I can feel when the time is coming near to write something new. My blood seems to fizz, to sparkle, slowly at first, like a pot put on to boil, my head too starts to spin, to fill up, and shadows of stories flit past me, completely unrecognisable but completely thrilling. If I'm unlucky, it builds up and builds up and I just finish in a week with a headache, a night of strange dreams, a fit of depression and nothing whatever to show for it. But if I'm lucky, and focussed, and have the time to channel it at the right moment, into a new idea or into the development of something already thought of, then it can mean a week of excitement, scribbling at every opportunity, a breathless rush, and a new plot or a new episode or a new person is there, alive on the page, almost illegible in places with the sheer speed of writing but the best, the best feeling in your head that you can ever have.
Broad beans planted in the kitchen. Five percent of the next novel (whatever it's going to be called) typed. Allotments calling to me, seed potatoes ordered or chitting. Currants badly needing pruning, raspberries too. But a lecture to do in an hour ...
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