An author friend who is going to read the first draft requested a printed out version. Surreal moment.

Was going to share a spare page from the printing, but just read it and realised it’s a spoiler, basically the only spoiler in the entire book.

Looking forward to a bit of a break while I wait for feedback.

Already working on another project. Three guesses on the topic. I’ve discovered over the course of this that I might actually be better suited to writing non-fiction as opposed to fiction. Other project is similar to this one, just a different subject.

But then there is also my novel I’ve been writing for about 8 1/2 years, and it concerns the same topic as this proposed new project. I now can’t choose between the two.

I thought my novel a bit of a lost cause, given that I’ve been working on it for so long and failed to complete it, but I’ve just been looking at my notes and it’s less of a lost cause than I thought.

However, my novel is just kind of sitting there; whereas this new project is calling out to be written. I’ve considered the necessary research and it comes to some 45 books. That’s literally a year’s worth of reading. It’s exciting though, about 35 of the books I have not read and wanted to read at some point anyway. So really it’s just an excuse to learn a ton of stuff.

Of course, once I have recieved my second lot of feedback (my first lot was incredibly positive and encouraging), I will be back on Dancing with Edith. This new project is just to give me a point of focus until then.

Just spent about 30 minutes scrolling through other people’s instagrams and feeling small and unsuccessful in comparison. I know comparing yourself to other people is the one thing you are NOT meant to do but it’s habitual by this point.

But, I am very proud of my little book. And Edith. And myself for writing my little book. [Insert sage advice about pursuing your dreams]. That someone has read all those words I strung together, assured me they have value, found them unique and moving (and likened them to those of Ali Smith, whose Public Library and Other Stories gave me perpetual reassurance) means the world.

I want to sign off by telling you ‘to live in those enormous moments’, which I appreciate I have said before but it just seems appropriate. A friend asked me once what I thought that actaully meant, and I said I thought it meant, live as powerfully as you can, even if your world is just moments, sometimes the small things are the big things, they were for Edith. But I think this verse by William Blake sums up what I think it means pretty perfectly:

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.

There you go. Chase those little eternities.