Freehand – writing without thinking

Listening to myself on the radio right now (I have grown to like the sound of my voice, and never had to grow into loving the music I love, because I’ve always loved the new and the weird and the wonderful). Sitting back in my garden office that was sanctuary to one of my children and his semi-feral cat for 14 months, because I wanted it to be, because it needed to be, because parents are sanctuary. But it feels good to have my own space again, because I was the only one in the household for 14 months without a space of their own (M did offer up hers but I didn’t want to deprive her; and she’s the real cornerstone of this gang). I can already feel the impact of being in here again – part solitude, part calm, part loneliness, part aching to go into overdrive again. There’s still a lot of my stuff in our marital bedroom that needs moving into here.

When I walked in here 10 minutes ago, I felt bereft of words, and to feel bereft on publication day for The Mortality Code feels a little counter-intuitive. I should be coining lots of soundbites and pithy sentences for my socials, should be finding ways of getting my message across so that lots of folks buy this hybrid author’s latest novel. There are just a few problems with that – I may be a writer but I’m not a copywriter; I may be a writer, but I’m not a marketer and never will be; it was the end of the financial year at work yesterday, and I’ve spent all day with my head in spreadsheets (and in the real world which is looking very ugly indeed).

If a thousand people a day buy the ebook of The Mortality Code which is what its previous mention links to, I stand a remote chance of being in the top 10 ebook sellers. I’ve got a grim smile on my face writing that, and something of the devil around that smile, a kind of resignation, but a happy one. Go on, folks, you know you want to.

Lots to do this weekend. And what I want to do most of all right now, is to close the office door behind me, lock it, and go sit in the sofa (a Norwegianism there, if there ever was one) with M and watch some mindless telly.