Lyra

By the time you read this my carefree childhood days will be a thing of the past. Adulthood will have taken a good, hard look at me, scowled and kicked sand in my face before leading me off into the great sunset that is Responsibility. Because of this:

Lyra Sibella Keynton Triggs. Despite appearances, she is not The Pope. Yet.

You can’t say the hints weren’t there: all the talk of ‘taking six months off work’; of ‘becoming an adult’; of my life changing. Something’s been a-brewing but I’ve not wanted to talk about it directly – partly for fear of jinxation, partly because I’ve maybe possibly been in denial, but mostly because that’s not what this blog’s about.

They say that everyone’s allowed one parenthood post. They can have one opportunity to gush; one chance to say how their kid is the best – better, even, than all the other ‘best’ kids out there. Well this isn’t it. This blog’s to talk about writing. Thing is…

Thing is, how can you talk about writing when you don’t know what shape your life will take for the next year?

Lifestyle affects writing. It’s obvious and it’s true. You can’t sleepwalk your way through a novel: you can’t (yet) download your thoughts directly onto paper or video your dreams. You need time, you need a certain degree of consciousness, you need routine, focus and direction. A wee bub challenges all these things.

Of course, it’s perfectly possible to write a novel with a small child in proximity. I’ve read a good handful of interviews where the starting point for the novelist was the sleeptime of the child. I had a Twitter exchange with Aliette de Bodard where we jokingly mooted writing an article on the problem/opportunity of writing with a smallrus in tow.

I know nothing of this yet. That it will affect me and my writing is not in doubt: the question is whether it will prove boon or bust.

In the short-term all I ask is that you be gentle with me. I don’t know what’s going to change. Maybe this blog will become more erratic. Please understand that I’m not abandoning you, that I’m still out here, across the cyberverse, doing my damnedest to produce wonderful words and wilful witticisms.

But Lyra comes first. And the wife. And sleep. After that – well, after that we’ll have to see.