on the life of a new author...

Hendon is a place on earth

So, tomorrow a piece of writing of mine is going to go public in a way that I'm not allowed to talk about. I know, mysterious right? But all will be revealed very soon.

Anyway, it's a piece of writing about Hendon. Which makes me anticipate the inevitable reaction that I'll get from the people of Hendon (which is where I live, where I've lived for the past seven years, where many of my friends live). When Disobedience was published, a lot of Hendon people and indeed a lot of Jewish friends said things to me along the lines of "why do you hate us so much? What have we done? What's wrong with Hendon? It's a wonderful place! Why don't you love us?"

Which, sigh, makes me feel rather like a cliched sitcom husband trying to explain to his wife that the suggestion that she not go to a business meeting in a bikini comes from a place that is the exact opposite of hate. That sometimes you can love a place or a person so much that you wish they'd communicate their wonder better to the world, or wouldn't keep undermining themselves in these stupid, petty ways.

So this evening I thought I would share a story of something that happened to me today which is the best way I know to express the glory of Hendon.

This has not been a great week. It's been very busy, full of meetings, so time's been tight and the one thing I didn't need was for my internet at home to be cut off for almost two days, especially when my gameplan for getting everything done included needing to be online from 10pm when I got home, and all the Starbucks' round here close at nine. Even so it would have been maybe OK if I hadn't woken up this morning with a migraine which felt almost exactly like a cigarette trying to burn its way out from the inside of my skull via my left eye. I have people coming for dinner tomorrow night. I have articles to write and presentations to plan and interviews to do. But all I could do was turn off the lights and close the curtains and lie in bed and wail.

This afternoon, at about 2pm, just before I passed out into a comatose sleep, I finally thought 'no way am I getting all the cooking done for tomorrow night. It's just not going to happen'. So, from my darkened migraine room I called my local butcher. The butcher is Nissim, he is on Brent Street, he and his wife make great chicken soup and wonderful roast potatoes and kugels and salads and just... if you are around these parts, go there. I called up and said "are you delivering this evening?" (I didn't really have to ask, it's Shabbes tomorrow, of course they're delivering) and ordered a bunch of food.

Less than four hours later, a lovely young man, Mr and Mrs Nissim's son, arrived at my door with my chickens and kugels and soups. And he stopped for a chat, that was the thing. He wasn't a supermarket delivery man with a timetable to keep to, he's just a guy and he knows me and knows my family. We chatted about what food I was making, about his family, his wife, what restaurants we like, what recipes are nicest with lamb. Basically he was doing what delivery men always used to do which is: not just to make their job nicer by getting to know people but also to make sure I was OK. I didn't even really notice that he'd stopped to chat with me - it seemed totally normal - but a friend who isn't Jewish was here and was amazed, just amazed, that we'd spent those few minutes on the doorstep, and I remembered why this is so unusual.

There's no delivery charge. There's no minimum order. There's no arbitrary cutoff point. There's no timetable demanding that the guy move on as quickly as possible. If I were an elderly woman ordering one carton of chicken soup a week, they'd still bring it round and chat on the doorstep. They'd notice if I seemed frailer, or confused, or just sad. If I didn't answer they might call someone - a member of my family, or a community representative.

This never used to be so unusual. I remember my grandmother's butcher and grocer and fishmonger and greengrocer coming around every week, stopping for a chat, sharing the gossip and swapping recipes and news. Somehow, in the space of my lifetime, we've mostly lost that sense of urban community, though. Instead of stopping for a chat, we order online and accept deliveries with a terse grunt and a signature. No one says, as the guy said to me tonight 'hey, I don't have change. Just pay when you're in the shop next.' Except in Hendon, and places like it.

People often seem really puzzled that I still live in Hendon. I suppose because I'm a writer they think I should be living somewhere edgier, cooler, or maybe more rural for that Walden vibe. Maybe they imagine that, having written a mildly controversial book, no one in Hendon will talk to me anymore. But it doesn't work like that; I may be a bit of a black sheep, but I'm still part of the flock.

