can be quite excruciating, reading your own work - it feels like hearing your suddenly unfamiliar and squeaky voice on someone else's answering machine, or watching a video of yourself performing. I was irrationally terrified that I would turn the page and see that the book ended with an alien invasion or robotic dinosaurs taking over the world. Or a typo. Equally terrifying. Anyway, I was reading it in order to find a passage that would be suitable for reading at events when I get to London, and I think I've found one. I've always been nervous about reading my own work, particularly in public, so I will have to practise a great deal to overcome shaking-voice-and-hands syndrome.

When I was fourteen (at one of my high schools - the Dominican Convent in Harare), my English teacher always made me read my stories out loud. I hated it. And her. Which wasn't really fair - she was a lovely woman. In my mind, however, she was a fanged, slavering ogre because she forced my bespectacled and pudding-bowl-haircutted self to stand quivering in front of a roomful of teenage girls. No one could ever understand a word I said because I spoke so quickly and quietly. I had a panic attack at the end of every session. And yet she made me do it every week. I am grateful, really, because it did make public speaking and sharing my work much easier (gradually), but it still makes me cringe when I remember it.

Still. She won't be at my readings. But if I see a diminutive woman with a beehive hairdo and cats-eye glasses at the back of the room, I'm running.