Being a writer is so much like being in a relationship it’s easy to confuse the two.

(Or maybe I should compare it to being in love. That comparison works in the sense that when writing is going well, it feels like I’m on top of the world, and nothing or no one can get me down; when writing is going badly, the resulting feeling is of incompetence and worthlessness.)

The worst way in which writing is like a relationship, is how not writing is like having a bad falling-out. You know the terrible fights that only break out with loved ones, because only they can get close enough? Where both of you stand their ground until the only possible ending is a complete cessation of friendly relations? And how hard it is to make up, forgive and forget, and how it gets harder and harder the longer you wait to try and make up? Until reconciliation seems as unnattainable as the summit of Mont Blanc in summer clothing*? Even though you know the reconciliation will be much easier than you fear, and it will be incomprehensible afterwards why you waited so long?

The only difference, really, is that I can’t apologize and kiss and make up to my writing…

* Last week on Mont Blanc, the highest peak in Europe at 16,000 feet, four climbers really did perish because they decided to go up in summer clothes…