I write in snatched hours of solitude, blinkering myself to the mess beyond, each day clearing a small space on my desk and in my thoughts. The house is silent but for the morning robin outside my window and the tapping of my fingers on the keys. Words, like birds, fly around my study and I do not feel lonely—when I write, I keep no company but the page.
Sixteen years ago, in my early months of pregnancy with our first son, my husband worked away. I stood in an empty, unfinished house—walls half-painted, floorboards ripped up—but I was not alone, I could feel the baby dance and somersault—his movements fluttering within me like the beating of tiny wings, a message only for me, After he was born, a part of me still yearned for that time we spent in communion: quiet as a secret, solemn as an oath. But eventually books—like babies—must emerge into the world, to be held by other hands and seen by other eyes. The cocooned, solitary days for my book are now over and the edits have begun.
The feeling of editing a book will be different for every writer, but for me, this feeling is a good one. I relish my work being edited—the sense (after all those solo hours) of becoming part of a team who want the best for my book, the pleasure of my words being truly seen, the experience of prose being polished to a shine, the clear-sighted editorial insights that come of expertise and distance from the text. It is through dialogue that a finished book comes into being: in switching on ‘tracked changes’, the conversation starts.