Saturday morning

Saturday morning. I’m writing on the computer in my dressing gown. The bell rings; it’s a friend who wants to invite me to a 50^th birthday party in a few months. I am suddenly more aware of the nagging unease that the garden is messy with weeds, the house messy with dust and dirty dishes and I feel slightly ashamed. After he leaves, I remind myself that when JK Rowlings was asked how she managed to write the first Harry Potter book while she was bringing up a young baby on her own she replied “I didn’t do any housework for three years”. Walt Whitman said to be a writer you have to be able to let the grass grow. It is not easy.

You don’t just decide to write one day and stick to the decision for life, as you would change your name by deed poll or convert to a religion. You have to claim the privilege every day, sometimes several times a day. It’s one thing saying “I’d like to write” or even, when your cupboard and hard disk are full of your unpublished production or you have won a few competitions “I’m a writer”. It’s quite another actually engaging in the activity.

In Arabic the word “art” means “act of life”. When someones writes (or paints or sings) there are a million other things they are not doing, pressing demands they are ignoring at their peril. I suppose I’m trying to say that writing is ‘dangerous’, it’s an intense struggle against the tendency to do nothing. At times everything seems to try to concur to prevent you from doing it.