Nicola Vincent-Abnett

Nicola Vincent-Abnett
"Savant" for Solaris, Wild's End, Further Associates of Sherlock Holms, more Wild's End

Thursday 28 August 2014

Writing, writing and more writing... Oh, and visitors.

It feels like an age since I wrote a blog about writing. I feel as if I ought.

For two years this house has been home to two writers, and no one else. It’s been a strange place. The dort has just returned home from two years of professional dance training in Leicester. It’s a pleasure to have her back. Her presence has radically changed the atmosphere in the house, bringing more creativity, if anything, and certainly not less.

And so we write... And we write.

The husband at his desk, looking thoughtful
We talk and we write, and we generate ideas and we write, and we read and we write, and we watch tv and we write, and we consume art and we write, and we listen to music and we write, and we cook and we write, and we dream and we write.

But more than we do anything else, we write.

Everything else is just the stuff that feeds the writing, the stuff that gets in the way of the writing, or it’s our lives... And, not for  nothing, sometimes the writing is our lives.

Right now, every conversation with every person seems to generate something that relates to a project one or other or both of us is working on, or it generates new ideas for something one or other or both of us would like to work on in the future.

We talk so long, so often about what a tough life the writer has, and that can be true, but how many people can say that they have this kind of job?

Surely it’s only in the arts that a person can work this hard and feel this fulfilled. 

There’s the rub, of course, because with this kind of creativity so often comes a slew of mental states and conditions that can be all manner of embuggerance.

It’s the price we pay, and sometimes it’s the price those we love pay too. I can’t speak for them, but, for me, today (and it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to say this)... Today, that price is worth it.

Today, I’m taking a couple of hours out of my busy schedule to bang the hoover round and flick the duster about. Honestly, I won’t make much of a dent in the housework. I’m one of that breed of women that knows that the housework will still be there when I get around to doing it. It’s a token effort at best, but I’m doing it because tomorrow, we’re welcoming into our home two more writers.

We don’t have a great many visitors, and we don’t invite people lightly. We can be horribly solitary. We do invite people we genuinely like to share our space, and these two people are among our favourites. We don’t see them often enough, and they’ve come a very long way.

Four writers in the house is going to make for a very stimulating, very funny, very energising time.

Work will be done, because, frankly, the schedule doesn’t stop for anything, and there are going to be some very long days ahead, but they’re writers, so they understand how this stuff works. A lot of talking will get done, too. A lot of ideas will be exchanged, and by the time our friends leave the mental coffers will be overflowing.

After that? Well, who knows? But I suspect that the notebooks will be full of ideas and the schedule will have expanded to include lots more future projects.


I can hardly wait.

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