So what can I say? Hendon, I still love you. Whatever you might have heard, you're still a part of me. There's a reason that I write about you as if you were a shtetl: it's because you're the closest thing to a shtetl that still exists. Yes, you may have your narrow-minded side. Yes, you may be conservative and conformist. Yes, those pants do not suit you. But you're still a good place. Now come here and give me a hug.

Living in the 19th century

Cosy day today, despite the horrible blustery weather. Went to a pub I like in Hampstead - arrived about 11.30am when it was fairly deserted, left at 2.30pm when it was getting unpleasantly crowded. I never do this sort of thing without a project but I don't know why: for the price of a cup of hot chocolate I sat for three hours, read, planned, and wrote a letter to a friend in America. Yes, a letter. With notepaper and a fountain pen. Really pleasant and very calming.

It's interesting. When I was a child I had a book (probably still have it somewhere) predicting the future of 'electronic mail', this futuristic idea of what might happen to letters. It still predicted, though, that we'd be writing letters to one another, just sending them electronically. I don't know about you, but I think I don't really write letters much anymore, in email or otherwise. Email is more like a continuous conversation than an edited, pored-over, considered set of thoughts about one's life. Maybe it's the immediacy - being able to send and receive multiple times in a day makes the exchange more conversational. Maybe it's being able to cut and paste and quote from each other's remarks and easily browse back over what's already been said. Maybe it's the lack of formality: instead of finding a time and place to sit down and compose a letter, emails are written at the same computer where we do everything else, where we always feel hurried and frazzled.

In any case, another old-fashioned pleasure I'm rediscovering is that of finding that I'm pretty much ready for bed at 10.30pm. This is so new to me that I'm honestly wondering if I'm actually getting a cold or something. But maybe it's just... getting up early.

Success/failure

Well. Yesterday went pretty well. I was feeling pleased with myself. Got up before 8am, went to a morning meeting without any 'oh god, do I really have to get out of bed' drama, mentally composing a post about how amazing my whole new way of living is. On the way back from the meeting, spotted this building with three sculptures of naked blue men playing instruments climbing up a wall - if that isn't a metaphor for joyful aspiration and achievement, I don't know what is.

And then inevitably last night I got distracted, stayed up too late, and when the alarm went off at 7.45am this morning there was a migraine waiting on the bridge of my nose and the edges of my forehead. Fail. Exhaustion. Of course by the time I got up the emails were already piling up in great drifts around my ankles. Just about managed to drag myself out of the house at 4pm to watch the sunset.

But, to me, this is why blogs are interesting. I like reading other people's blogs because of the day-to-day-ness of them. Unlike novels, or journalism, or TV shows, they are very immediate. If someone is blogging about their improved fitness or their journey out of debt or their struggle with depression or their work on a novel or their fledgling company or whatever and things start to go wrong they either 1) disappear or 2) just 'fess up that it hasn't worked out today/this week/this month. And it happens to everyone, because despite what self-help books might promise, no one's life is a 100% upward trend.

There's a thing therapists say about how most of us spend too much time comparing our insides to everyone else's outsides. We look at other people: they all seem perfect, healthy, productive, happy, well-adjusted and generally coping well with life. We look at ourselves: we often feel grumpy for no reason, wonder if we've made the right choices, second-guess ourselves, feel ugly, lazy or stupid, worry that we're not rich enough, funny enough, thin enough, wish that we were more successful, got more done and failed less often.

The nice thing about blogs though is that there's no concealing failure. (Unless you lie, I guess. But I haven't seen too many obviously dishonest blogs. I wonder why.) Either you stop blogging: failure. Or you blog and admit that not everything's perfect. Even this guy, Thomas Barnett. He's a very successful person, mostly putting up dozens of posts a day on very clever ideas about America's foreign policy and strategy. And then suddenly he posts about his horrible infected sinus cyst, which has caused him huge amounts of pain and discomfort for the past six months. It was quite shocking to find this post among his other astute observations on diplomacy and the world's military hot-spots. Basically no one is fine all the time, whether because of physical or mental health issues, business setbacks or family traumas. Blogs, like diaries, reveal the minor setbacks as well as the major successes.

So, failure today, but back on the horse tomorrow. And then it's Saturday which is my day off anyway! And then it's only four weeks until it starts to get lighter again...

