GETTING OVER THE GAP

When I put the pen down after correcting the last set of page proofs of my seventh novel Between a Mother and Her Child, I honestly believed it was the last act of my writing career. Worse, I knew it was me who had derailed it. The truth was, I had hated writing it.

I’m not necessarily the kind of author I sometimes read about who adores every minute of their writing process, and who cannot conceive of a day when they don’t write something. I have many days when I struggle to sit down in front of the laptop, and am often found engaging in mundane domestic tasks like cleaning out that kitchen drawer instead. And with my first five novels, a familiar pattern had emerged, so that I had come to expect a bit of a love/hate relationship with the process – a writing rollercoaster.

Ideas had never been a problem for me. They had always just lodged