There are 22 days left of this year. This makes me unreasonably happy. I know that every day is a gift and all that crap – but the sooner I can peel off this year, the better. There is no rational for my loathing of 2011, it just feels like its been a lot of very hard work with no measurable results. I call it being a writer. And, on a bad day, a mother.
The trouble with being a writer is that it is so easy to stop. It starts as a niggling tug of a thought as you stare at a blank page: Who cares? What if I don’t write? After struggling with a chapter that will not work, its a thrilling option. Soon it has grown into a big statement. The world doesn’t need more writers, it needs more mothers. And you volunteer at school, organise playdates. You get the DVD man in, you file three years of bank statements. Those things do make a difference.
My guru this year has been Fantastic Mr Fox. The audio book was top of our car playlist for months. Though I’ve heard the story more times than one ever should, one line always made me smile. The foxes are digging for their lives, they haven’t eaten or slept for days. The tractors are closing in on them (see – I know it very well). Instead of telling the little foxes, We’re nearly there, or It will all be alright, Mr Fox says, in Roald Dahl’s 1940s BBC rumble: ‘Keep going, my darlings! Don’t give up!’
Perhaps there are some achievements this year I’ve overlooked. I can do a headstand now. And I’ve taken up horseriding and last week did my first jump. To be fair, it was a very little jump – one would struggle to slide a letter underneath it, and my children were too busy playing with a mangey stable dog to see it – but I did it. And although I seem to have a staggering inability to finish the edits to my book, I’m still chipping away.
gone
Rosie Rowell 