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The Lady Earth and Me
Some time in 2008 I started getting the restless upset-stomach feeling of a book-download on its way.
When I say that, I mean a book arriving complete and usually all at once, where I just take the words down like a harassed secretary, as if somebody is dictating to me just beyond my hearing.
While it’s happening, I feel excited and weird and can’t think about anything else. I can write for hours. During a previous download event in 2000, a doctor friend of mine rang me while I was writing. I talked to her for about 20 minutes, gabbling about all kinds of things, flooded with ideas I couldn’t even keep up with. When I finally shut up, there was a pause and then she said, “I’d love to know what your cortisol levels are doing right now!”
Or, as my daughter said when somebody patronisingly asked her if she liked having a mummy who was a writer: “Dunno. Depends if you like having a mum who’s writing all the time, who finally comes out with eyes like boiled eggs in tomato sauce and slams a plate of baked beans on toast down in front of you for the fifth time that week.”
However, this download came in bits and pieces over several years, interspersed with a great deal of external stuff and writing books. I always felt a bit embarrassed by it, to tell the truth. Finally, I typed it up and found I had written something called “Arguments…
