"Mmm," I said.
"And then they're going to take one look at your blog and know, for absolute certain, that you are a flake."
"Mmm," I said.
"As well as a lot of other stuff that people don't usually put on their CVs," she added.
There was a pause.
"You know that you're supposed to be trying to make money out of writing, right? Not removing all potential of ever having any."
"Yeah."
She sighed.
"So can't you just give yourself a good write up now and then?"
(I worked with her in PR, incidentally. Giving things a good write up is what she does best. That and drinking six pints in one sitting.)
"Why?"
She sighed harder.
"So that you don't write yourself out of a future, Holly," she said crossly.
I frowned.
"But it would be lies."
"No," she said, putting her tea down firmly. "It would be fiction."
I write myself out of a lot of things. I write myself out of relationships (nobody wants to read about themselves or your feelings for them on a blog) and I write myself out of privacy. I write myself out of false dignity - the ability to pretend to my friends and family that everything is perfect - and I write myself out of false pride: the ability to pretend to the world that I am a success. I write myself out of love, I write myself out of heartbreak, and I write myself out of the chance of ever getting a 'proper' job again. And I write myself out of the life that everybody else has, because I'm so busy writing - or thinking about writing, or worrying because I'm not writing - that I'm never really part of it.
There are some things we cannot change: that are such a large part of who we are that without them we would be nothing. And I - in one shape or form, since the day I started my first diary at the age of 5 - have always been, and will always be, The Write Girl. Without writing, I am not happy. And without writing, I am not me. So - as far as I can see - whatever I write myself out of was never really meant for me in the first place. And as much as it hurts me, and scares me, I have to have faith in that.
"Maybe I'm writing myself out of a future," I said after a pause. "Or maybe I'm writing myself into one."
"Thank God," my best friend said, picking her tea up again. "Because that's exactly what I was hoping you would say."
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