The Drying Rooms - Epilogue

The Red Goblin

- It’s a mess

- Maybe you’re right.

- I thought you were writing a memoir.

- I am.

- You could have fooled me!

- Let me think! Stop that! It’s disgusting.

[The Red Goblin is peeling off bits of fingernail with his tiny sharp teeth and spitting them at her]

The Red Goblin. He used to exist. When I started writing this memoir, he appeared on the first page. As well as the little girl, who helped me navigate the early chapters, The Red Goblin was a character. He did the opposite of holding my hand through the sentences. He shat on them. But now he is just an occasional ghost.

He was a revolting little thing, the size of a baby bat. He used to crouch naked on the bookshelf, or sometimes he would jump on to the corner of my laptop — a tiny leering gargoyle with a cynical, sneering sense of humour that often made me laugh. But it also made my cry. The Red Goblin interfered horribly with the process of writing, even though he was such an unstoppable part of it.

- What the fuck are the hay parties?

- The hay parties are carefree joy.

[The Red Goblin sticks two wizened fingers down his throat and retches.]

Before taking the plunge to serialise The Drying Rooms here on Substack, I discussed the first few chapters with an editor. By the end of the session, she had made me believe in my writing enough to say the thing that had been gnawing at me for months.

“Look, [heart rate beginning to accelerate] I can take some robust criticism. I really need to know what works and what doesn’t work [thump thump thump]. For example, if you say, get rid of The Red Goblin, I can handle that.” [Heart in mouth. Is she going to say piece of genius or piece of shit?] She said, “Get rid of The Red Goblin.” And I knew she was right.

So I excised him, first from the pages, and then slowly from my being until I almost completely forgot about him, but I could feel his return when writing the final two chapters – the letter to my parents.

He appeared at the edge of the empty page at sunrise, naked and grinning, as always. And he waited – with a tiny gun in his hand. Ready for the showdown. We circled each other all day. Words came and went, but by sunset the elongated shadows of my fingers fell on a large crowd. It was time. I flicked him off the page. And he was gone.

But here’s the bit that I still find hard to believe. He wasn’t a device. And — please believe me — when he first appeared, I didn’t recognise him as my inner critic. I thought he was something else, some deep-down true voice, the real thing. It was a relief to realise that effectively all I was doing was whanging on about my internal battle with writing [oh, poor me!] But the editor was right when she said the Red Goblin served no purpose; he broke the flow of the writing and he was just nasty, she said — just nothing; all writers struggle with their inner critics.

- oh, so you’re calling yourself a writer now!

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Acknowledgements

I’d like to thank all my beloved family for being nothing but supportive throughout the writing and posting of this memoir on Substack.

And thank you to all of you who have subscribed and stuck with it. Your likes, comments, personal messages — and just knowing you’re there — have kept me going.

I’d also like to thank

London Writers' Salon

for their daily online Writers’ Hour and wealth of seminars and interviews.

But I simply couldn’t have written The Drying Rooms without my sister Laila’s unconditional encouragement and reassurance at vulnerable moments. The same goes for my son, Patrick. I loved the audio-recording sessions with him in his sound studio.

What next?

I’m having a little break — but I’ll be back. The Drying Rooms is finished. But please don’t go away! There’s something else to come. I’ll keep you posted.

If you have enjoyed reading The Drying Rooms, do hit the heart/like