Over the last few weeks, strangely, I have been asked to write: three different pieces of work. Two small, one big. I haven't written for quite a while, so it took a bit of persuasion to get me going. Persuasion that I am now grateful for, because it reminded me of how much I love writing. I am very sorry that I was so mean to my husband about it: that I twisted his benign encouragement, wrongly psychoanalysed his motives, fell into an inevitable decline and used my usual refrain of "I am not sulking, I'm depressed about the way I am treated". A very good quote that I borrowed from my father.
I suppose when you have been copy-editing for a while, most of the time you are reading other people's prose with a rather huffy attitude of "what is this rubbish?" and it is daunting, in fact terrifying, to be on the other side again. I apologise to the friends who I shared my article with at its beginning stages, for sitting right next to them while they read it, and staring directly into their faces, looking carefully for a raised eyebrow of suspicion, a small genuine smile, a tiny light upon their expanding pupils, listening for any hint of falseness in their laughter. I am grateful that all of them had the courage to tell me to go into another room, point out its flaws and help me make it much better.
In a conversation last weekend with my dear friend Tom about rejection, he said that my citron jersey was much more citron than anyone else's citron jersey. A metaphor for what some might kindly call the gift of an over-active imagination – at times wrongly channelled. Tom used to write a Friday poem, so he understands about how it feels to put things into the world that others, including your friends, will read. I only confessed to him last week that I would wake up on a Friday morning and think yay, its Tom's poem day. He doesn't really care who likes his poems, but he might have liked to know that I did.
What I also did, last week, was make this website. Initially I deleted the blog page, deciding that I was much too busy to do a lame blog. Well I've changed my mind. Like Tom, I will attempt a bit of writing each week, and try not to worry too much about it.