This is not what I planned to write about
But this is what happened, and it dovetailed into what I was going to write about which is one of those things that happen and no writer could get away with letting them happen in fiction because it sounds too beautifully coincidental.
Last night, well 2 am actually, my very tall, very intelligent, usually very laid-back seventeen year old son came into my bedroom to ask me to ‘deal’ with the spider on the ceiling in his bedroom. Yes. My rock god son still needs his mum on rare occasions…
I got up, got dressed (yes I sleep naked, too much information?), got the stepladder, got the large and active spider into a plastic cup with a sheet of stiff card over it and threw the spider out of the front door and went back to bed. “I’m an adult,” I thought. “Finally, indubitably, I’m an adult. How very cool.”
And then I woke up an hour and a half later, sitting bolt upright in bed, my heart pounding, my palms slick, my eyes wide open into the darkness because, fucking hell, I had been near a spider and I’m terrified of spiders! And then I woke up another forty minutes later, having another complete panic about a spider being in bed with me. So I put the light on and persuaded the dog to sleep on the bed and didn’t get any more sleep that night.
So this is what I have to share with you. Whenever you think you’ve got there, whether it’s adulthood or career success, your inner child will rise up and remind you that you’re faking it. Oh yes you are!
So yes, I now have an agent, but that doesn’t prove anything. And maybe I’ll feel like a real writer when I get a publishing contract. But probably not. Because my inner child will have something to say about that too.
Spider courtesy of Opo Terser at Flickr and Opo Terser is a braver person than I am!
3 Comments
Nik's Blog
3rd March 2009Brilliant post, Kay. And empathies a plenty!
townmouse
11th March 2009Mmm. One publishing contract later I still feel a bit of a fraud. I wonder whether JK Rowling wakes up in the middle of the night in a sweat wondering where the next book is coming from?
Congrats on the agent
Kip de Moll
12th March 2009Ahhh, finally some actual neuroses! I thought you were so grown up all this time. I love the connectedness of all this…and congratulations on riding yourself of one spider for another sort of weaver of strange webs.