Current state of play is that I have a book coming out in six months which is just bursting with sensible advice for writers and wanna-be writers. Which is good, of course, and I am v. excited about it, though also nervous, as it's like one long feature which will be out there in the public domain for, ooh, decades, I should think. Which is sort of daunting. And there are autobiographical bits, which might a bit too autobiographical. But most of all, what is annoying me about my Writing Life a the moment is that there needs to be more of it. I'd like to move to a Scottish island, or rent a Cornish cottage on a rocky outcrop high above the sea, or a flat in Paris where all I had to look at was cats on rooftops. (French cats, with a special extra layer of attitude.) Instead, I have teenagers, and IKEA, and a man doing the kitchen floor, and the washing basket keeps overflowing, and I'm usually on a train, often one that has broken down and... so on.
So it's useful to remember that busy people are often Very Prolific Writers. Step forward Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, George Eliot (Henry James once said she "did not suffer from cerebral lassitude"). And my own particular modern favourite, MelvynBragg, the man who does everything, including write loads and loads of big fat novels.
Happy juggling!
