Oh, the trials and tribulations of the Literary Career! You are either banging your head on the keyboard, fretting about Writers More Successful Than You Are, scrutinizing Amazon to see if your Oeuvre has risen above the half-millionth mark or worrying about all known subjects, including the Eurozone, global warming and the safety regime at the Grand National. (Or is that just me? I can't stand seeing photographs of the falling horses, all those heavy bodies crashing down as they leap over Becher's Brook.)
As I mentioned in my last post, writers are generally programmed to think that success is a rare and precious commodity, and if one writer gets some, then there is less for everyone else. Crazy though this may be, it's a widespread feeling. The danger here is that if you are not in the actual process of being awarded the Booker prize, or being spoon-fed pate de foie gras by adoring PR girls in some chi-chi Soho eaterie, daily life is a paranoid place of constant anticipation and dread.
Little can be done about this, apart from attempting to produce a constant flow of books of such crystalline genius that no one dares say 'no' and the Booker and the foie gras are yours.
But you can go for a walk. Which is what I did yesterday. And that makes all that worrying and angsting and awfulizing seem rather silly. Because writing is just writing, and real life is usually elsewhere, and it's still a beautiful world.
