Sometimes there is no guarantee that you can make a life’s work out of doing what you love.

Sometimes in spite of good intentions the time you need to keep the momentum going that is needed for being a serious novelist just won’t be there.

Sometimes the money or programme or encouragement to be able to put that time aside won’t materialise.

Or sometimes it will materialise for others and not for you and sometimes their work will be deserving and sometimes it won’t. And that can be as much luck and timing as anything else.

Though sometimes it won’t be just luck and timing. Sometimes it will be social nous, cunning, charisma and plenty of other things that are not related to writing but seem to help push their work up the greasy pole.

Sometimes you will fight for your work in an environment where people fight dirty. And sometimes you will rest and fight another day.

And sometimes you will be given an unexpected gift of time and fill it up with work. And hope that the work you have given at the end of this time is enough, because you are not going to get that gift again. That is where I am right now.

Sometimes a crazy piece of luck might help turn things around. The right person loves your first novel. Or something in your synopsis inflames the imagination of an international person who might help you. Just something, one thing, sometimes, might lift you out of the cycle. Take the endless striving off your shoulders. That is not where I am right now.

Or sometimes, you might walk away replete with the knowledge that at least you have done your utmost.

Sometimes, it is hard to know what will happen.

Part of the South Leinster Way going through Inistioge

Forty Days in the Desert

From Ash Wednesday to today, I chose to abstain from social media to mark Lent. (With a four-day interruption caused by the Arch-Tempter Himself, Mr Amazon) This was because I wanted to live more meaningfully and in the moment. I wanted to force myself to live an undocumented life and be less reactive on places like twitter. It was also an attempt to return to the spiritual framework that had informed much of my childhood. I also threw over Goodreads, as there is an addictive quality to that site as well, as well as taking twitter off my phone.

Continue reading “Easter – Return to Social Media” →

Happy New Year to everyone.

These past few months there’s been a quiet revolution going on in my head. I read Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic a little while ago (a wonderful, kind, positive book for writers and artists) and one passage resonated with me. She mentioned a botanist saying that many people were saddened at the degradation of the planet at man’s hands, yet had little to no relationship with nature at all. This was brought home to me when I was talking to somebody and despaired about the damage we were doing to our stripped, exhausted Earth and its non-human inhabitants. In response to my despair, that evening they gave me a plant, a small, unremarkable winter cherry picked up in a petrol station on the way home from work. I should take a picture for readers of this blog, but it is too dark at present. I can tell you that the shrub’s berries are fine and orange (and poisonous) while its leaves are a bit subdued, some dying off. I might repot it soon. But it’s still hanging on in there in the window in bright southern light.

For me, that plant is hope. A tiny bit of hope in humanity and in nature.

Continue reading “Morning, Excellent and Fair” →