Locked out: N M Browne

Sometimes being a writer is like being on the wrong side of a door, a glass door, that offers tantalising glimpses of the world on the other side.

  When I was young, I just broke through it using whatever was at hand; determination, energy and ignorance mainly which, correctly wielded, are powerful tools. These days I peer through the misted glass, admiring the scenery. I go away and rifle through my office drawers. I find several dried up felt tip pens, a broken biro, a usb that no longer works and an aged roll of cellotape which appears to have no end. A sensible woman would throw them out, but this one observes that none of these dispiriting objects resembles a key and closes the drawer. The door waits. 

     On the other side, a dramatic storm is brewing. The sky is charcoal black and, as I watch, white lightning forks. Its afterburn dazzles me and I blink it away. I hope whoever lives there is safe: I have not met them yet, but I would care about them a great deal should I ever have the pleasure. I hang my coat over the door. The more I see the more I want to open the door and the more I regret the absent key. 

      I check the pockets of my coats. This proves helpful in other ways. I find the Society of Authors card I’d mislaid, a dried up mascara, a very useful tube of lipsalve and an unopened bottle of hand sanitiser. I stick them all in the drawer that doesn’t hold the key and make a pot of coffee. 

    Sometimes being a writer makes you angry, not just with the state of publishing, libraries, the proliferation of celebrity novels and the idiocy of social media, but with yourself. That world on the other side of the door is yours. All you have to do is open it and yet somehow you don’t. The door waits.