It might seem odd to compare my time away in hospital, grappling with a life-threatening illness, to stepping into a magical land through the back of a wardrobe…but there are definitely similarities.
Art and Care
Some Wise Advice from our New, or very Old, Neighbour
“Hooray! Our house! A new beginning!” we cry.
“Welcome,” writes Death. “I live on this road too. So glad you made it…”
My New Recipe for Making Art – What’s Yours?
My new recipe is starting to take shape, one in which great work could come, not from 10 hours of uninterrupted time alone per day, but from a lifetime of company and care: 10,000 precious scraps of time, mixed in with 1000 wild days of care.
What will you sacrifice?
It has long bothered me that motherhood is so often framed as a tale of sacrifice. When I was working on my book, the novelist Nicky Singer – who mentored me with such generosity and perspicacity that she became my ‘Book Mama’- informed me that mother-child stories always end in sacrifice. I didn’t want to believe it…
How to keep going
I am wondering how to keep going, what stories I can find to help me, and if there is a less exhausting, worrisome way to move on in the aftermath of publication.
What It’s Actually About
“What is it actually about?” Nicky asked me. We were in her study. The room of a real writer, I thought. She handed me a piece of paper with a list on it. “You have four choices,” she said. “You can only pick one.”