Before I started writing novels I had an idea of what a novelist’s life might be like. I assumed the writer would take herself off every morning to a shed.
Not a clapped out old garden shed filled with earwigs and disintegrating tubs of hormone rooting powder. No, I imagined a picturesque shed - more of a garden room really. Light and airy and painted pale blue, with a fridge that would self-fill with delicious things, and a verandah and pots of geraniums that would self-water.
Something like this maybe?
Flipping twenty books on and I still don’t have a shed. In the early years we did have a garden, in which a shed could have been built (but wasn’t). But we don’t even have that anymore. You grow up thinking that as you get older your life will gradually become more luxurious and entirely free of stress.
My resources are shrinking.
We no longer have a garden of our own. There’s a communal one here, out the back and shared between six flats. The one time in eight years that I dared to sit out there on a blanket and try to write, a neighbour rushed out with a folding chair for me. I had to sit on it while he stood there with his arms folded, smiling and watching me write.
‘That’s it finished!’ I held up my notebook in triumph.
‘The book?’ he asked.
‘Yes!!!’
Cafes are much better. I enjoy the background hubbub as long as no one speaks above a certain volume, like the woman sitting near me today who announces shrilly to her friend: I WAS TELLING MY GASMAN ABOUT THE ABOUT THE AWFUL LITTER STREWN ABOUT EVERYWHERE!
‘My’ gasman, she says? I find myself pondering this. Because when you’re in the thick of a novel you’re primed for distraction, snagging onto the least interesting thing in the world, simply because it’s not your book.
Suddenly, everything around you is deeply fascinating. A mark on your shoe! That woman’s red hair! The ingredients list on your pea and falafel wrap!
You have your own personal gasman? I marvel, honing in on the women’s conversation when I should be writing. What’s his name? And can I use it in my book?
When choosing ‘my’ cafe (my own personal cafe!) I’m sorry to say that I prefer a tax-dodging multi-national chain over a delightful independent establishment. That way, no one cares how long I’m in there, spinning out a single large Americano for years on end. I’ve grown partial to their oddly damp wraps and searing hot toasties that drip cheese down my jumper and scald my mouth’s interior as I realise that two of my characters have similar names. So either Shelley or Shona will have to go.
I change Shona to Rona and realise I have a Raya, so that won’t do either.
Then I realise I have a Millie, a Tilly and a Jilly.
And for an overbearing gin-swilling mother-in-law character, I have inadvertently used the name of a friend’s actual overbearing gin-swilling mother-in-law. So that too will have to go.
Sitting here at my cafe table, eating trashy food and drinking too much coffee, I really should be wrangling this mess into an actual book. However something fascinating is happening close by.
The heavily bearded fortyish man at the next table appears to be on a date. I assume the date is making him nervous because he is drumming the table with his hands.
It’s not a little light drumming, over in seconds. It is an extended solo, going on and on, long after the lights have come on and the audience has gone home and now someone really needs to drag him away from his kit and batter him.
STOP THAT BLOODY DRUMMING OR I’LL COSH YOU WITH MY HEFTY CUP!!!
I don’t actually say that. I just keep shooting quick, sharp looks at him while also hoping that his date works out well.
Why not just write at home, you might wonder? I do this an awful lot. But as my current favourite writing location is tucked up in bed, like a sick person, it starts to feel dysfunctional. It’s embarrassing to admit that I write for hours and hours - all day sometimes - huddled under a mulchy old duvet, scattered with crumbs.
It’s like living in a hospital. I keep expecting the soft rattle of a trolley laden with drugs to come towards me, but it never does.
I know, it’s madness really. There’s a perfectly good desk and a horribly expensive ergonomic swivel chair in another room. But for some reason I can’t make myself sit there.
Meanwhile, although I’m very much enjoying writing this current book, it has become deeply involving to an obsessional level. It’s literally all I want to do. As a result, I am not functioning normally and the rest of my life - i.e. the non-book part - has stopped.
Casually, a family member asks me, ‘What date is it today?’
‘I don’t know,’ I reply, blankly.
Not, ‘Oh, I think it’s the 9th or the 10th?’ No grabbing my phone and checking the date. Just a stark: I DON’T KNOW.
My friend Chrissie asks if I can read over her job application. It’s in a tiny font and for some reason I can’t make it any bigger (these days I opt for a whopping 16-point). I search all over the flat for my glasses - and realise I am already wearing them on my eyes.
Her job application is impressive, and when she comes by later I tell her, ‘You choosed really good words.’
Chrissie looks as if she wishes she’d asked someone else to read it over.
Apart from cafes, I also love to work on trains. So I get stuck into my book on the journey to Dad’s. There’s something about the train’s motion that helps me to fully focus, and finally the words are flowing and nothing is going to distract me now!
I glance up. This is what I see from the window:
Waves crashing onto the sea wall at Saltcoats on the North Ayrshire coast. Turning back to my laptop, I batter away at the keyboard like it’s a manual typewriter from 1983.
Finally, brain mangled, I look up again.
Just in time to realise that the train has stopped again. But the doors have closed already, and now we are moving slowly out of Ardrossan Town station, where I need to get off to visit Dad.
‘STOP!’ I yell helplessly.
I think I really do need a shed.
Love,
Fiona xx
PS My new novel, The Woman Who Ran Away From Everything, is just 99p at the moment, for a limited time! You can order it here. I actually ran away to finish writing this book. To a hotel in Perth (for four days) where I worked mad hours and had literally nothing else to think about. It was oddly blissful, hiding away from the world.
And it’s got me thinking… *eyes booking.com.
I’ll report back.
Brilliant! I love writing in cafes.
Love this, Fi! What day is it again? Hope the train stops to your dad’s aren’t too far apart. Started The Woman Who Ran Away From Everything last night and stayed up much later than I should have! A good antidote to the very good but bleak autobiography I was reading before.
Happy writing!