Two things I have discovered...

...since starting my 'getting up early/at the same time as normal people' project yesterday. One is that the violet tea at La Fromagerie is absolutely gorgeous. The other is that it's really easy to park at Homebase at 8.30 in the morning. (Picture above is La Fromagerie. Homebase not pictured.)

Yesterday was all pleasure. Woke up early, sat in bed having a think, reading, making a list, then drove over to Highbury for a cup of tea in a room that smells of cheese. I'm always on the lookout for new lovely places to work, and in theory Fromagerie is perfect - has wifi, is pretty - but in practice I'm much pickier than that and couldn't really work there because of a) the constant cheese temptation causing my thoughts to stray and b) the constant radio chatter. Why do beautiful places tune into annoying radio stations, thus spoiling the carefully-constructed ambience? A mystery.

This morning, all business. Leapt out of bed at 8.15am, drove over to Homebase to pick up some home essentials, plus ran a few more errands all before breakfast - and before 9am when they start to charge for parking all over Hendon. S'funny, I think I'd always imagined that there'd be hoardes of people doing their shopping or whatever at 8.15am, but it turns out that, no, that's early enough to be wandering almost-totally-empty shops with helpful assistants who aren't yet exhausted and harrassed.

Here is my question for today. Why is it that, having said on this blog that I'm going to get up before 8am every morning, I'm doing it, whereas if I'd just said it to myself I'd have hit snooze on the alarm and rolled over? Motivation: another mystery.

I Have Forgot The Sun (a pre-solstice project)

I am not a morning person.

Some people leap out of bed first thing in the morning, rejuvenated and ready to start the day. I am not one of them.

When I wake up, my brain is mushy. It's not even that I need coffee or want breakfast - I don't even get hungry until a good two hours after I wake up. (In fact, exactly two hours. Some perfectly-accurate internal clock takes care of this.) After I get up, I can basically read - which is what I tend to do, for preference.

My evenings are great, though. I often get a burst of creative energy around midnight (look at the timestamp on this post) and I've been known to stay up writing until 3 or 4am. I also often find I have a sentence floating through my head just as I'm on the verge of sleep. If I make myself write it down, it usually proves quite good - weird, but good. Unlike the ideas I wake up with in the morning, which tend to be more like 'hmm... how about some kind of *love story*!'

Left entirely to my own devices, I tend to gravitate towards a pattern where I'm going to sleep between 1.30am and 2am and getting up between 9.30am and 10am. I am pretty embarrassed to admit this, actually. I feel like people with real jobs will despise me and think I am lazy, even though I get good work done between midnight and 2am! Such is the early-morning prejudice of our culture.

Anyway, in general this pattern doesn't bother me. As long as I'm still working, I figure it's less important exactly when I do it. It only comes to be a problem... well, now, really.

These are - at least in terms of the calendar rather than life events - my worst weeks of the year. Between the hour change and the winter solstice, I think my whole body becomes slowly convinced that the world is dying, that the wolf Fenrir is devouring the sun and that Ragnarok is coming upon us. It's not exactly depression, but a kind of bleak melancholy. Weirdly, it turns as soon as it starts to get lighter again on December 21st, even if only by a few seconds a day, so I never worry about it too much - I know it'll disappear (and I have a light box, which helps a lot).

However, this year, the clang of my internal Winter Gong made me think... hmmm, perhaps I could do a little project! Since I enjoyed the August one so much. This project is called:

Naomi Alderman Is A Morning Person
(Yes she is. She is. Yes.)

I'm not really a morning person, but I'm going to pretend I am, for five weeks, starting on Monday 16 November (although I might practice some over the weekend).

What this entails:

1) Getting up every morning no later than 8am and posting a message on the Twitter account I have specially set up for the purpose. I don't really expect anyone to follow this account (although you're welcome to), but I thought it'd be good to have a record somewhere with a timestamp, and this blog would get pretty boring if I posted 'awake!' on it every morning.
2) Leaving the house while it is still morning and going somewhere. 'While it is still morning' = before midday, and I may cut that fine, and not feel ashamed. The somewhere I go doesn't have to be a new somewhere - although I'm sure some of them will be. Just somewhere that is not the warm cosy nest of my home which I can so easily stay in all day until it is dark. 
3) Writing something here about the place I went to. Or, if it has wifi, from the place I went to!

