I thought that unless I was the best, I was unfit for love or acceptance from anyone

I FINISHED writing my fifth novel this week. It’s a first draft, I hasten to add, and an extremely messy one at that, so I’m not getting overly excited. I know too much about the amount of work that lies ahead of me for that.

I will say this book came more quickly than usual, primarily due to the week I spent at the Tyrone Guthrie artist’s retreat over Easter, writing 30,000 words in six days. (For context, Almost Love, the shortest of my four novels, comes in at 65,000 words.)