So I’ve been wondering: what is the technical term for authors who are “between contracts?”. If you are an actor between jobs you are resting. Such a lovely term. The mental state of a writer who is not working, I think my husband would confirm, is not- ahem – restful.
Since delivering my manuscript (the second of a two-book deal) I have repainted the spare room, hired a skip, done Ikea (and God knows you have to be desperate to contemplate that), and reconfigured the derelict asbestos-cement buildings on our farm into an imaginary writers’ retreat. I have cut and coloured my hair, sorted out my office and the cupboard under the stairs, taken several bales of clothing to Oxfam and got quotes for every bit of home improvement that we can’t afford. The cat and dog are de-flea’d and wormed, the children groaning with home-cooked food.
What is this? Well, in part it’s simply a manic way of compensating for my customary vacancy by fitting in all the chores that I can’t manage while I’m working. But also it’s a way of avoiding thinking about the fact that I am, effectively, unemployed. Superstitious, I can’t start my next book until I know it has a home. Writers are a little like pit ponies (yes, check out my fringe) – we need to work. We need to have the emotional energy harnessed or it all spirals outwards, sending out chaotic sparks. Or as my husband says nervously, gazing at the architectural redesign I am scribbling, pen in mouth, on bits of graph paper, “so – ah – when are you meeting your editor?”
Two weeks. Until then I am working on my new lexicography.
I suppose I should say publicly that I’m “researching”. But somehow neuroticising feels better. Or festering.

To Norwich, last week, to the Gothic splendour of Dunston Hall, to speak at the Spring Jarrold literary lunch. I was stepping in at the last moment for Penny Vincenzi, who had been forced to pull out, and the audience of 150 had the good grace not to groan audibly at the understudy.

I suspect I was the light froth between Ed Pearce (biography of Walpole) and Lee Child (big-selling gritty thrillers) and after my own talk, I was struck by that of Mr Child, who has an interesting theory of storytelling.

Apparently anthropologists have determined that language began approximately 200,000 years ago. Child suspects that storytelling began approximately 100,000 years after that. But what, he asked, made humans leap from a language vital for survival (“uh … big bear behind you”) to telling stories about people who might not exist and events that didn’t happen (“there was this neanderthal over that hill, see….”)?

Storytelling, he believes, was, and is essential for survival. If you were sitting in that dark cave with no food, little comfort, and creatures outside baying for your blood, you needed to know that someone had survived the same trials. Hence story emerged. And today any book with a proper plot is essentially giving you the same message. Which is comforting to those of us who would rather read something that kept us up turning pages into the small hours than something that might be beautifully crafted but essentially goes nowhere…

I have another reason to listen keenly to Mr Child. He remarked that my unromantic habit of grumbling when my husband buys me flowers (as it means washing up a vase) apparently makes me the perfect woman. I knew there was a good reason to go to that lunch.