The exceptions:

1) Saturdays are excluded. Because, you know, Sabbath. Also I refuse to give up my lazy Saturday mornings in bed with the paper.
2) I might fail. You know. Failure is ALWAYS an option, especially when it comes to blog challenges. There will be no apologies, although there might be explanations. I hate when people's blogs become full of their apologies for not blogging/not doing what they said. Never apologise.
3) This project ends on 21 December, when the sun begins to return. I mean, it will return, won't it? Won't it?

And on that note, time for bed! Must stop thinking of 12.30am as the ideal time to start a new short story/talk outline/blog post. At least for the next five weeks, then I'll be happily back to my old ways.

Read it and weep (but, literally)

Read the incredibly powerful Dragonslippers: This is What an Abusive Relationship Looks Like a couple of days ago. It's a quick read but unputdownable (that over-used publishing ersatz adjective, but really true in this case). Started reading in bed at 1am thinking I'd look at a few pages and then go to sleep, finished at 2.15am, sat in the dark shivering till 3am.

It's not the kind of book I'd usually read: I guess I feel like I've seen enough documentaries/episodes of ER and Eastenders to understand what domestic violence means and to go, in a fairly detached way, 'oh yes it's terrible, and so often these women stay with their abusers.' But this is a totally different level of understanding: of the way that a relationship like this is essentially a kind of slow brainwashing, that it breaks down the will, that behaviour that, if it happened at the start, would have made the woman call the police can come to seem, drip, drip, drip, normal.

I was shocked that, at the start of her relationship with 'Brian', 'Roz' (all pseudonyms) was 35, a successful businesswoman, winner of the Woman of the Year award from her local chamber of commerce. I really had - it turns out - presumed that women who get into these relationships are badly-educated, poor, unable to find other economic options for themselves. (This despite the fact that I have a friend whose husband was also physically violent to her who is successful and brilliant.) Roz's website contains a list of warning signs of an abusive relationship which I really think everyone in the world should read: both to spot it if it begins to happen to you, and to understand why some 'romantic' behaviours can actually appear very threatening and scary.

The book also made me think about the ways in which our social construction of relationships, and of women's roles, facilitate abuse. Several times in the book, Roz - having been emotionally and physically abused - comes out with cliches about relationships. 'Relationships are about forgiveness', or 'he must love me, otherwise why would he get so jealous?' And Brian emphasises, and she agrees, that relationships mean 'becoming one', 'being absorbed into each other', 'not trying to be so independent'.

It made me think that an abusive relationship is just a relationship that really follows some of these pieces of hideous folk 'wisdom' to their logical conclusions. If a relationship means 'becoming one', then surely it's OK for your husband to ask you to give up friends he doesn't like? You're one now, so you shouldn't be trying to pull away from him by having hobbies he doesn't enjoy too. Or by going on vacation without him, or by taking a job when he'd really like you to be home.

The truth is that however close you are to someone else you will NEVER become 'one' with them, and a good thing too; we remain wonderful individual beings with our own hopes and dreams and likes and dislikes. But the rhetoric of relationships is that 'becoming as one' is somehow supposed to be a good thing.

And everyone knows that women are more 'verbal' than men. So, like those books say, you can't always expect him to be able to tell you what he thinks in words. Sometimes he might have to storm off into his 'cave'. Or shout. Or throw something. Or hit you.

The truth is that everyone, both men and women, sometimes need to be quiet and uncommunicative. If you are in a relationship, though, it is a good idea to be able to say this quite clearly. "I need to be quiet for a while. I need to be on my own for a bit." [Of course if you believe that you have to 'become one', even voicing that idea can be difficult...]

Looking back through the book, it seemed clear that from the very first moment they met, Brian was breaking Roz's boundaries. They met at a friends' house at a pool party. He picked her up bodily and, even though she was saying 'no, no!' [but we all know what it means when a woman says 'no', but keeps smiling, don't we?] he threw her into the pool and jumped in after her. Flirty behaviour? Or a total inability to respect her autonomy?

