How to lose friends and alienate people...

Posted by Katy Regan at 11:04 on 24 Feb 2010

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Writing this second novel is a  bit like labour in many ways, especially in that I can't seem to do it without moaning (and groaning and a bit of shouting thrown in).

The other night, Matt Black gave me a bit of metaphorical slap around the face... ahem...I mean a pep talk on the phone.

You work for yourself
You get paid well
You're not digging coal
I'm driving four hours a day and getting up at 7am and have two jobs at the moment
Stop fucking whingeing, basically.

The thing is, although in my logical mind I know he speaks perfect sense, in the part of my brain affected by SNS (Second Novel Syndrome), I have lost all perspective.

I have begun to think that maybe a stint down the coalface might be quite nice - at least I could switch my brain off. Maybe getting up at 7am and going to work where there were other people at least, might be quite a treat. And driving four hours a day? Pah! Driving you can also do with your brain switched off and the radio on. Bloody luxury, I'd say. (I don't mean this for a second, MB. It sounds hideous. It's just the part of my brain affected by SNS that is talking, you understand. I shall regain my powers of empathy very shortly!)

 Soon I'll be like someone off that comedy sketch: You had no central heating? You were lucky! I lived in a cardboard box and ate gravel for my breakfast. Martyr, me? Oh no, no, no. Just moaning it out, this book. Like a big, fat baby. Me and the book, that is.  

Oh dear, I have gone mad. It was only a matter of time before SNS really took hold. Joshua Ferris who I mentioned in an earlier posting, described writing a novel like a constant low-grade fever. I couldn't agree more. I am most definitely sick. Symptoms include: Bags of unopened shopping everywhere, namely some washing up liquid that has been in my dining room in a Tesco bag for five days because I can't even be arsed to wash up (Oh, I never could anyway).

Friends have started to say ‘Mmm' a lot on the phone and then get off it as quickly as possible. I most definitely have my all-my-family-have-been-wiped-out-in-a-car-crash face on. It's just pretty permanent now, where as previously it was only when I reached a very sticky patch.

I have started to listen to The Smiths - this is not a good sign -  In particular, the track Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now, whilst I am changing fuses and washing rugs in the bath. Another symptom of SNS being the sudden urge to do all manner of things apart from actually write.

I have lost all powers of communication due to my ongoing solitude. I don't like music or any noise whilst I write.  It's just hours of silence, so that when I do speak, it kind of alarms me and sounds a bit like a teenage boy going through puberty. Wobbly, with a tendency to go up several octaves with  nothing I can do about it at all.

I saw someone I knew in the pub yesterday, where I'd gone for a brief break from my four walls (to work, not drink btw. Good GOD what do you take me for?). I was talking to her, but I didn't really know what I was saying. People have started to look at me funny, probably because I look pale, about ninety-four and am wearing really bad clothes when I do venture outside, namely a disgusting red jumper from Sainsburys. I mean, surely anything with TU in the label is unacceptable? It's a slippery slope towards BHS, that's what it is.

So anyway, it's official. I am mad and driving everyone else around me the same way. I have decided there's nothing else for it, but to bury myself away until it's finished so as not to inflict my loss of perspective / empathy / reality on anyone else.

I really hope this is just SNS; that after this, I will become a real professional who doesn't feel the need to put on the equivalent of a Laurence Olivier, Oscar-winning performance in terms of dramatics when writing a novel. My friend Rowan is such a person, she's written about a hundred novels and is a real pro, (check out her great blog at rowancoleman.blogspot.com where she actually writes interesting stuff, rather than just moans.)

Maybe writing novels is a bit like having babies: the more you ‘have', the easier it becomes, until you only have to sneeze and one pops out. Er.. I doubt that very much.

Anyway, in the meantime I shall shut myself away (then cry after 24 hours of solitude, and become totally paranoid that I haven't got any friends and never did.) For you, the moral of the story is don't try this at home. Don't write a novel. Don't, ok? Not if you don't want to lose friends and alienate people. You have been warned! xxx

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