A new relationship with my writing ...

... is what I need.

I realised over the weekend, while thinking about other relationships in my life, that the relationship I have with my writing is one of dread fuelled by the certainty that it will be a struggle: that I always expect to discover that what I thought was a story isn't, that the characters I thought realistic aren't and that the situations I thought plausible are as unstable as, well, something very unstable.

My relationship with my writing is fuelled by my dread that it won't be what I thought it was, either in the imagining or in the rereading. I dread that I have, and will end up with ... nothing.

But what I realised on my way back from Salisbury yesterday was that if I change my expectations, if I welcome the lack of knowing where it's all going as a puzzle I'll probably be able to solve instead of a failure of imagination; if I delight in the exploration instead of feeling inadequate because I'm not already filled with ideas; if I have the courage to dare to see what happens next without rejecting ideas before they have the chance to flower, then that black cloud of dread could be pierced by shafts of sunlight and I'll get down to writing quicker and, who knows, this whole MAT business could become a thing of the past.

Here goes ... .