In the 1990s, Peggy Orenstein did some amazing research into how boys and girls are treated in the classroom. Essentially, it goes like this: a teacher asks a question and some kids put up their hands and others shout out. If a girl shouts out the answer, whether it's correct or incorrect, the teacher says "don't shout out, put your hand up". If a boy shouts out the answer, the teacher responds saying either "yes that's right", or "no that's wrong". Boys are rewarded for being impetuous, breaking the rules, going aggressively for what they want. Girls are rewarded for obeying the rules, and being placid and accepting.

This goes on in all areas of society. Babcock and Laschever did some research in 2007 that investigated why women don't push as hard for pay rises as men do (which is always what's blamed for the pay gap: of course, it's women's fault). The researchers found that there's a good reason for women not to ask for more money: they receive stiff social penalties when they do.

"women who do rebel against these standards by pushing more overtly on their own behalf often risk being punished. Sometimes they're called "pushy" or "bitchy" or "difficult to work with." Sometimes their skills and contributions are undervalued and they're passed over for promotions they deserve. Other times, they're left out of information-sharing networks."

Plus, women don't even get very far when they try to negotiate, because employers simply don't respond in the same way as they do to men.

"They make worse first offers to women, pressure women to concede more, and themselves concede much less."

We live in a world that rewards men for aggressively pushing for what they want, and rewards women for accepting what's given to them uncomplainingly. It's a world that says that relationships involve self-sacrifice, and giving up autonomy. It's a world that says that women's autonomy is less important than men's. It's a world that tells men 'if you don't get her the first time, just keep on pushing', and tells women 'don't make a fuss'. And although of course there are women who are violent and abusive to their male partners, it's far more common the other way around and one can see why. It's not because men are 'just more agressive' any more than women are 'asking for it'. We live in a world that is set up for abusive relationships; that's what I learned from Dragonslippers.

The library at the moon under water

Some internet rambling recently led me to this - an essay George Orwell wrote about his ideal, platonic perfect pub, The Moon Under Water. Apparently this is where the Moon Under Water chain took its name from, which I didn't know. I don't think they follow all his rules anyway! Carraway seed biscuits?

And then yesterday I was interviewed by Mslexia magazine, an excellent publication can highly recommend it. They asked me about my 'writing day' and I realised that I'm actually quite superstitious, or ritualistic in my writing-in-a-library practices. [I find a desk, I leave my things at it, I wander the shelves, find a book that I like the look of, take it back to my table, read a few paragraphs and then I'm off.] And also that I have a very good idea of what my ideal platonic library would be. So here we are. The library a few streets over from the Moon Under Water.

1. It should have open shelves, with a good collection of both modern and older books covering all the academic disciplines but with a special emphasis on fiction, poetry and drama of course, and history, classics, psychology, religion and anthropology. There is an excellent collection of medical books, and several shelves of photography. At the Moon Under Water Library, skillful and well-educated librarians have chosen the best of modern works, but haven't weeded out older books hard. A Victorian edition of Ovid rubs shoulders with a modern commentary. Occasionally one still finds books with the pages uncut.

2. The librarians know what they're talking about. A reader in trouble can turn up at the front desk and say 'help, where do I start on Byzantine architecture?' and they know where to point you. For more esoteric questions, they know who to ask and will take your details and get back to you.

3. There is no cafe in the Moon Under Water library - food smells do not penetrate its halls nor is there any danger of spillages on the books. However, one is permitted to take in a bottle of water and there is a charming refectory in the Moon Under Water university building next door where readers are admitted on presentation of their Moon Under Water library card.

4. The building is large and its bookshelves are serpentine. There are plenty of little corners with a desk next to a tiny window (and next to a power supply and a good light source. Although the library has existed in some form for centuries, it makes sure that every desk is adequately supplied with power and light.) Although there is a large central desk space, it is easy to find a more private area in which to work. The seats are comfortable. They do not, in general, have arms.

