My birthday was on Saturday and it always starts with a bike ride for coffee. This made me smile.
What’s my greatest writing memory? That’s the question posed to all the authors attending the Queer the Shelves festival this coming Saturday, and I admit, I’ve been trying to work it out.
I don’t have one.
I have a lot of them. I have so many wow, really? kind of moments when it comes to writing. It’s Monday, and for me, that means a bullet list (because as of my birthday this past weekend, I’m now most definitely a woman of a certain age and I need lists like I need morning coffee and prunes):
- My wife told me she’d get the tattoo my main character had if I’d just finish that bottom drawer novel I had in my head. The day she got it, (a snake coming out of a page from my book), was pretty amazing. She’d inked herself with my words and concept.
- My publisher and friend, Sandy, called to tell me they were going to publish that first book. My neurodiverse response was a little more muted than she’d anticipated, something that still makes us laugh.
- I received an email from someone who’d come to our book stall at Manchester Pride, and she’d read my books. Her eloquent email told me how much those books meant to her and how that moment at our stall had changed her life in intensely fundamental ways. She and her wife have become good friends.
- Tattoos. So many people have tattooed themselves with the wings of the Furies, or with our names or the titles of our books that have meant something to them. That’s incredibly intimate (and permanent) and I’m incredibly humbled by it.
- Connections mean something. At book festivals, at readings, at conferences, at Prides…we connect over stories and the fact that we write things readers can see themselves in, and that’s a true gift. And so many of those connections have turned into real friendships. Friends we meet up with here and there and have a good laugh with, and commiserate with online. Those connections are precious.
I think that’s it for now. There are so many small moments, too, that don’t come to mind right away. But being a writer is incredible for many reasons, most of which have to do more with the people who read what spills out of my head than with the actual story.
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