A Writer's Life

I just attended the Yarns in Barns festival in Masterton, and though I didn't see any barns, I did hear a few yarns. Very entertaining they were, too. Unfortunately I only have the notes to my own bit of what turned out to be a hilarious debate on the Friday night (in the post below) so you can't get the full flavour of just how much fun it was, but I had a ball. Met some wonderful people, exchanged some authorly bon mots, talked a lot of rubbish. It was marvellous.

As I soldiered home yesterday with a hangover, I was newly aware of how being a writer can mean a life of wild contrasts - on the one hand, the writing, and on the other, the promotional stuff.

It's lonely, writing. There's no other description for it. You spend hours, days, eons all alone, with only the clanking spaces of the inside of your own head for company. If you're very lucky, you might find your brain populated by a chatty character, and that can sometimes break up the silence a little, though there's always that worrying little accompanying undercurrent (I'm hearing voices. No, it's just a character. But will it ever shut up? I'm hearing voices).

Then you grow to crave the silence. Your hearing becomes hyper-sensitised: you can hear a baby cry two streets away; what you think is full-scale renovations next door is simply someone at the other end of the street wheeling out the dustbin; lawnmowers sound as though they're shaving the hair off your head. 'How am I supposed to work like this?' you wail. To nobody. Or, occasionally, to the chatty character in your head who, let's be honest, doesn't really like to be interrupted and can make you pay for it in many, many ways.

At times like these, I find there's nothing else for it than to head for where there's some life. An hour or two working in a cafe restores the balance in your ears, and reminds you that there are real people having real conversations, while drinking great coffee and eating actual food instead of re-toasted old toast and scapings from the bottom of the oven.

And then you have the complete opposite end of the scale, like the Yarns in Barns Festival - shoved out into the limelight, expected to be outspoken and witty and engaging with strangers, when you might not have used your voice for forty two hours straight and aren't completely positive you've even got one any more (other than the narrative variety).

For some writers it's completely anathema, like dragging a kiwi out of its darkened case and demanding that it tapdance in a spotlight. The two natures do not, cannot go together. For my own part, though, it's something I really enjoy. I love performing, and even do it voluntarily in acting classes and the like. And I love training, so it's no hardship to be suddenly on my feet in front of 20 people (or 220 people as it was on Friday night), generally being a bit gobby.

It's so different to my usual life, however, that I can go a little mad in the headiness of it all, like a kid on a sugar-high. More used to not going out at all, I try to have all my nights out in one evening, having as many high-speed conversations as possible, making all the new friends I can, drinking (apparently) my entire quota of wine for the last month or so, or whenever it was I last went out.

Well, all I can say is, it was worth it. The high-speed conversations were ennervating as well as entertaining, and the new friends will turn out to be just that, I hope. Maybe even some new clients, as well, who often turn out to be friends in time. As for the wine, I can just regret poisoning my liver with it but not a second of the bonhomie in which it was imbibed, and try to do better next time.

Because there will be a next time, of course, someday. After I've spent a few days or weeks or eons placating those little characters in my head. Shush now. I'm home again. Shush. Shshshshshsh. Don't make me come up there ...