5. There is wi-fi, it is fast and easy to access but - and this is important - the password changes every day and must be picked up from a box of small slips on the front desk. Writers completing a manuscript are grateful that they have to make a conscious decision to be able to log on that day.

6. All the members of the library understand that silence is not a forgotten virtue. Any member found conversing on a mobile phone outside the designated 'conversation area' on the fourth floor knows that they face immediate expulsion.

7. The library is open every day from 8am to midnight. The loan period is typically three months. Loans can be renewed online, reservations can be made online, you will receive an email when your book is in.

8. Although the library allows some leeway to its members - and the members are in general completely trustworthy - those who are found to 'reserve' a desk at busy times by placing a jacket over the chair and then go for a three-hour lunch will be sternly reprimanded. However, this reprimand rarely has to be issued - the miracle of the library is that there always seems to be a quiet desk for those who need it. There are also a number of private lockable carrel rooms - big enough for a desk and a chair - which can be rented by those who want them for a minimal charge. There is a waiting list, but progress along it is brisk.

9. The library is a part of the community, with a noticeboard and an interesting speakers' programme in the evenings. It also has an excellent children's library - well-stocked, with an array of storytellers, reading times, beanbags for lounging and toys for the not-reading-yet children to play with. The children's library and the speaker's area are soundproofed.

10. I'm amazed I didn't mention this first. The library is beautiful. The proportions of the rooms are elegant, the desk-spaces simple and workmanlike but with a grace to them. Even though the library is extremely easily accessible from north-west London (it only takes me 20 minutes to get there from my house) it has glorious views of rolling countryside. How lucky I am to work there.

Sigh. If only if only.

[picture stolen from the Trinity College Library, Dublin website]

Just to prove I've been leaving the house

Even though I haven't written anything about it, I actually have left the house and gone places recently. Went to the very civilised Kalendar cafe in Highgate. Great food, plus this wonderful arrangement of dogs (sadly I think not a permanent fixture).

And if you're ever invited to a bookshop's birthday party, my advice is to arrive early. I was invited to the 10th anniversary party of Waterstone's Piccadilly the other day, in their very swish 5th floor restaurant. But, the party was 6-8pm and I arrived at 7, which apparently is *not* what the famous authors do. Michael Frayn was just leaving, so I got to dash up to him and say "I really love your work! I really do!" But I had *missed* Zadie Smith and Joanna Trollope. Sob. Also, there was a cake, but they didn't actually... serve it? Perhaps the senior management had decided it was all for them.

A stolen poem

I found this poem in the London Library's Summer magazine (I have a pile of magazines, I work through them slowly). I worry about posting the work of writers online without permission - I know Wendy Cope is quite against it - but as Clive James posted it on his own site himself I hope he won't mind too much. And if he does, I'll take it down!

In searching to see if he'd put it online, I found lots of scurrilous articles about James' extra-marital affairs. Of course if these weren't sanctioned by his wife (and some wives do), they are quite reprehensible. And yet this seems to me to be a poem written by a man who likes women. Which is an attractive quality in a man. So often men seem to talk about how much they dislike women and then in the same breath wonder why no woman will go out with them (and the same applies to women who say they dislike men of course). But this is quite the opposite of that.

A Message From the Moon
Clive James

Ming fruit dish, swirling Jackson Pollock tondo
From Wedgwood, just because you’re so much bigger
Than I am, don’t you lord it over me,
The frail outrigger for your fat canoe.
My seas are dead but I control your tides
And stir your women on a monthly basis
To their blood sacrifice. It isn’t you
That liquefies them for their absent lovers,
Churns their insides, puts highlights in their faces
On hot nights where the sun no longer lingers.
With my lost air to breathe they lie bereft,
Touching themselves for hours beneath thin covers
As I lean down to them and pull them open
Like little oceans I can close at will.
You think them satisfied but I know better.
Those men you sent me were too small to feel:
A pin-prick when they came, and when they left
One tiny splash of fire I hardly noticed
While they went home tin heroes. Next time send me
Someone who’s known me since she was a girl.

-- London Library Magazine, Summer 2009

Among other things I have failed at

Look at this. After all that creative energy on my August project, it's been nearly three weeks since I last posted here. I think the only answer is *another project*. I am brewing ideas. Ca ira.

