11 Mar 2013 15:22:08
As many people want to create fiction, it sometimes appears, as to read it. For them, the news from AL Kennedy's On Writing is mixed. On the one hand, Kennedy makes it clear that she feels blessed to have her job. She has a relentless but glamorous schedule: in the period covered by these blogs (first written for the Guardian) and essays, she appears at festivals; she is bombarded with commissions; she teaches; she performs a one-woman show; she writes a new novel, delivering it as usual to one of the most prestigious literary imprints in the English-speaking world. On the other hand, the schedule is so relentless that she damages her health. She regularly succumbs to viruses, and loses a good part of 2011 to an exceptionally nasty infection of the inner ear. We learn that Kennedy does not value her appearance, lives alone, and has many valued friends. This is a writers' journal, though, not a memoir. It offers encouragement, advice, and words of caution. If Kennedy impresses on her readers – perhaps through her virtuoso account of how to develop the line "A man walks into a room" – that writing is rather hard, she will have done a great service.
