Catherine’s blog – day thirteen

Friday 12th August 2011

Reflecting on my life so far, I am not really too dissatisfied.  At a certain age it is almost inevitable to look back and assess things, weigh up the achievements and the disappointments.  As the old saying goes “is the glass half full, or half empty?”  And of course, it depends on which way you look at it.  On the positive side, I had a good and happy marriage; I have a comfortable home and no money worries.  The negative?  No children (although that could be considered a positive as well), a truncated career, lack of a university education, and a gnawing sense that I could have done better, had I had a different upbringing.  I suppose that I was always slightly resentful of the fact that I was deprived of my father’s influence from the age of seven, and probably just when I needed him most.  I believe it led me to be far more withdrawn than I could and indeed should have been.  And slightly withdrawn i have always remained, always on the outside of the picture looking in.  But then again that may have worked to my advantage too, at least as a writer.  I can remember as a young woman when reading books, I always imagined I was the writer, developing the characters, teasing out the plot, telling the story  – or maybe a film director, positioning my actors on the set, checking the lighting, running through the spools of film in the cutting room.  And this, even as I was reading, devouring the book in question, instead of just taking it in, I was somehow creating it at the same time.  Maybe that is how it is for everyone.  And now at last I have written my own book, and even as I was writing that I was imaging reading it, as if it had been written by another person altogether; which maybe it was.