NewsBreakingOnline

An essential part of good writing, it can also obliterate your best efforts when prompted by the wrong editorial hands Well, the antibiotics weren’t exactly what I needed – should you remember them from the last blog . I had/have viral labyrinthitis and the only response to that is lying down a lot and taking pills to counteract the worst of the symptoms. The worst of the symptoms being panic attacks, nausea and generally feeling as if you are strapped to the prow of a ship in a force nine gale whenever you stand up or do something reckless like turning your head. And then there are the muscle cramps and the immense tiredness … this health bulletin seeming horribly appropriate as we reach what will be the last sketch of Stages in the Writer’s Career, which we might entitle When You Have Been Doing it For Ages And Are Knackered. And may I hope sincerely that all of you writing readers don’t take my precise path to being knackered. It is in every way not worth it and contravenes all the healthy and good advice I give to other people. Of course. Imagine the scene: I am being tended in Warwickshire by my mother. (You know you are ill when you are a grown up and your mum is looking after you.) I shuffle about, sometimes check my email and take short strolls. I feel old. (To be fair, I am old.) I have forgotten many of my hobbies, and the possible strain of arranging any of them leaves me worrying that I will worry and feel worse. (Labyrinthitis both causes and can be caused or worsened by stress. This will be funny when I am well and perhaps a decade away from it.) I am self-employed, but have done no work since my last blog two weeks ago. This doesn’t exactly mean that I haven’t earned anything for a fortnight, but it does mean that I’m further behind schedule than during the weeks building up to Complete Illness when I was only moving at the speed of chilled glue. I assumed I was simply a bit poorly and tense – which is to say, my standard self. I forgot one of my most fundamental rules, dear readers, which is that I have to look after myself in order for myself to be able to do anything. Even writing. I forgot that I am a horrible self-employer and should be dealt with by the kind of harsh arbitration that only ever really happened during the 1970s. Whole swathes of what used to be the TUC should be picketing me, even as I type. I also forgot that I need to arrange nice little outings, trips and inspirations – or just a few hours off for myself to preserve maximum efficiency. I have mentioned this practice of inspiration in our shared virtual pages at other times, when I was sane and functional. I can ignore it but I only ever do so at my peril. It’s not the first time this has happened. One of the issues that must be addressed when you’re writing is the enduring conflict between other people’s agendas and one’s own. The urge to keep working while the work is there can quite simply steal your life. But it’s hard to resist. It may be that I want to watch a box set of Babylon 5, but perhaps someone else is offering me a bit of a trial in a new medium, and although now isn’t ideal, the creative possibilities do seem interesting … Perhaps I have been working on some odds and ends for radio and more than the average number of pitches have been accepted, and I don’t want to now refuse tasks I have essentially been humbly requesting the honour of undertaking (the BBC requires precisely that attitude) for months, so the schedule thickens … Suddenly a novel-free year looks as if it may kill me before the novel that nearly killed me last year has a chance to come out. (This would, naturally, increase sales into the high dozens.) And then there are the rewrites. Rewriting is as much a part of writing as being mugged is part of walking about in an urban environment at night looking happy. The right and improving kind of rewriting is a gruelling delight, as I feel we have established . Anything of mine will have been rewritten until it squeaks before anyone else has to put up with it. On collaborative projects, there will then be necessary changes that deal with technical issues, changes of location, or cast, lack of funds – the possibilities are horribly variable and numerous and yet oddly fun. There are also the good ideas and happy nudges from people who are providing a healthy outside eye on a piece of work. But then there are the other kind of rewrites – the wrong kind. Many of you out there may also be familiar with these and will be wincing and twitching already. These are never to do with the script and always to do with whoever is demanding them – and trust me, they will always be demanded. They will be required to address the demanding party’s personal difficulties with their lives, their need to feel involved and powerful, their need to crap on other people’s days, their need to add hours and weeks and even months to projects which might at one point have been pleasant and alive. Sadly, no literary process can ever cure any of these ills and so the demands can and will continue until the writer does the only thing the writer can do – he or she withdraws, accepts that vast effort has been wasted, that the struggle has been in vain and that the script, text, article, limerick is now a dog’s breakfast that cannot be saved, and nothing anyone would wish to bear their name. At which point everything will always become the writer’s fault and they will be, forever after, branded as “difficult” – even if they are already folded into a pretzel with the strain of accommodating increasingly self-contradictory and mentally peculiar instructions. One script writing friend of mine counts it as a victory if he gets through the terminal conversation without crying – and he’s a veteran of the Korean war. If nothing else, the stress and personal offence this kind of nonsense builds up, can remind the author that he or she really does still care about what ends up on the page. And it can act as an emotional reminder for future occasions, when work is questioned and probed by others. There’s all the difference in the world – and it’s more than palpable – between the sting of someone noting a weakness you missed and the pain of someone deciding to stab something witless into your personal sentences because they had, for example, a funny relationship with their dad. As my years of writing pass, I find that the only thing I really resent, regret and generally deplore is the number of months – perhaps even years – that I have wasted on projects that could have been OK if everyone involved actually wanted them to happen and to be as good as they could be. Choose your collaborators wisely, would be my advice. And take no advice from anyone who can’t take their own. Onwards. AL Kennedy Fiction AL Kennedy guardian.co.uk