When my first novel was published there was a small and helpful burst of accompanying publicity which, nevertheless, caused me to feel suddenly exposed, examined and poised on the lip of some horrible pit of compensatory doom: today the Guardian profile, tomorrow the freak case of galloping leprosy/lycanthropy/demonic possession. In an effort to comfort me, a friend of mine remarked, "Never mind, it'll all be back to normal soon." I remember the evening clearly, because it also involved his pouring the contents of a box of Trill down my collar and my chasing him up the street. (We were young, he had a budgie, seed-throwing was popular, all the cool kids were doing it ...) Of course, my life never did get back to normal, and during weeks like the last one my chum still calls and sepulchrally announces "Never mind, it'll all ..." while I yowl with busyness and tiredness and all the side effects of still having a job when many others don't and being able to earn a living as a writer when many others also don't. It seems ungracious to complain, but there are weeks which exceed even my capacity to anticipate extreme workloads, sleep deprivation, train travel and the naggingly persistent sense that any media exposure will inevitably lead to a hideous disaster of some especially unnameable sort.
So, although – for example – it's always lovely to do things for Radio 4 (they're very polite and kindly and remain a quite civilised part of the BBC) I do get perversely alarmed by the thought that something, somewhere will end in tears – if only my day, as I subside into a tepid bath while typing and eating a sandwich and wondering if a blood transfusion from a healthy child would mean I didn't need to sleep this month. Meanwhile, I have to remember what city I'm meant to be in, what I'm meant to be doing there and where I put the railway tickets I bought expensively at the last minute to replace the ones I bought cheaply earlier – before my plans changed. Again. Then there's the book introduction I promised I'd write and the play to be finished and the radio play and the research for the next novel (which is alternately exhilarating and brain-melting – while always being terrifying) and all of the small, but persistent requests for prose that seem to rise up with the morning and hang about my shins until I either fall over or deal with them. The danger of this inadvertent lifestyle being that I may end up too tired to be of any use to myself or others and may also fail to have any fun.
No fun for me, no fun for the reader. This isn't a rule I made up – it's a natural law. There has to be joy in the process, or the stuff just dies on the page. Naturally, the possibility of myself being found dead on the page also looms as I curl into yet another Holiday Inn bed, push in the earplugs and hunch under the covers for a nourishing three or four hours' kip.
Not that there haven't been bright points as I've barrelled along. At the weekend I was again a judge on the panel for the Warwick Shootout – a short (and moderately impossible) film competition for Warwick University students. All kinds of technical limitations and regulations are heaped upon entrants and yet hordes of disgustingly imaginative and talented young production teams still come up with lovely little movies every year. And then we get to give them Perspex award thingies in recognition of their mad skills in variously designated areas. All this and I get to be on a panel with – among others – the fine man and fine writer, Barrie Keefe.
And the following day involved me running the Edinburgh show in the free students' arts festival, which seemed to go well – nice to play with a real studio theatre and to remember doing much the same 25 years ago when I was a student at Warwick – and we didn't have an arts festival, or a film competition, or coordinated limb movements. Although we were dab hands at "Maggie, Maggie, Maggie! Out, out, out!" Ah, those were the days – only a handful of politicians on which to focus your loathing – nothing as exhausting as despising an entire parliament.
Back at home, my big author's box of finished copies arrived a few days ago – so that's the next book done. Although I've seen a number of my own books by now, I always experience the same little shock when I unwrap them and they look so … well, like a book – a book that anyone might have written – a proper book, by someone else.
One minute they're a buzzing pain behind your eyes, then they're a screen full of gibberish and rewrites, then they're mangled papers in coffee-and-red-stained heaps and then suddenly they've scrubbed up nicely and are off to meet the readers. Or the pulpers. Either way, that first moment you meet what is effectively a neatly bound section of your own mind is certainly an excuse for a short pause, maybe a cup of tea and perhaps a bit of hefting before you slot it into the shelf with all its brothers and sisters. And in August the new short story collection will be officially launched, at which point plunging into the media with enthusiasm will be pretty much a parental duty – so off we'll go again, more travel, more paranoia. Onwards.
