West Hill, Hastings, 9.30am

and now I can think of other things again (for a while).

The Spaniel bounds after the ball, catching it square in its mouth before rounding in a circle and returning to its owner, who throws it again for the dog who bounds after it again, rounds in a circle again, returns it to its owner again, who throws it again and I walk so as it doesn’t seem I’m watching them play this endless came of throw and catch, neither of them seeming to tire in this morning that is brightly lit, the sky blue, the sun rising still over the sea, the mist from earlier burnt off by now.

January days like this so rare each seems to open itself like a gift and I don’t care if it’s hyperbolic to say this; these kind of mornings and the joy of being alive on them, in them, to be able to walk to the sea only ten minutes away after the school run, feel so pure and good they’re enough to celebrate alone. And it is rare that life feels like this. Every day spent working since the excitement of Christmas Day, Boxing Day and it was back in my study to unravel this thing I have been unravelling for three years. Last week I was convinced I couldn’t do it. This is a good sign. The sensation it’s beyond me. The feeling of being so far out my depth I’m not sure if I will ever feel the ground solid again. Every time I feel it, I forget it’s a good sign. Last week, earlier this week, crying in the shower, in my study, doing everything I could to avoid it. Watching stupid videos online. I have fucked my Instagram algorithm so thoroughly it’s now showing me videos of capybaras giving rides to ducklings. I find these highly amusing. It’s possible I’m hysterical. It shows me a dating coach wearing a very high roll neck collar, his hair cut like a premiership footballer from 1995. Until then, I didn’t know dating coaches existed. He dispenses the kind of advice that will either get you arrested or a restraining order. I resolve to date him, write a long read on the date. So hell bend on procrastinating that everything becomes funny. Yesterday and the day before that, rolls of paper laid out on the floor, talking to myself as I walked around the house, a midday shower where I talked the structure out. Surely this is a type of madness. Masochism at the very least. A possession of sorts. I screw Spotify up by listening to the same song on repeat for fear any others will interrupt my concentration. I pick my phone up again just to see what the dating coach is up to.

For a year I believed I was being guided by the dead, I write. Sometimes telling the truth is the hardest thing to do. Imagine letting yourself look that insane. I begin to write down the most insane things I can think of that also happen to be true. That time I was…I write it all down just to practice doing it without flinching. Everyone is dead, I repeat, no one is left to read it. It’s not true, but it helps. With blinkers on, you can write anything.

Some strange alchemy happens sometimes when you’re writing, suddenly everything points to the book, every conversation, everything you see, everything you read; it all somehow helps bring the book into being. It doesn’t make any rational sense. It doesn’t sound logical but it is what it is. I heard a conversation once between Nathan Englander and

Etgar Keret

and I think it was Englander who said that suddenly you’ll see someone eating soup and SOUP you’ll suddenly realise holds the secret to the book. It is that unhinged. For the last few weeks, signs everywhere. That’s when you know you’re on the right track, I want to think. It would be nice to think something is right. I think I heard this conversation between the two writers the summer my grandmother died. It was August and I was pregnant and had my MA thesis to finish and hand in. I wrote a lot of it in the press tent at Edinburgh International Book Festival where I was working, Englander was talking at an author’s conference, the cadence of his voice would come through the tent, and some of this rhythm made its way into my thesis. At least, I remain convinced of this pleasing thing, since I was writing about Derrida, the ghost of Englander at this conference, embedded in a piece of work long since forgotten. I didn’t know anything then about writing books. I still am not sure I do.

So early in the year for there being so much work to do and the conviction this time I was attempting to do something I certainly couldn’t. Tuesday, and I read this essay by Patricia Lockwood and I saw something in it or her subject that told me, no, I could. I would. Sometimes, just beginning to believe is enough. For better or worse. Lockwood is a genius. I know genius gets thrown around a lot, I know it can be a way of diminishing how hard someone works - oh but they’re a genius, the implication being it’s easy for them - but God, she’s special. To take a book everyone has a strong opinion on and then express no opinion whatsoever is a different and very skilled kind of criticism. I feel we’re losing the art of criticism. A book reviewer isn’t the same as a critic. The distinction, critical.

Lockwood pointed to the book as the dog pointed to it as the seagulls skidding across the frozen pond did as the women I was possessed by did. I will not tolerate the idea I was not possessed by them. I am not sure I no longer am. Didn’t notice the date either until just gone noon, until I realised I was finished. The last sentence always comes as a surprise. Blindsides you. You think you have so much more to do and then you are done and then what are you supposed to do after that? How do you navigate the world again? Damon Galgut said a sentence should always surprise you, you should not be able to tell from the beginning of a sentence how it will end - a fine piece of advice, but in this case, the final sentence suddenly was written. It is like this every time. A sense of how did that happen, and then the world slowly comes back and where have I been other than on the page? To write is a type of annihilation. A realisation that for a time you will retreat from the world. I often feel sorry for my children. I am not an ideal mother. And how did the house get so dusty? The fridge so empty? The children so tall? The date, when I finally notice it, 104 years to the day since the woman who kick started this whole thing walked out into the Glasgow snow and was dead before dusk. Now tell me I have not been possessed by the dead these last three years, longer likely.