BooksChatter: ✉ What I like about writing, or being a writer

Today author Alice Gilmore takes over our blog to tell us what she likes about writing, or being a writer.

Alice, a Memoir (12 June 2019, Amolibros, 165 pages), his her Non-Fiction Memoir.

"Is it a work of fiction or is it really a memoir? It is certainly no misery memoir, it is a joyous recollection of ardent, lifelong love that Alice won by her own imagination and determination." ~ Guy Rose, literary agent

"...this made me feel queasy. The writing is tremendously good and the situation unfolds most convincingly. I'm sure you'll find someone with stronger nerves than me, and then I shall be sorry." ~ Head of Zeus publishing

|| Synopsis || Teaser: KCR Preview || Author Guest Post || About the Author || Giveaway & Tour Stops ||

What I like about writing, or being a writer

by Alice Gilmore

It is the privacy, the freedom to be with your own thoughts and imagination, to let it go where it will and then to try to order it to go where you want. And nobody else is a part of that at all.

Most of my adult life I have shared everything with my partner. We shared our most private thoughts and feelings to a degree that I doubt few people do. And I loved it. But now he has gone I am free to wander alone. The surprise was that although I was alone I was never lonely. That only came when I returned to the world of my children and our house and the daily round, where I miss him from dreadfully.

However, when I go back into my writer’s world, my creative world, I can take him with me when I want, or go alone, or with anyone; Nelson Mandela, Marilyn Munroe, Hitler – urgh, no – Helen of Troy, fill in for yourself. Now, I realise for the first time just how private writing is and how, even as you spill the words out onto the page you are hugging them into yourself like some private embrace. It is just for you and the paper.

Then I turn off the computer, having clicked ‘save’ – oh, how I love that moment, it feels so satisfying. I have produced something all my own and kept it - and re-enter the world of my family and friends refreshed from the commune with myself and whoever else I chose.

As for his thoughts and feelings? Were they all mine? Obviously not because part of his work involved creative writing. He did this successfully for years so perhaps our minds were not so totally wound together as I thought. This never occurred to me. He had a bit separate from me through all those years. I feel quite jealous.

'Fearless and scandalous love...
what a woman! Staggeringly readable.