Chapter Nineteen

So, you say, why do it, if it's all so painful? Because I couldn't do anything else. Writing is what I do, and whenever I've tried to do anything else (and God knows, I have), it's felt wrong and miserable and not what I should be doing. People tell me I'm lucky, because I work at what I love doing - which is half right - I'm lucky, sure, and I know that. But this thing that I'm supposed to love - sometimes I HATE it!! When I'm involved in something like this, everything else goes out of the window. People bore me, things bore me, tv bores me. My head is just full of fictional people whizzing around bending the story this way and that, with me desperately trying to shut them up and control them. They follow me about. They nudge me at inappropriate moments. They argue with me when I'm trying to buy things in Sainsburys, they jostle me at football games, they breathe down my neck at parties. It's like being insane, only without the lack of conscious reasoning.

I worry about whether Violet is wearing the right kind of frock for having her photograph taken in 1903 at a marble works in Carrera. Would Paul be drinking tequila or just overdoing it with scotch? When Freda takes a plane to Seattle in 1968, how is she treated at SeaTac Airport? - And was it in fact even CALLED SeaTac in 1968?

Should Freda tell her husband she's expecting another man's child? Was Paul really in love with his wife? Was Violet evil or just a victim of her times? These are all questions I have to ask myself every minute of every day, whether I like it or not.

So, if you know me, and I seem these days to be monosyllabic, depressed, distracted - now you know why. I'm BUSY BLOODY WRITING A BOOK!!! - And I still have eight chapters to go...