Panic and Emptiness

First of all it’s not THAT bad. It’s just a phrase I like, I love Conran- he’s one of my favourite writers.

I have a lot to do – but it is doable. I have plan and schedule and a desk and a lunch hour and a clocking off time when I go to pick up my little girl up at six pm. There actually are enough hours in the day, I know because I’ve worked it out. Now I just have to do it, or I should say the rest of it because a lot of it is already done. It’s just that speaking as a person who really can’t stand heights, taking that final step off the precipice and into the headlong descent of the last big push is giving me vertigo.

But in the end (by which I mean tomorrow, I’m on schedule remember!) I will feel the fear and I’ll throw myself back into it and attack it and live it and breath it and love it until it is done. Because I love this. I love writing, yes it stresses me out sometimes, yes it keeps me awake in the middle of the night, YES I am sometimes to be found banging my head against the burr walnut of my expensive desk BUT THIS IS ME and the idea of giving up is impossible to imagine. At the risk of going all Gloria Gaynor this is what I do and what I love and I never forget how privileged I am to be able to do it. (Plus, I Will Survive)

There are few things in this life better than the free fall into writing, that wonderful tumble of words and ideas that somehow eventually find a form and make a book. So what I should do is stop with the Panic and Emptiness nonsense and get on with it. Enough with the pep talk.