In the meantime, though, another attempt to turn a spoken-word talk into a post. I spoke a few weeks ago at a Royal Society of Arts event on 'The Glory of Failure'. I've been a member of the RSA for about 18 months now - originally joined to use their library and, as a subsidiary point, to make my father proud. I don't really use the library that often - not enough space for working on one's own computer, but the paternal pride element is stopping me de-joining so I thought I should go along to one or two of their events.

'Glory of Failure' grabbed me as a concept because it seemed so playful, so delightfully English, and so wonderfully undemanding as a topic. In fact, I started my talk by commenting that I wasn't sure whether, at a Symposium On The Glory Of Failure I should try to give a really good talk, or a really bad one...

Many of the other talks had been about learning from failure, and using it to propel oneself toward success. And in some fields I can quite understand this: we had a talk from a representative of the Royal College of Nursing. He spoke very powerfully about how, for him, every failure must be a learning experience, each one must highlight the failures in the system that allowed it to happen, and show how that can be plugged. Because when he and his colleagues fail, people die. Perfectly sensible for him to try to avoid failure at all costs.

However, I think this attitude towards failure is not so helpful when it comes to the arts, to creativity, to my particular thing, writing. In fact, the subject of my talk was, perhaps, now I come to think of it:

ALL WRITING IS FAILURE

Which I proved via the following quotes.

1. "Happiness writes white" - Henry de Montherlant

No one ever wrote fiction who was completely happy. Why would you? Fiction is what you do when your life's miserable, or when you're recollecting past miseries. In fact, as Aristotle said, 'conflict is the essence of drama' - there'd be no fiction if there weren't conflict, unhappiness, distress. You couldn't have an episode of Eastenders where everyone went around feeling very fulfilled, calm and full of love for one another. You simply can't write about perfectly happy people - it's incredibly boring. [Even Julie & Julia spend time being creatively frustrated, even with their lovely marriages.]

Therefore: all fiction writing is a symptom of failure. If one were perfectly happy, one wouldn't need or want to do it.

2. "All writing is rewriting" - Ernest Hemingway

This is the thought that tortures me when I'm hacking away at a first draft. All this, all these gallons of words that I'm expending such energy on flooding onto the page - pretty much all of them will end up trickling away to nothing. I'll have to start again. And then again. And then again. With my new novel, The Lessons, I had to throw out the first *50,000 words* and rewrite them from scratch. It's demoralising. You have to write many many many words to find the good ones. Most of what you write won't end up in the finished book. This is the way with most writers.

Therefore: most sentences that one writes are failures.

3. "A poem is never finished, only abandoned." - Paul Valery

Oh how true this is. I still get ideas for how to improve Disobedience. No one ever feels completely satisfied with the work they've produced. There are always ways to improve it, maybe even to start again and completely redo it. The trouble is: when you first envisage a novel, it's a glittering, delicate, beautiful, perfect thing in your mind. Just an idea, shining and golden. And then you have to drag it into the mire of words - bringing it into the real, so much is lost. The plot becomes a little awkward, the characters who you found so charming begin to grate. The themes which once seemed sublime become trite. Everything that we create fails to come up to our deepest hopes and visions for it.

Therefore: all creations are failures, when compared to the vision that began them.

4. "There is a splinter of ice in the heart of a writer." - Graham Greene

Yes. Sad but true. Writing fiction is a way of escaping real life because, at any moment, at the point that the worst possible thing has happened to you, in the midst of grief, of loss, of misery, of anger, of fear, of bitterness, of hatred, in the middle of all these real emotions, a writer always has a tiny inner voice saying "I must remember how this feels so I can write about it later". It's very useful; it means that you never quite have to feel what you're feeling. There's always a journalistic platform to stand on, one can always be - just a little bit - an observer of one's own life.

Therefore: the writer is to some extent a failed human being.

Should we worry about all of this? Certainly not! Writing wouldn't be 'better' if we eliminated these failures, in fact it would cease to exist at all. This is one thing I know for certain:

the search for perfection kills creativity.

Therefore let us embrace the glory of our creative failures. They are also our creative successes.