I have never had the compulsion in write in the way that I know many (oh, so many, going by the number of submissions we receive!) others do. I love reading to the extent that I usually fall asleep with a book imprint on my face and – true story – I once made my dad jump into Lake Geneva to retrieve a copy of Matilda. I even sometimes feel the need to reread sentences and paragraphs just to admire them.

However, I have always felt that writing for a living – even if one had talent – would just be so much of oneself on display, even in fiction. The thought even makes me feel a little queasy, the same kind of feeling as if I had decided to take all of my most personal belongings onto The Meadows for Edinburgh residents to poke about and judge. Intellectually, I know that writers must have boundaries and that as readers we can’t really be living in their heads, but emotionally I feel that the relationship between reader and author is at times almost possessive.

I read a blog post today by Scott Adams in which he talks about how his creative impulses were and are just that: compulsive. The best you can hope for in this life is that your delusions are benign and your compulsions have utility. I am very jealous of those who have the courage and intense hunger to create, and who also have the talent to create something that is full of beauty and humour and light.

[On the other hand, even without that intersection of talent and will, Vanessa and I were saying last week that we could do a better "write-by-numbers" chick-lit book than some of the proofs we've been given recently. One too many glasses of wine one Friday evening and we'll knock up a synopsis and an appropriate double-barrelled author name for you all to judge...]

I’m not sure I had a point I was getting to here, but feel free to ramble in the comments creatively about creativity if you so desire!

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