Mostly I think that all I ever want do is write. In the white heat of working on a novel I forget that it is a solitary and solipsistic occupation and that there is another world beyond the engrossing one inside my head. However, in recent months a friend and I have been fosicking around for old and discarded items -- crockery, linen, this and that, and we've spent our free time refashioning them into something different: cake stands, pretty candles, items for the home. More craft than art, but it's taken a certain amount of imagination and skill and the fruits of our labour have been on show in Room 212 in Bristol this week.
I haven't had so much fun in ages. It's been great to do something manual and profoundly satisfying to see concrete results at the end of an afternoon's work instead of having to wait for months (or years) to see something finished. I have enjoyed having some headspace; time not to think. Best of all, I've had lots of conversations with warm, enthusiastic people, real ones, not the elusive and contestable ones of my imagination. Apparently Charles Dickens used to try and do an hour's walking for every hour that he spent writing and I'm beginning to understand the wisdom of that. It's not just time off for good behaviour, it's a kind of therapy...
So at the end of the week, when our time in the gallery is up, I shall be able to go back to page 143 of my rewrites refreshed and reinvigorated. The moral of today's tale? That just writing isn't always right...
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