I’ve written 45,000 words of my new novel The Dragonfly, it’s a sunny morning and I feel full of that elation which comes when the currents of what you are writing seem to shift and move of their own accord and for a moment you glimpse clear water. All the hard graft of establishing your characters starts to pay off as they begin to behave autonomously and one by one the plot traps you have set are sprung. I’m mixing all kinds of metaphors here, but it does feel as though I’m cresting a very steep hill and that the downward sweep is lying before me. It’s also a bit like falling in love — the same sense of wonderment, of living in an enclosed and private world. All the pleasure of writing is here and I’m conscious of the need to enjoy this phase as what lies ahead is the part I dread, when you send it out into the world and wait to see what becomes of it.
I had my fix of the countryside at the weekend, which I think is an absolute necessity when you are writing as it stimulates an appetite for beauty, it truly does inspire. I went to Norfolk with my mum, wandering along endless beaches and through meadows that were waist high with cow parsley, sharing together the shining world. Lovely stuff.
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