The next thing: unknown and lovely by Emylia Hall 08 May 2013

Right now, I’m in a deliciously rootless place. I’ve finished one novel, and am about to embark on the next. With two books under my belt, I now know a little bit more about how I behave when I’m writing. I know that as soon as I start, order will kick in. My days will be made of word counts and to-do lists, and I’ll annoy myself with my own obsessive compulsiveness. So I’m going to enjoy this transient period, when a new idea tantalises and I get to waft about a bit, my head pleasantly airy. While my house is free of dreamcatchers, nevertheless I’ve a taste for the ethereal, the unexplained, especially when it comes to ideas. No one really knows where they come from, and for all the work of creative theorists, their inexplicableness remains their most alluring quality. ‘Not I, not I,’ said D.H. Lawrence, ‘but the wind that blows through me!’ This is the point in the process where poetry trumps pragmatism, hands down.