The End ... which is a beginning
4am writing club diaries
Hello. I just want to start by saying thank you for all of you who have been reading and sharing my latest post — ‘We Could Be Heroes’ — I also wanted to share an update since I posted that piece and since I pressed send.
The first thing I’d like to share here, is that I hit my personal deadline and a new draft of my new novel ‘The Life Of Life’ is now with my agent and publisher. I know lots of you who read these posts are fellow writers and will know this state of being, it is the weirdest feeling isn’t it? A strange sensation of vulnerability, of letting go of a story, of letting someone else read your words, letting someone hold your heart, rummage about your soul. When it kinda feels like your work is a wet calf, bloody on the grass, and it feels as if you say ‘what do you think’ as it lays there, it still needs to dry off and learn to stand on it’s own, but here is the beautiful wriggly new thing, a bit like a new born foal.
After pressing send you are still thinking in the characters voices, still in the story, another world. Since delivery this past few days I have been feeling quite lost in this jagged reality. When is a story over, where is the ending, and are endings beginnings, and when do you press send? Well, I guess, I got as far as I could, and I was sure I did the best I could, and gave it my all, and I worked as hard as could, here we are after miles and miles of 4am starts. I counted to ten and pressed send. I remember how it was getting dark early, it was just as the night burst into a cacophony of fireworks for Guy Fawkes and bonfire night and Diwali and just as the world burst into flames.
After I sent the book off, I went downstairs in a daze, and sat on the sofa and poured a glass of wine and watched the US election, or perhaps we could call it another episode of the end of the world as we know it. Then I got a phone call from Holland that a very dear friend and big sister of mine died, just as they started calling Trump the winner. I felt it, all of this, at once, letting go, saying goodbye, the changes and shifts, happening out there and in here, all at the same time. Needless to say, I finished the bottle of wine, and wept with you and the rest of the world.
We have so much work to do, to continue to do, but we know that. The work is continuous, the work is the journey, the work is the point, the work is what we were born to do. I cannot ever imagine thinking that all the work is done out there in the big world and in here in my world of words. We live in a work in progress, we are a work in progress, growing and learning and loving.
As for the new book ‘The Life of Life’ will be published with Canongate Books and galloping into this world in 2026. It feels so far away and in a future world. Who knows who will be here then? Who will read books, who will keep fighting the good fight for books, who will keep championing libraries and indie bookshops and find funding and platforms for all of our beautiful poets and story tellers and for literacy and humanity … and who knows what happens next to our worlds and words and hearts.
For now, here is a small moment in this new books journey which feels big to me. I know I will never forget writing and sending this new draft of this work on this one particular book, a book singing with the voice Life, in the autumn of 2024. I will remember this feeling, this mourning, the fire and light, the hope and dreams of where we could be and who we could be to each other, stamped with all of my fierce love of this world onto every page.
Ok, I must finish my laundry and pack to go to my beautiful friend’s funeral in Amsterdam. I share this page of diary, just so I remember this time of Life and I press send with her voice still singing in my head, this feeling, how it is or was to be here and now … here and now … which is all we ever have.
THE END
which is a beginning
Come see me, here's a handful of novemberry dates:
November 20: Newham Festival Of Stories, London
November 22: Radical Book Fair, Roxy, Edinburgh
November 23 + 24: Push The Boat Out Festival, Edinburgh
November 27: Stop The War Fundraiser, Seven Dials Club, London
November 28: Coronet Theatre, Notting Hill, London
December 6: Toast Poetry, Norwich Playhouse
This got me right in the heart! The bleeding calf lying there, not yet ready to stand alone - that’s EXACTLY it. I am querying a new novel after leaving my agent after my first (but really 3rd!) novel didn’t find a publisher, and it’s such a weird process! And yes, the world, the sadness and grief and hope hiding somewhere in it - you articulate exactly what I feel! Can’t wait for the new book.